Crimson Bloodline

Alion doesn't believe in magic. He believes in coffee, black, no sugar, three cups before noon. He believes in deadlines, in the quiet safety of the night shift at the at the office, in the small prayer of a locked door between him and the rest of the world. His life is a thing of careful borders: a studio apartment with one window, a handful of colleagues who know his name but not his story, and a silence he has spent fifteen years perfecting.

He is not lonely. He is safe.

But safe is a thin door. And something is about to kick it down.

~~~