The following morning, Lucian's sleep had been fractured, disturbed by the strange events of the previous night. He woke with a lingering unease, his thoughts a chaotic mess as he tried to piece together the fragments of the previous evening. The scorch marks on his hands. The faint glow on his chest. That... feeling, something foreign and powerful stirring inside him.
But there was no time to dwell on it. He had to get to work. The Black Swan called, and it had a way of demanding attention.
He arrived early, pushing open the back door and stepping into the dimly lit staff area, where the scent of old wood and stale beer hung in the air. The bar hadn't yet opened to the public, and the quiet was a sharp contrast to the rowdy chaos of the night before. He hung his jacket in the back room and was about to start prepping for the evening shift when he heard a voice behind him.
"You're up early today, Lucian," called out Maya, the bartender who worked the morning shifts. She was a cheerful woman in her late twenties, always quick to offer a smile and a laugh. Her short, dark hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she was already wiping down the bar, humming under her breath as if the world were her stage. Maya was a regular fixture at the Black Swan, an easy-going, approachable presence who seemed to find joy in the mundane routines of bar work.
Lucian nodded, offering a faint smile. "Couldn't sleep."
Maya shot him a knowing look, arching an eyebrow. "Bad dream?"
He stiffened slightly at the mention of dreams, the memory of the nightmare from the previous night still fresh in his mind. "Something like that."
"Well, you know where to find me if you ever want to talk about it," Maya said, offering him a sympathetic grin. She wasn't the type to pry, but she had a way of making people feel like they could share if they wanted to. She had always been the friendly sort, always ready to make small talk or lend an ear.
Lucian appreciated her kindness, but he didn't want to drag anyone else into his confusion. "I'm fine," he said curtly, though his tone didn't quite match the words. He wasn't fine, and she knew it.
Maya chuckled a warm sound that filled the space. "Alright, alright. But don't come crying to me when you need a drink to forget your troubles."
Lucian didn't respond, instead turning to start restocking the shelves, focusing on the task at hand. He didn't have time for distractions. His mind was still reeling from the previous night.
But before Maya could continue her teasing, the door opened, and a new patron walked in. He was a middle-aged man, wearing a dark coat and a well-worn fedora that cast a shadow over his face. He looked out of place—his attire too formal for the atmosphere of the Black Swan, where patrons typically wore whatever they felt like in the late-night haze. He was older than the usual crowd, his presence an odd contrast to the bar's usual patrons.
The man glanced around, taking in the quiet before his gaze settled on Lucian, a sharpness in his eyes that sent a twinge of discomfort through Lucian's chest. He hesitated before approaching the bar.
Maya greeted him with her usual enthusiasm. "What can I get you?"
The man nodded but didn't respond immediately. His eyes lingered on Lucian, studying him in a way that was almost unnerving. There was something about the man's stare that felt as though he could see straight through him, like he knew something that Lucian didn't. His gaze flickered down to Lucian's hands for a brief moment, before returning to his face.
"Whiskey, neat," the man said, his voice low and gravelly, with an accent that Lucian couldn't quite place. "And make it strong."
Maya poured the drink with a practiced hand and slid it toward him, but Lucian couldn't shake the feeling that the man was still watching him.
"Anything wrong?" Maya asked, her voice light but curious, catching the shift in the atmosphere.
The man didn't answer immediately, his eyes flicking between Maya and Lucian. Finally, he broke his gaze and took a long drink, his lips curling into a tight smile. "Nothing wrong," he said slowly, almost as though considering his words carefully. "Just... a little off today. Something in the air. You feel it?"
Maya blinked, her brow furrowing slightly. "What do you mean?"
The man shrugged, a casual motion, but his eyes remained locked on Lucian. "It's hard to explain. But something's changed. Around here, and in him." His eyes flicked to Lucian again, and for the briefest of moments, Lucian felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
Maya laughed nervously, but it was clear that she didn't share the man's sentiment. "You must be imagining things. It's just a quiet morning."
The man didn't seem convinced, his gaze never leaving Lucian, and Lucian could feel a strange, unspoken tension between them. It wasn't the man's words that bothered him; it was the weight behind them, as if this stranger knew something Lucian himself didn't.
Lucian forced himself to smile, trying to mask the unease bubbling inside him. "Maybe," he said, his voice steady but his heart racing. "Maybe I'm just having an off day."
The man took another sip of his whiskey, still eyeing Lucian with that unnerving, knowing look. "I wouldn't be so sure about that," he muttered, his voice low enough that only Lucian could hear.
Before Lucian could respond, the man stood up, tossing a few bills on the counter and giving Lucian one last, lingering look. "Keep an eye on yourself," he added, then turned and left as quietly as he had come.
Maya blinked, then looked at Lucian, an amused smile playing on her lips. "Is that guy always that weird?"
Lucian shook his head, his mind spinning with questions. "I've never seen him before."
"Well, just so you know," Maya said, a playful glint in her eyes, "I don't trust people who talk about the air being 'off.' It's bad enough around here without adding spooky weirdness."
Lucian didn't respond. His hands clenched on the bar as the strange man's words echoed in his mind.
The night came swiftly, and Lucian could feel the weight of it pressing on him as he tried to sleep. The events of the day—the strange burns on his hands, the eerie glow of the mark, and the unsettling words of the patron at the bar—kept circling in his mind, like a storm that refused to break. He lay in his small apartment, the air cool and still, but his thoughts were a mess, restless and tangled.
It wasn't long before exhaustion claimed him, his eyelids heavy as he drifted into a fitful sleep.
But sleep didn't bring peace.
He found himself once again in the burning landscape, the flames licking at the edges of his vision, consuming everything in their path. The sky was a deep, fiery red, and the heat pressed against him like a suffocating blanket. The air was thick with the scent of smoke, acrid and heavy in his lungs. It was familiar, like the nightmare from before—but this time, there was something more.
Through the smoke and flame, he saw her again—the woman from his dreams. She was a figure of fire, her body shimmering with heat, her form shifting like the flames that surrounded her. Her eyes were molten pools, glowing with an intensity that felt like they could burn right through him.
She was closer now. Her voice, when it came, was like a whisper on the wind, but it pierced the air like a blade.
"Lucian..." Her voice echoed, deep and resonant, with a force that shook him to his core. "Lucian, my son."
He froze, his heart slamming against his ribs as the words sank in. Son?
The flames flickered around her, but she didn't burn. She was the fire, her form a manifestation of it, and the way she spoke—so sure, so final—made his stomach twist with a new kind of dread. This wasn't just a dream. This wasn't some random vision. This woman knew him. Knew him in a way that felt ancient and unfathomable.
"Your legacy calls you, Lucian," she continued, her voice laced with both affection and something darker—something that made his skin crawl. "You cannot escape it. You are mine. You have always been mine."
The ground beneath his feet trembled, and Lucian could feel the heat intensify, burning around him, closing in like a furnace. He tried to move, to run, but the fire was everywhere, and she was there with it, standing before him like a towering inferno.
"Your blood flows through the flames. You are the spawn of the flame, and I—" The fiery woman's lips curled into a twisted smile. "I am your mother."
Mother?
Lucian's mind reeled. The word felt wrong, a jagged shard of something that didn't belong in his world. She couldn't be his mother. He didn't even know who she was. His real mother was nothing like this, nothing like the terrifying, burning figure standing before him.
But there was no denying it. There was a certainty in her voice, an undeniable pull that made his very bones ache with recognition.
"Lucian, you were born of fire, and to fire, you shall return," she whispered, her eyes narrowing in a way that felt predatory. "Embrace it. Embrace who you are. Your birthright is coming for you."
The flames around him surged higher, the heat unbearable, and Lucian's chest constricted as if the fire was creeping into his very lungs. He couldn't breathe, couldn't move, could only stand frozen in place, trapped in her fiery gaze. His heart raced, the terror of it all suffocating him.
And then, just as the flames were about to consume him entirely, the woman's voice echoed once more, louder now, as if it were coming from every direction.
"Lucian... my son..."
With a jerk, Lucian woke up, his body drenched in sweat, his heart pounding in his chest. The sudden shift from nightmare to reality left him gasping for breath, the aftershocks of the dream still rippling through him.
The darkness of his room pressed in around him. The air was thick and heavy, but it wasn't the same as the heat of the flames. Still, the weight of the dream lingered, and the image of the fiery woman haunted the edges of his vision.
My son...
The words echoed in his mind, over and over again, like a mantra. What did it mean? Why was he being called? And why had she said he was born of fire?
Lucian rubbed his face, trying to shake off the fog of the nightmare, but the strange sense of familiarity that the fiery woman invoked remained. The mark on his chest—the mark that had burned and glowed before—felt like it was pulsing, alive, beneath his skin, responding to the memory of the dream.
His hands trembled as he reached for his shirt, pulling it open just enough to see the mark. It wasn't glowing this time, but the faint burn he had felt earlier remained. The edges of it seemed sharper now, more defined.
Lucian sat there, still trembling from the nightmare, his chest rising and falling with every labored breath. The weight of the woman's words echoed in his ears—You are mine. You have always been mine. Her voice, commanding and unsettling, lingered as though it had been branded into his very soul.
His hand hovered over the mark on his chest, now pulsing faintly, but the room around him was still dark and silent, save for the rhythmic ticking of a distant clock. He stared at the jagged symbol, the fiery etching that had appeared weeks ago with no explanation. Its lines twisted and curled like something ancient and primal, but now, under his touch, something shifted.
The mark began to glow again—this time, more intensely, a soft red light that flickered like the last embers of a dying fire. His breath caught in his throat as the warmth of it radiated outward, spreading like wildfire across his skin.
It wasn't the same heat he'd felt earlier, the mild burning sensation that had haunted him for days. This was different. It was alive. And, as it pulsed, the room seemed to change around him.
At first, it was subtle—just a shift in the shadows, a slight distortion in the air, like the space itself was warping in response to the growing intensity of the mark. Lucian's eyes widened as he watched a nearby book on his nightstand tremble, its pages fluttering as if caught in an invisible breeze.
Then, without warning, the room seemed to bend. The air became thicker, heavier, as though gravity itself was being pulled in unnatural directions. A book on the shelf behind him teetered on its edge before lifting off the shelf entirely, hovering in the air for a moment. Lucian watched, wide-eyed, as it spun slowly before crashing back down to the ground with a loud thud. The sound felt muffled, like the very air around him was thick with tension.
Panic surged through him. This wasn't happening. This wasn't real. But the reality of it hit him harder than any nightmare had.
What is going on?
His breathing quickened, and the mark on his chest burned hotter, a searing warmth that spread like fire through his veins. His entire body felt as though it were coming alive—crackling with energy, as though every nerve was awakened. He reached out instinctively, his hand hovering just above the floor as the carpet beneath him rippled, the fibers lifting into the air like they were caught in an invisible wind.
A cold, suffocating silence settled in the room for a fleeting moment, before a low hum began to vibrate in the walls. It was as though the entire apartment was resonating with something powerful, something beyond his comprehension.
Lucian jerked back, his eyes darting around the room as he tried to make sense of what was happening. The lamp on his desk flickered, its light distorting into strange, elongated shadows. The edges of the room seemed to ripple, as if the very fabric of reality were warping.
Suddenly, the sound of scraping metal caught his attention. Lucian turned to the mirror across the room. It was small, cracked at the corner from a long-forgotten accident, but now it was pulsing with the same unnatural red glow as the mark on his chest. The reflection in the mirror twisted, contorting as though the glass itself was bending in time with the pulsing energy in the room. Lucian's heart raced in his chest, his instincts screaming at him to move, to escape, but his body refused to respond.
The reflection of his face—his own familiar features—was suddenly distorted, like someone had stretched the image in the mirror. His eyes, once just brown, now glowed with an eerie red tint, reflecting the same fiery light that was coming from his chest. The room seemed to close in around him as the light intensified, and Lucian could feel his body growing heavier with the pressure of the energy now swirling through him.
He stumbled backward, his legs shaky beneath him. The air was so thick now, it felt like it was pressing against his skin, suffocating him. Every object in the room—the furniture, the papers scattered on the floor, the books on the shelf—seemed to tremble in time with the force building inside him.
And then, as suddenly as it had started, the energy shifted. The light from the mark flared one final time, brighter than ever, before it suddenly collapsed in on itself.
Lucian's breath caught in his throat as the room fell back into a profound, oppressive silence. Everything was still. Everything was calm.
His body trembled as the heat from the mark finally began to fade, the glow dimming until it was barely visible. His mind raced to process what had just happened, but the reality of the situation was too much to grasp.
He couldn't explain what he had just experienced, but one thing was certain: whatever was happening to him, it was only just beginning.
The mark, the strange power inside him, was growing stronger. And it wasn't going away.
Lucian ran a shaking hand through his hair, staring at the objects scattered around his room. He felt a pang of something like dread—a premonition that this was only the beginning of something much, much worse.
Lucian stood frozen in the center of his room, his pulse still racing, his body tense with the remnants of the strange, fiery energy that had just surged through him. The quiet that had followed the chaos felt unnatural, like a storm had passed but left the air thick with the anticipation of something worse to come.
His eyes darted around the room, looking for any sign of normalcy, any hint that he was still in control. But as his gaze swept across the walls, something began to shift. It started small, at first—a flicker in the corner of his eye, like a shadow stretching out of place. But it grew quickly.
The shadows in the room—those that had once been harmless, merely an effect of the dim light from his lamp—began to move. They twisted and shifted like liquid darkness, creeping along the walls and floor, curling around the edges of furniture in serpentine patterns. Lucian's breath hitched as he watched them writhe and coil, moving in ways that felt... alive.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. His heart pounded louder in his chest, and every instinct told him to run, to escape this thing that had invaded his space, his very mind. But his feet felt like they were glued to the floor, paralyzed by the sight of the shadows contorting in front of him.
And then came the whispers.
Soft, almost imperceptible at first, like a breeze passing through his ears. But they grew louder, clearer, until they filled his head entirely, making it impossible to ignore. The voices—low and guttural—seemed to swirl around him, coming from every direction.
"Embrace it..."
"It is your destiny..."
"You are chosen... born to the fire. You cannot fight it."
The whispers slithered into his mind, their words curling around his thoughts, making them feel foreign, unrecognizable. His breath caught in his throat, his body trembling as the shadows continued to shift and dance around him, each movement seeming to pulse with life, urging him, beckoning him to surrender.
Lucian reached for his chest instinctively, his fingers brushing over the mark, still faintly glowing beneath his skin. The heat had returned, but now it was different—an all-encompassing warmth that seemed to thrum in tune with the whispers and the twisting shadows. The mark was no longer just a symbol; it was a living, breathing thing, a part of him that had been awakened, and it seemed to be calling to the darkness.
"Stop," he muttered through gritted teeth, his voice shaky, his hands trembling as he tried to force himself to regain control. "This isn't real. None of this is real."
But the shadows didn't stop. They only grew more animated, more insistent. The edges of his room seemed to blur, like the boundaries between this world and some other place were becoming thin, fragile.
"You are the heir to the flame," one of the voices crooned, this one deeper, almost hypnotic. "Embrace your birthright. You were always meant to rule."
Lucian's heart pounded in his chest as he staggered backward, feeling the weight of their words crash into him like a tidal wave. What were they talking about? Heir to the flame?
He had no memories of any of this. He had never asked for this—whatever this was. The shadows, the whispers, the mark burning beneath his skin. It didn't make sense. He was just an ordinary man—a bartender in a city that had long since forgotten the supernatural. But now, everything felt like it was shifting, like his life had never truly been his own.
The whispers grew louder, more demanding, swirling in his ears, filling the silence with their insidious, persistent chant.
"Embrace it. Embrace your destiny."
Lucian's fists clenched at his sides, his body trembling with a mix of fear and anger. He wanted to fight back, to scream, to force this madness out of his mind. But the mark on his chest pulsed harder now, and the shadows in the room grew more aggressive, pressing in on him from all sides.
The temperature in the room rose, the air thick with an electric charge that seemed to cling to every surface. He could feel the power building around him, suffocating him, but beneath the weight of it all, he also felt something else. A strange... pull. The mark seemed to be calling to him, beckoning him to accept whatever fate it was offering.
Could he even fight it?
A cold shiver ran down his spine as he realized the terrifying truth: The mark, the shadows, the voices—they weren't outside of him. They were a part of him, a part of his bloodline, a legacy that had awakened after years of dormancy.
Lucian clenched his jaw, determination flaring in his chest. He wasn't going to give in to this—he wouldn't.
But the longer he stood there, the more his resolve wavered. The whispers grew more insistent, the shadows closing in tighter, until the air around him felt thick with dread.
"Embrace it," the voices repeated, their tones almost tender now, as though coaxing him into submission. "You are not meant to fight it. You are meant to rule."
And then, with an almost imperceptible shift, the shadows swirled toward him, like tendrils of smoke reaching out to touch him, to claim him. His body tensed as the darkness wrapped around him, curling like a lover's embrace, pulling him toward something unknown.
Something dangerous.
Lucian's heart raced faster, his breath shallow, but something in the deepest part of him knew the truth. The truth that he had feared from the moment he'd first seen the mark.
There was no escaping it. The fire was in his blood, and the darkness was coming for him.