The child began crying again.

Alaric held him close, his silver eyes wet with tears that fell onto the baby’s crimson hair.

’Darius...’

The memory hit him like a physical blow.

’You know, if these really are twins, I could give you one. Solve your problem right there.’

Darius’s laughter had been warm, genuine, the kind that came from a place of deep friendship.

’I’m serious! My wife would kill me, but hey, what are friends for?’

It had been a joke.

Just two men talking about families and futures, one teasing the other about struggles that seemed insurmountable at the time.

Alaric had laughed it off, made some comment about not needing charity, both of them knowing it would never actually happen.

But now...

Now that joke had become reality in the cruelest way imaginable.

He was holding his friend’s son.

The son Darius had joked about giving him.

The son Darius and his wife had died to save.

And Alaric had finally become what he’d wanted for so long.

A father.

But the cost...

Damian continued crying softly, unaware that he’d just gained a father who would burn the world to keep him safe.

A father who’d carry the weight of this night for the rest of his life.

A father who’d been given the greatest gift and the heaviest burden all at once.

****

Nobody spoke.

The dining room had fallen into a silence so complete that even Kuro had stopped moving, the bird’s usual mischief forgotten as he sensed the weight pressing down on everyone present.

Alaric looked at Damian across the table, his silver eyes taking in his son’s face.

And his mind went back sixteen years.

To a forest bathed in moonlight.

To a baby crying in his arms, too young to understand what had happened but somehow still able to feel that everything was wrong.

Those same crimson eyes had been filled with tears then, confusion and loss bleeding through despite not having words for either.

Now those eyes stared back at him with carefully controlled emptiness, understanding everything but burying it so deep that nothing showed on the surface.

Damian sat without any visible expression, his posture relaxed in a way that looked almost unnatural given what he’d just learned.

Lyandra’s face was hidden behind her black hair, her shoulders shaking slightly.

She’d known pieces of what happened that night, enough to understand the danger and necessity. But she’d never known the full truth of what Alaric had done to save their son.

The servant couple whose names she’d never learned.

The decoy baby who’d died in Damian’s place.

The mother who’d walked to her death carrying another woman’s child.

All of it to ensure Damian survived.

’Our son... the best gift of our lives... was saved by destroying another family. By sacrificing someone else’s precious child.’

The moral weight of it pressed down on her like physical force.

"Oh, Alaric..."

The whisper came out broken, carrying more weight than any louder exclamation could have.

Luna sat frozen, her silver eyes fixed on Damian’s face.

Her Empath skill was screaming at her, drowning her in emotions that threatened to tear her apart.

The grief radiating from Alaric hit her in waves, old pain mixed with present worry, guilt that had been buried for sixteen years suddenly exposed.

The horror bleeding from Lyandra felt like knives cutting into Luna’s consciousness, maternal anguish at what her husband had done to save their son.

And Damian...

Luna’s hands clenched beneath the table, her knuckles going white as she fought to process what she was feeling.

She could feel it underneath his calm surface – a storm of confusion so profound it felt like standing in a hurricane, pain that didn’t know how to express itself, gratitude twisted together with guilt and the strange grief of losing parents he’d never known but who’d died to save him.

It was like trying to read emotions through layers of steel, but her SSS rank skill could see what others would miss entirely.

’He doesn’t know what to feel... Doesn’t know if he should be thankful they died for him or sad that they had to... Doesn’t know how to grieve for parents he never met... Doesn’t know how to process any of this.’

The weight of everyone’s emotions crashed over her simultaneously.

And her own horror at the story, her own grief for the family that had been massacred, her own fear about what this meant for Damian’s future.

It was too much.

Far too much.

Luna’s breathing became shallow as she fought to maintain composure, her Empath skill making her feel like she was drowning in other people’s pain while pretending the water didn’t exist.

’Hold it together... Don’t break again...’

The silence stretched longer, becoming almost unbearable.

Then Damian spoke, his voice barely above a whisper.

"...What was her name?"

Alaric’s throat worked for a moment before he could answer.

"Mariana Bloodworth."

He paused, then continued.

"...One time, Darius was thinking about names for his children... The one he liked most was Damian. He said it had parts from both him and Mariana, that it felt right somehow."

Luna felt the spike of emotion from Damian, something sharp and painful that he immediately crushed back down.

The implication hung in the air.

Damian nodded slowly, his expression still maddeningly controlled.

"...Have you figured out who was responsible?"

The question came out flat, like he was asking about weather patterns rather than the massacre of his entire family.

But Luna felt the cold rage underneath it, carefully contained and deliberately suppressed.

Alaric paused, his hands tightening on his glass.

’Why is he so calm?’

"No one knows for certain... But only the important members of Imperial families were invited to your birth celebration. And no one apart from them would have had the power to slaughter the entire Bloodworth family in a single night."

His voice became quieter.

"I can’t think of anyone else who could have done it."

Lyandra lifted her head, her black eyes red but her voice steady.

"I can’t think of anything that would make the Imperials turn against one of their own like that."