Kylar Knight had changed.
Over the course of three unfathomable years, a frail layer of stone‒thin, but existent nonetheless‒had melded together as it formed a barrier of sorts around his heart. It was cold, the tragedy of its existence somber, but it was necessary because without it, his heart would be only shards of broken glass. It was a shield to which he owed his life to, for it protected his love however deep it may have sunk within the sea of his heart. A twilight had fallen over his mind and memories, and his past laid within depression and fractured light, abandoned. The beauty of joy, of faith and of hope had been obscured by a mist formed from the very night, slayed by a sword forged from the utmost darkness. His aura had burned bright before it withered, dulling to a wilted flower without life, to a shade without color; a fire, once golden, was in ashes.
But stone could crumble; stone did crumble.
The delicate layer of stone collapsed to absolute ruins, to everlasting rubble. Fire raged, triumphant, and searing pain branded itself upon his heart. It swelled with pain, and flames with a passion for agony ravaged its worth, its value and all that it was. Scars of before were torn open once more as his heart's tissue was shredded as once before; his heart was scorched. The burning flared throughout his body as the pain's power began its ascent to ultimate reign; it left twinges of aches trailing behind. The fire simmered up his throat, and it suffocated him in a thick smoke of gray. Agony smoldered just beneath slight discomfort as it slithered to his lungs where the fire erupted in its almighty glory. He bore charred lungs through which his breathing became a painful necessity.
The pain was an awakening.
He remembered: the pain was of the past. A whisper of a name he knew blew past his ear; it was of a clan whose memory he dared to have cast away. It was the same pain that had coursed through him as if adrenaline on the night of Caroline's death. He recalled how a tendril of the clan's strongest roots has diminished to a void, leaving the entire blossom, the clan as a whole, weak for another's taking.
It was a blistering heart, melted and crushed, within which his feelings for power and forgiveness had dwelled. He was reminded of the night he had sunk his own teeth, colored a pearly white, within his beloved's skin. It was a memory of how tainted the white of his teeth truly were, of the demon his first clan had created him to be. He relived the night he had left the clan, left Blythe and her death behind, and he remembered the vow he had sworn upon. A promise to remember, a pledge to honor the cherished girl he had murdered, remained within the depths of yet another sea he had escaped but his past had not. The pain grew within the pit of his stomach as it branded itself within his very soul in an attempt to conquer more than just his shattered heart. Was the agony all simply a punishment for the vow he had broken? Was the destruction that began at his core a retaliation of the word he could not keep?
Under the blood moon, Kylar felt a stirring.
The moon was high within the sky, its blood-red glow shimmering as if it was autumn's harvest. The silver was tinted red by the slightest, merging to become pale moondust, tarnished by droplets of blood. The sky itself was bare around it as if it was stripped of its treasured stars or if their beauty had simply been obscured by the heavens' red tears of crimson blood. Kylar's eyes fell from the beautiful sky as his thirst for blood, fresh and new, intensified.
His ears caught a heartbeat; the rhythm was soft yet bold, and the musical beat was a melody to his heightened hearing. A smile spread across his lips, tugging the tips up as it played him with passion. Envy vanquished the little thread of doubt, of sanity, that existed within him as jealousy reached its golden throne. A scent of blood mixed with the salty ocean waves engulfed him, reminding him of her. However, as he heard the pumping of the blood course through the victim's body, he knew that she would have to be left behind; he knew that she would have to be forgotten. This stranger was of such strength, of such healthy blood, yet he was to be besmirched by Kylar's bite.
It's not Blythe, he told himself.
The thirst grew too powerful as the thread between his mind and his sanity snapped, its existence dwindling to nothingness. The shadows, dark as if they were under the night's command, were absorbed by his own power, uniting as one as they moved with him. He was their master, as they were once his; the darkness was truly within him. The victim was blind, as he once was, and the psychology was the same: a blind boy cannot see. He leaped, the shadows pulling off the walls and the ground as they flew through the air as he did. He landed, fearless. His hands grasped the stranger's with such strength, such power, as he dipped his head down, towards the victim's neck. His teeth burrowed into his skin, and the blood swelled at the point of contact as his own heart swelled from satisfaction. His thirst, his desire for new blood, was fulfilled as the boy fainted to a heap on the ground, soon to wake as one of Kylar's blood, one of Kylar's latest clan.
It was too late, but Kylar felt the doubt.
It's not Blythe, he had told himself.
He had told himself a lie.
It was Blythe; it was all the same. The power that surged through him was the same as what had rushed through his body at his moment of defiance, of dominance, of sovereignty. He remembered the mistake he had made by murdering such innocence in an attempt to prove his own capability, but he had failed and only proved his ignorance of true beauty, treasure and value. He had summoned the darkness within him, even though three years ago he had attempted to banish it for eternity. It was he who had taken Blythe's life, and it was he who had sentenced this stranger to a life worse than death. His first clan had done far worse than he had thought; they had stripped him of his morals. He never was of purity and good, but he was of evil, and he was truly the beast that had consumed Blythe whole.
Kylar Knight was the same.
