𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗖𝗜𝗥𝗖𝗟𝗘 𝗢𝗙 𝗟𝗜𝗙𝗘 ━━ 𝑃𝐸𝑇𝐸𝑅 𝑃𝐴𝑅𝐾𝐸𝑅

𝙩𝙬𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙮-𝙨𝙞𝙭. graduation

Eric Brooks found himself kneeling down beside an unearthed grave, his face devoid of all emotions, a faint crease forming in between his eyebrows as a form of concentration. His dark obsidian eyes analyzed the decaying corpse inside the tomb. In his mind, he wondered: after all this time, how come the body was beginning to decay until now?

The body of the Celtic witch, Hayek, looked like it had been buried barely this month when in actuality, it had been 494 years. Eric Brooks knew something was off, but it wasn't his job to figure out what and try to fix it. His duty on this earth lay on killing vampires and stopping them from slaughtering the face of the earth. Though, if he's not willing to intervene in what's happening, then no one will. Nobody had the knowledge nor the training that he did, Eric Brooks' world is supernatural, and he has seen countless things.

Luckily for him, he had an apprentice.

"So we're hunting zombies now?" Elias Magnuson jokes, eyeing the corpse as Eric examines it, before his eyes drift to the gravestone and notice the name.

Hayek.

"Zombies don't exist," Eric replied in a flat tone, giving his apprentice a look that clearly told him this was serious. "Tell me, Elias, do you know who Hayek was?"

Elias Magnuson was a walking library, he racked his brain trying to grasp some information according to the topic. "I know she used to be a Celtic witch, extremely powerful. She burned down her whole tribe, including its inhabitants."

"That's the Irish version." Eric yanked the rusty necklace chain from her neck and stood up, Elias eyed the necklace. "Hayek was a protector. At least that's how the Celtic version depicts it: her people loved her, they thought of her as a gift from the gods."

Elias frowns. "So, if she didn't burn down her own tribe, then what happened? Why two versions of the same story?"

"There are always two versions of a single truth. The point of view of the people involved always changes, there are always details that one omits but another says." Eric continued, Elias listened carefully. "The Irish King was a jealous monarch, he hated the fact that Hayek had more love and power than he. He sent his men to burn his tribe, when Hayek returned it was too late. She lost her temper and burned all the soldiers, turning her very home to ashes. Her revenge spread, she wasn't going to stop until she killed the king, that's when another Witch intervened. A Walker, The Witch of Life."