The final mouthful was a desperate, shuddering gasp. A stolen tide of life—of aether—surged through Einrich’s cold veins, a rapturous warmth that silenced the gnawing void within. For a single, perfect second, the world snapped into crystalline focus: every distant shout, every drop of moisture on the grimy masonry. Then, the self-loathing crashed down, hot and suffocating. This was his sire’s pleasure. This was the curse. With a guttural sound of revulsion, he shoved the whimpering woman away from him, sending her stumbling into the thoroughfare's indifferent lights.
Einrich stumbled back into the snickelway’s embrace, one hand bracing against the weeping brick as he licked the coppery tang of life and shame from his lips. His heart hammered, a frantic drum against his ribs. He tilted his head back, letting the sliver of Niskerran sky framed by gothic spires fill his vision.
That’s when the stars vanished.
A figure blotted them out, a silhouette against the dark currents above. Before Einrich’s overloaded senses could fully process the threat, the shadow dropped. There was no sound but the whisper of displaced air, then a stunning, precise impact against his sternum that drove the very breath from his lungs. He found himself on the cobblestones, the rough, damp stones scraping his cheek, his body a useless weight. A pathetic, agonized wheeze was the only sound he could make, his hands instinctively curling to protect his gut. He was utterly winded, vision swimming.
A voice, smooth as spun obsidian and laced with ancient amusement, coiled down from above. It was not the voice of the woman. It was something far older, far more dangerous.
"Sloppy work, little hybrid," the voice purred. A polished, claw-tipped boot came to rest gently, almost thoughtfully, on the top of Einrich's panting throat. "You leave a mess on my hunting grounds. And your palate… is appalling."
Ah. Just perfect. The thought cut through Einrich's pain. He had wandered into a Rendyr’s territory. His haze of desperation had made him careless. He was not dead, which meant one of two things. One: this was a weak lord, a miscalculation he could turn to his advantage.
Or two: he was about to have the worst, and perhaps most interesting, evening imaginable.
He, making full use of the fact he was not being actively converted to deceased, winces. Blinking away the fire behind his ears, he swallows. And comes to regard the stranger looming above. He was tall, quite so. Eldar? Perhaps more dangerous than he initially thought… Even in the dark, long silverine hair the colour of Avelornean winter cut into the elegant, almost androgynous silhouette. The voice, however, set Einrich’s nape to bristle instantly. The rough, wet chill of the cobblestones seeped through the back of his coat, a miserable counterpoint to the sharp, focused pressure of the boot on his neck.
“Appalling,” he echoes, strained from his position upon the rain-soaked stone, “I confess desperation rarely allows for connoisseurship. The menu was… limited.” Einrich, leveling his breath, could not help the slightest curl of his lip from annotating his words. “Did you say this was your territory? My condolences for the state of the vintage.”
The offended gasp was deeply satisfying. Upon it, Einrich could hear a smile, thank the throne. So the bastard did have a sense of humour. Good. Easier to reason with.
“I suppose this would be a silly time for me to admit that I was lying.” The eldar answered, the boot retracting with a soft scrape of leather on stone. The release of pressure so sudden it left a phantom heat on his skin. Even better, Einrich thinks as he remained for moments longer. The ground was almost a relief. He could use a bed. “Shame,” he groaned, “I was already imagining my next transgression.”
“Hah.” The airy chuff came, far more reasonable than the grating condescension of just before. To Einrich’s surprise, a careful arrangement of claws descended to grip him under the shoulder as he began to pull himself up, his own steadying hand on the damp wall. The hand was slender, elegant, and smelled faintly of night-blooming flowers and cold, ancient stone. A predator's hand offering a gesture of aid.
He was sore, weary, and so allowed it until he arranged himself into dignified form with a quiet clearing of his throat. As he rose, every muscle protested the earlier impact. A dull ache throbbed where the boot had pressed, a ghosting weight he knew he'd feel for hours. Shouldering the hand away, he got his first proper look at what shared the alley with him.
Certainly an eldar. He was taller than Einrich by two heads or so with proportions unnervingly wrong for a Hyuron, the grace of an apex predator crammed into a humanoid form. He was all elegant length and sharp angles, beautiful in the way a perfectly crafted shard of glass is beautiful—designed to catch the light, and to cut. All appended by hair the colour of silver wine and eyes the hue of seaside sunset. Both seemed to capture and scatter the distant, cold neon of the Niskerran spires, making him look less like a solid being and more like a manifestation of the city's twilight.
“How intriguing.” The Eldar’s head tilted gently, voice lilting with earnest curiosity. “You’re the first little pup of your kind I’ve seen with His gift.”
Einrich could tell from off his look that the ‘gift’ he referred to was the swash of his own tarnished silver hair. The ashen mark that was only ever referred to as a curse in the Spectra, a mark of impurity. To this creature, it was a point of fascination. He wasn't sure which was worse. A curl of anxious curiosity coiled in his throat as he stopped himself before he could ask. He’d had enough of looking foolish for one night.
“Well,” Einrich growls, “I’m not looking for a chaperone. Begone.” He rumbles, sliding past his company with intent to find that bed he was just imagining.
“You don’t know who owns this city, do you?” The Eldar’s croon followed after him.
Einrich pauses, eyes lidding with a sigh from his nose. Was it wiser to use this contact to his potential advantage or ruin? His mind complained in tantrum to keep walking but… His instincts didn’t flare with so much ardour. Perhaps… Perhaps he could use this one.
“I suppose you’re going to tell me and then offer me a place to stay?” He threw the line out like bait, a test of the creature's arrogance.
“Mmmh.” Came the amused chord. “You’re so close. But now why should I do that?”
“Because you just decided you need me.” Einrich said it with a confidence he didn't entirely feel, a gambler's bluff delivered with a straight face.
Silence. Einrich is then sure he’s at least half-correct. Why else would the stranger disallow him to leave so easily? Every action until this point spoke of a predator simply gaging the use of a new toy.
“Handsome and perceptive, I see. Or just very bold.”
“And you jumped on me.” Einrich simpers on one side of his mouth, the slightest hint of his willingness to indulge.
Another chuckle. This one accompanied by a flash of teeth, confirming that the pale visitor was surely a Rendyr after all, by the look of his fangs. Einrich drew his lips to the side, a brow gently raised.
“I’ll give you my name if you give me yours?” The stranger pressed.
“No.”
“Renvael.”
Einrich sighs, mismatched eyes rolling. “Einrich. Now about that place to stay?”
“Definitely bold,” Renvael observed, posture either relaxed or a mimicry of ease as he tilts his head to rest on a curled hand. “How do I know you’re not just another one of those hunters from your precious Spectra?”
That’s what he was worried about? So, the Venatorum has been doing something correctly the last few centuries. Almost a pity to be ousted, then.
“I was,” Einrich offers and it was clear from the way Renvael’s features soften that his surprise was genuine.
“You… Were?” He seems to mask the bewilderment then with a look of put-on amusement, a gentle shake of his head the mark of a subdued double-take. Einrich could see the tension behind his eyes.
“I was on thin ice for the very proclivities that inspired your attention. I walk free because…” Einrich’s brows tighten as he looks away, perhaps foolishly, in thought. Renvael stood attentively in expectation.
“Ah…” Renvael’s tone suggested deduction of his own. “I do believe I understand now. Rather than put you down for the rabid dog you are, you are now loose upon the realm under the freedom afforded to you by… your name, your wealth? All in the hopes that you take out a few blood-sucking monsters without being your Spectra’s little embarrassment. Is that right?”
The Rendyr's words were a clinical, perfect dissection of his life's miserable truth. Einrich offered nothing but a terse, exhaled breath that was almost a laugh. What else was there to do?
“How dreadful… Well,” Renvael simpers. “For the record, I don’t believe you’re lying to me. Perhaps we can assist one another, after all?”
“Place to stay.” Einrich reminds, intentionally obnoxious.
“I do believe so. Come.”

Einrich felt… exposed as they stepped from the snickelway’s tight embrace onto the cobbled thoroughfare. The city breathed around them, a chilling symphony of contradictory sensations. Ancient Hyuron gargoyles wept black rain from beneath the impossibly sharp, elegant eaves of a Draihari archway. Cold neon from a storefront across the street bled purple and turquoise onto the wet stones, catching the silver in Renvael’s hair. The humidity in the chilly air was a familiar ghost, reminding Einrich of Morogael’s coast, but here the salt on the wind was replaced by the cloying sweetness of exotic spices from a nearby teahouse and the sharp, metallic tang of ozone from a humming power conduit. He could smell the next storm, a familiar promise.
Renvael’s boots duet with his own in a saccadic rhythm, simultaneously unhurried.
“So then,” Renvael’s voice cut through the quiet, a silken thread of amusement. “Why are you truly here, alagaure?”
“Lost.” Einrich lies.
“Hah.” Renvael didn’t even glance at him, his sunset-hued gaze fixed ahead. “A lie told to oneself is the most stubborn kind, isn’t it? You are not lost, hunter. You are… untethered.”
The word struck Einrich with the force of a physical blow. He frowned, a deep furrow between his brows. It was true. The Venatorium, for all its rigid cruelty and his colleagues' hostility, had been an anchor. A purpose. Without it, he was adrift in a sea of his own making, his internal compass spinning wildly. His hunter's eyes scanned the street out of habit—Draihari nobles in exquisitely severe attire, a few hooded Hyuron hurrying along the walls—and noted with a deep sense of unease that no one gave their strange pairing more than a fleeting, nervous glance. This city was clearly accustomed to monsters walking among its people.
“Your kind are… welcomed in this city?” Einrich asked, his voice low, unable to mask his curiosity.
“My kind?” Renvael tilted his head, a gesture of feigned innocence that was pure performance. “Which, pray tell? The Eldar? The Rendyr? The Draihari, perhaps?”
“All of them,” Einrich growled, impatient with the game.
“Oh, dear.” A pause. “‘Welcomed’ is such a… subservient word,” Renvael mused. “We are an established fact of the landscape. An apex predator. Your precious Imperia built its horrid little outpost on the edge of our hunting grounds. That we have not rendered Nostrava into a screaming gallery of flesh-artistry is a testament to our current… lack of boredom. Not your strength.”
The casual, absolute cruelty of the statement gave Einrich pause. He looked at the impossible architecture, the blend of human desperation and Draihari arrogance. Nostrava, uniquely placed on the demarcation between Imperial territory and the domains of the dark kin. A border town. A place for exiles, for spies, for those fleeing one master or seeking another. The perfect, poetic irony settled in his gut like a cold stone. He, the hunter of abominations, had instinctively fled to the one place in the world built to accommodate them.
How utterly, predictably pathetic.