_*]:min-w-0 !gap-3.5">As the Council of Evolved dispersed following their discussion of the predator paradox, Viktor lingered in the chamber, his attention drawn to Nova. Since awakening from hibernation, Viktor had maintained careful distance from the hybrid who had captivated Lucius's attention, uncertain of his pce in this transformed vampire society.

  "I was there, you know," Viktor offered as Nova prepared to depart. "At the beginning. I could share observations from those early days, if you're interested."

  Nova hesitated, his curiosity about Lucius's origins warring with his awareness of Viktor's complex position. The former researcher was among the few who had witnessed the Evolution's earliest days, yet his decision to enter hibernation rather than face its consequences had earned him little respect from those who had endured the subsequent millennia.

  "I'd appreciate your perspective," Nova finally replied, recognizing that understanding Lucius required assembling viewpoints from all avaible sources.

  They moved to a smaller antechamber where Viktor began recounting his scientific observations of Subject 23 with clinical precision—cellur changes, physiological adaptations, the cascade of mutations that transformed an unremarkable human into the progenitor of an entirely new species.

  "The transformation process appeared to activate previously dormant genetic potential," Viktor expined, his researcher's enthusiasm overtaking his usual reserve. "Subject 23's cellur reconstruction demonstrated unique properties unlike anything observed in subsequent transformations—"

  "You never knew him at all," a voice interrupted, the words slicing through Viktor's scientific narrative like a bde.

  Valerian stood in the doorway, his military bearing somehow more pronounced than usual. His expression had darkened as he listened to Viktor's clinical assessment, his hands csped behind his back with uncharacteristic tension.

  "None of you did," he continued, stepping into the chamber with measured precision. "None of you ever saw beyond the specimen, the anomaly, the scientific curiosity."

  Viktor fell silent, recognizing in Valerian's tone something more significant than the military leader's usual directness. This was not tactical disagreement but personal grievance—the protective instinct of a younger brother that two thousand years had done nothing to diminish.

  "Viktor's only known him as Subject 23," Nova said quietly, turning to Valerian. "But you knew the person he was before all that—before he had any name at all."

  Valerian's posture shifted subtly, military precision giving way to something less regimented as he cimed a seat across from Nova. For perhaps the first time since Nova had met him, the military leader seemed to momentarily set aside the armor of his position.

  "I knew him when he had no name at all," Valerian confirmed, his voice carrying uncharacteristic emotion. "When he was simply the boy who protected me from our mother's neglect."

  With rare vulnerability, Valerian recounted their origins as street children—his brother scavenging for food, stealing when necessary, doing whatever menial jobs he could find to ensure his younger sibling had enough to eat and could attend school despite their mother's drug addiction.

  "He was never documented," Valerian expined, his eyes focused on some distant memory rather than his present audience. "No birth certificate, no school records, no official existence at all. Our mother never registered his birth—he was nothing in the system, a ghost child who existed solely to care for me."

  Nova absorbed these details that expanded on what Lucius had already shared about his nameless childhood. "And from there, how exactly did he become Subject 23?" he asked, seeking to fill gaps in the story he had gradually been piecing together.

  "Blood disease," Valerian replied simply. "Something rare in his bloodline that manifested when he was barely an adult. A doctor took pity on him and sent samples to colleagues. Those samples eventually reached Dr. Keller, who recognized some property in my brother's blood that made him the perfect test subject for immortality experiments."

  Valerian's gaze hardened as he gnced toward Viktor. "Not that Keller or any of his researchers cared about saving his life. They saw him only as ideal experimental material, not as a human being with a brother who depended on him."

  Viktor shifted uncomfortably under this accurate assessment of the research team's priorities. Whatever humanitarian cims they had made about the immortality project, their approach to Subject 23 had been fundamentally exploitative from the beginning.

  "But something went wrong with the experiment," Nova prompted gently when Valerian fell silent.

  "Everything went wrong," Valerian corrected, his military precision momentarily resuming. "The serum was meant to grant immortality but triggered transformation instead. My brother appeared to die during the injection process, then awakened with uncontrolble hunger that created the first vampires when he attacked the research team."

  Nova had heard this part of the history before, but Valerian's perspective added crucial emotional dimension to events typically recounted with scientific detachment. When Valerian fell silent again, Nova asked the question that had begun forming through various conversations: "What happened after that? After the transformation?"

  For a moment, it seemed Valerian might not answer. His composure faltered visibly, military discipline giving way to something rawer and more human. When he spoke again, his voice carried unexpected pain despite the centuries separating him from these memories.

  "I didn't know what had happened at first," he began quietly. "My brother simply disappeared. Days passed with no word. I searched everywhere, frantic with worry that his illness had cimed him."

  Valerian's posture had changed completely, the military leader temporarily repced by the frightened younger brother he had once been. "It was months after the initial outbreak when I finally heard rumors of someone matching my brother's description. The world had already descended into chaos by then, with newly-turned vampires attacking humans everywhere."

  His expression darkened with the memory. "I was with a group of survivors when we were attacked by vampires. Suddenly, my brother appeared—killing every vampire that threatened us. More vampires arrived, and he destroyed them all... except one managed to bite me before he could stop it."

  Valerian paused, the memory clearly still vivid despite the millennia that had passed. "My brother's face when he saw I'd been bitten—I'll never forget it. He believed that a bite alone would turn me into a feral vampire like the ones he'd been fighting. In that moment, following pure instinct, he bit his own wrist and made me drink his blood."

  Nova leaned forward, understanding the significance. "That's why you're different from other vampires."

  "Yes," Valerian confirmed. "His blood, not his saliva, transformed me. It made me like him—not exactly the same, but simir in ways other vampires could never be. Once he saw that I could protect myself, that I wasn't like the feral ones, he disappeared again."

  Valerian's voice tightened with remembered pain. "He was consumed by guilt over what he had unleashed. He wandered alone, feeding only on animals, deliberately avoiding humans. He couldn't bear to cause any more suffering."

  "Eventually," Valerian continued, his military precision returning, "he encountered human resistance fighters. They tried to kill him, using every weapon they had. When conventional methods failed, they continued trying new approaches. What shocked them most was that my brother never fought back, never resisted, never tried to escape. They thought it was a trick at first, but eventually realized he was deliberately allowing their experiments."

  "He wanted to die," Nova whispered, the realization dawning with painful crity.

  "Yes," Valerian confirmed grimly. "He believed death was the only proper atonement for accidentally unleashing vampires upon the world. But no matter what the humans did, his body simply regenerated. They couldn't understand why their methods failed, but I knew—his transformation had made him truly immortal in ways even other vampires weren't."

  Valerian's composure cracked momentarily. "I spent months tracking him through rumors of a 'monster that couldn't be killed.' When I finally located the resistance facility, I overheard scientists pnning their next approach. They had decided that since nothing else worked, they would cut him into pieces and separate those pieces to see if complete dismemberment might succeed where other methods had failed."

  The military leader's hands clenched involuntarily. "They were going to begin in a few hours—industrial saws and cutting tools were already prepared. They pnned to keep his head, torso, limbs, and organs in separate containment units. And through it all, my brother would be fully conscious, experiencing every moment of being dismembered alive."

  The chamber fell silent as both Nova and Viktor absorbed the horror of this revetion. Valerian took a measured breath before continuing, his military discipline gradually reasserting itself.

  "I killed them all," he stated without apology or emotion. "Every researcher, every guard, every person in that facility. I tore my brother's restraints apart, expecting relief or maybe even gratitude."

  His voice tightened with remembered pain. "Instead, he looked horrified. He stared at the bodies around us—the people I had sughtered to save him—with absolute horror in his eyes. When I tried to help him up, he flinched away from me, as if I was the monster, not them."

  Valerian's face revealed the depth of his emotional wound at that memory. "I had to physically carry him from that pce. He kept saying I shouldn't have killed them, that they were just trying to stop what he'd created, that he deserved everything they did to him because of what he had accidentally caused." The vulnerability in this admission—from the normally stoic military leader—created profound silence as both Nova and Viktor absorbed its implications.

  "That's when I realized his guilt would destroy him—and me along with him," Valerian continued after collecting himself. "I told him that if he truly wanted to atone, suffering accomplished nothing. Only action could make a difference. If he wanted to fix what he'd broken, he needed to live, not die. He needed to guide the transformation he had triggered rather than simply suffer for it."

  Nova could imagine the scene—the nameless street child who had transformed into Subject 23, broken not by physical torture but by guilt over what he had inadvertently unleashed upon the world, and the younger brother forcing him to confront the inadequacy of suffering as redemption.

  "That same night," Valerian continued, his voice softening perceptibly, "he had his first dream about you, Nova. He saw someone who, despite captivity and suffering, never stopped fighting to change things." Valerian's gaze shifted directly to Nova. "He told me about a creature who refused to be broken, who maintained dignity when everything was taken away. Someone who kept fighting even when victory seemed impossible."

  Nova struggled to process the implications—that prophetic visions of him had helped transform Lucius's perspective two thousand years before his actual birth.

  "Those dreams gave him purpose beyond guilt," Valerian expined. "That's when he truly became Lucius instead of the nameless boy who raised me. When he saw that persistence mattered more than perfection, that resistance itself had meaning even when the odds seemed hopeless."

  The military leader's typically harsh expression softened momentarily. "Your spirit, even before you existed, showed him that suffering for past mistakes changed nothing. Only building something better would matter. He stopped trying to die for what he'd done and started trying to live for what he could create."

  This revetion transformed Nova's understanding of Lucius completely—seeing his millennia of patient guidance not just as strategic pnning but as profound atonement, his careful manipution of vampire society not merely as governance but as redemptive creation.

  "Why has he never shared this history himself?" Nova asked quietly.

  Valerian's response was characteristically direct: "My brother doesn't believe his suffering matters to the rger purpose. He never has." The simple statement expined so much about Lucius's tendency to focus on practical solutions rather than emotional processing—a pattern established in his earliest days of existence.

  Viktor, who had remained silent through most of Valerian's account, finally spoke. "This adds crucial psychological context to my observations of Subject 23's transformation. The emotional trauma combined with physiological changes suggests—"

  "Your hibernation was cowardice," Valerian interrupted with military bluntness, his momentary vulnerability repced by cold assessment. "You thought you could escape responsibility by sleeping through the consequences. My brother stayed awake through every moment of the world he accidentally created, guiding it toward something better across millennia you cannot comprehend."

  The sharp condemnation silenced Viktor's scientific perspective, establishing the profound difference between observation and participation—between studying the Evolution and actually living with its consequences for two thousand years.

  Viktor withdrew without further comment, leaving Nova alone with Valerian. In the silence that followed, Nova considered everything he had learned—not just about Lucius's origins, but about the guilt that had driven him across millennia of careful pnning and patient guidance.

  "Does he still bme himself?" Nova asked quietly.

  Valerian's expression softened slightly as he considered the question. "Every day for two thousand years," he answered finally. "But now he has something he's never had before."

  "What's that?" Nova asked.

  Valerian looked directly at him, military precision giving way to brotherly concern. "Hope."

  As Nova left the chamber, he carried with him a fundamentally transformed understanding of the being who had loved him across millennia before his birth. Not merely the strategic mastermind who had orchestrated vampire society's evolution, not simply the king who commanded absolute authority, but the nameless street child who had carried the weight of accidentally transforming the world and spent two thousand years trying to guide that transformation toward something better than what it had begun as.

  And somehow, improbably, Nova's own spirit had provided the catalyst for that journey—a connection that transcended time, circumstance, and even physical existence itself.