[Warning: This Chapter contains graphic and sensitive details. Proceed with caution.]

They said no one was born a monster.

But somehow, that was a saying Lucian didn’t believe.

Why?

Because the very beginning of his memory started with... blood.

BANG!

The young Lucian stood in a quiet, dark room. The only light came from a yellow desk lamp and the open door behind him, where a strip of light stretched across the floor to where the boy stood.

Before him was a heavyset man, slumped against the wall. Blood and matter fresh on the wall above him, his head hanging, blood dripping from the hole in his cheek.

"..." The young Lucian gazed down at the pistol in his hand. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

A pistol he had stolen from the man, only for it to go off when the man tried to take it back.

Yet despite the deafening sound that left his ears ringing, his hands and body were as calm as still water. He didn’t bother with the speck of blood on his cheek, nor the blood soaking into the back of his thin shorts.

His backside didn’t ache anymore, even though it was still bleeding.

Instead, the young Lucian simply stared down at the director of the orphanage — the man he had overheard whispering about sending him away for organ farming.

"A lump of meat," he whispered, the longer he looked at the lifeless shape before him. "Looks like a lump of meat."

Whether he fully understood what he had done or not, the corners of his lips curled into a small, relieved smile. Even at that age, he knew his suffering would not continue.

It wasn’t so hard, after all.

Had he known it would be this simple, he would have stolen the thing sooner instead of convincing himself that the director would keep him safe and fed if he just stayed obedient. That enduring the pain this man caused him was worth the roof over his head.

"Mister," he said quietly, crouching beside the body and setting the pistol into the man’s limp palm. "Thank you for taking me in."

The young Lucian raised a small finger and pressed it to the man’s forehead, pushing lightly enough to see the full extent of what the shot had done.

The distance had been close. Barely a hand’s length between them. But instead of fear, a soft giggle escaped him. Almost gleeful.

"It wasn’t so hard," he nodded, repeating words he had heard the man say countless times. "It really wasn’t."

With one last quiet chuckle, the young Lucian got up and walked out. He never looked back. He left the orphanage almost at a skip, but not before raiding the kitchen and eating as much as he could, helping himself to everything they had never been allowed to touch.

He even washed up afterward, mimicking everything he had seen the adults do whenever they had done something terrible to the children there.

That was the last time the young boy set foot in that place. He just kept walking as far as his legs would carry him. When he was tired, he slept on the streets. He begged and dug through trash for food. And when that stopped working, he turned to stealing and pickpocketing.

All to fill his stomach.

But he was young, and he knew nothing of the world.

When he thought leaving was the answer, the world beat him down to remind him it was never that simple. Living on the streets at that age was dangerous on its own. People tried to lure him, hurt him, sell him off as though they had the right to.

Life outside was barely different from what he had left. A cycle of hunger, abuse, danger, and escape.

It stayed like that until one winter — shortly after he had managed to escape yet another person trying to force him into what he had been forced to endure his entire childhood — she appeared in the middle of his misery.

She gave him a scarf, told him it was cold, and sat down beside him at a time when he had already made peace with the idea that death was his only way out.

But when he thought she would leave, she stayed.

She taught him how to earn. Taught him a kind of morality he would never have considered on his own, and fought for him without hesitation. Things he never imagined anyone would do for him... and all of it coming from a girl smaller and younger than he was.

She gave him a reason to live.

After all, she was reckless, childish, and far too trusting. She didn’t know the streets the way he did. She hadn’t met the people he’d met, and she had no idea how sick the world could be.

Perhaps that was exactly why he was still alive.

The worry over what had become of her, and the relentless search for her after she was taken from him kept him going.

Instead of falling back into his old ways and accepting death, he pushed forward. He willingly joined syndicates that could move him across places, making himself useful enough that no one would think to dispose of him.

Despite his age, he did whatever it took until one day, an opportunity came.

A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that might actually lead him to that little ghost wannabe.

It arrived when the syndicate he had been running for came under attack by a larger organization — one they had, somehow, managed to offend.

That night, while everyone else was either running or fighting for their lives, the young Lucian found himself hiding beneath a desk. He hugged his knees in silence, eyes tracking the shadow that moved slowly around it until a face appeared directly in front of him.

A woman.

A dangerous smirk on her face, staring straight back at him. Then her brows rose in faint surprise, knitting together the longer she studied him.

He didn’t understand the mix of emotions crossing her face at that moment. All he knew was that she was different from all the people he had met. She was far more dangerous. But before he could bolt or raise the gun he had stolen from his boss’s desk, she spoke.

"I am the Madam of Dominion," she said. "Tonight, everyone you knew will die without a trace... that includes you."

She paused, intrigue flickering in her eyes. "But I’m in a mood. So I might make an exception. What are you willing to become to survive tonight, boy?"