AN: Testing the water with this, it's been quite some time since I've written anything for FF but this one really has me engaged. It's short but let me know if you think it's worth continuing!

The forest blurred around me as I ran, my movements effortless, my pace a whisper against the rain-soaked earth. I barely registered the unnatural speed that no human could ever hope to match. The steady rhythm of my steps was an afterthought, lost beneath the relentless storm and the whirlwind of my thoughts, each more erratic than the last. My tattered clothes clung to my body, saturated with rain that had long since ceased to be an inconvenience.

Had I still been mortal, the biting chill would have seeped into my bones, and exhaustion would have stolen the strength from my limbs. But such frailties were nothing more than a distant memory faded echoes of a life I no longer belonged to. This night marked precisely 150 years since that existence had been ripped away from me. The details of my mortal life had long since dissolved into a murky haze, insignificant fragments slipping further from my grasp with each passing decade. And yet, one memory had never dulled, never blurred with time the night it all changed.

I had been walking home after what I vaguely recalled as an arduous shift at the Port Discovery Mill, a newly established venture brimming with the promise of progress. The scent of damp earth lingered in the air, mingling with the fresh crispness of the night. The full moon bathed the well-worn path in silver light, guiding me toward the outskirts of town, toward the small, humble shack I had begun to think of as home.

Cresting the final hill, I had seen her.

She stood not fifteen feet ahead, as though she had materialized from the very shadows. The sight of her stole the breath from my lungs. She was ethereal, too beautiful, too perfect for a town as meager as ours. Midnight hair cascaded over her shoulders, pooling like ink against the pristine white of her gown. Her skin was the fairest I had ever laid eyes upon, luminous beneath the moon's glow. I had stopped walking without even realizing it, frozen beneath her gaze. It wasn't until she spoke that I became aware of how I had been standing there, transfixed, like a fool entranced by a siren's call.

"What have we here?" Her voice was smooth, luxurious, each word a silken thread wrapping around my senses. "Such a handsome lamb, all alone and lost in the woods. What did I do to deserve such a marvelous treat?"

Her words sent a shiver down my spine, though at the time, I did not understand why.

"E-ee…excuse me, ma'am," I stammered, my voice unsteady, my tongue betraying me. "Did ya need help finding your way back into town? I can't imagine how ya made it all the way out here on purpose. Are ya lost?"

She chuckled, a sound both warm and chilling. "What a sweet boy. No, dear, I'm not lost. Just searching for my supper and it seems you're what's on the menu tonight."

I blinked clear confusion on my face as I processed her words. Then, she vanished.

Pain, blinding and absolute, consumed me. Fire and darkness, an eternity of torment compressed into mere moments. My body had writhed, my voice had failed me, and my mind my mind had been shattered, rebuilt, then shattered again. When the agony finally ebbed, when the fire within me settled into an ever-burning ember, I was no longer the boy who had worked himself to exhaustion for an honest living. I was something else. Something that had outlived humanity's grasp.

And so, 150 years later, I ran through the same wilderness, the weight of time pressing heavy on my shoulders. The town I had once known was gone, long since reduced to ruins by the passage of years. I had not set foot near it in over a century, avoiding the memories of the monster I had become in those first blood-soaked years. Shame stirred in my chest, an old and familiar burden.

I was not here by coincidence. I had spent decades avoiding this place, yet something a force I had stolen long ago from a nomadic predator, a being far more cruel than I, pulled me forward, whispering of purpose. Of fate. Of inevitability. Among the countless abilities I had taken over the years, this was the only one I had ever chosen to keep. Its former owner had been a parasite upon the innocent, revelling in their suffering, and I had felt no remorse in ending him. Watching as his headless body burned was the highlight of that decade for me in fact.

Now, that power that once guided him in his pursuit of suffering guided me to my desire, an unrelenting beacon drawing me closer to whatever lay ahead.

I pushed forward, ignoring the hunger gnawing at my insides. A few more hours, and I would reach my destination. My body tensed as the trees thinned, giving way to a clearing, and I emerged from the dense forest into the open. Before me stood a house no, a mansion. A striking structure of modern design, all glass and steel, rising from the wilderness like a monolith.

I came to a halt just beyond the threshold of the forest. For the first time in what must have been years, a genuine smile broke across my lips. I had arrived.

As I stepped forward, figures emerged from the house eight in total. They moved in unison, their eyes trained on me, despite the caution I could clearly make out in said eyes my smile deepened. For the first time in a century and a half, I was not alone. I was not meeting just one of my kind, but eight others who bore the same eyes, the same hunger, the same burden.

A laugh rumbled in my chest as I raised my hands in a gesture of peace. "I mean you no harm! My name is Ezra."

The words hung in the air, and for the first time in 150 years, I felt as though I had spoken them to people who might truly understand.