It felt wrong, this lonely place that clearly wasn’t abandoned.

He pushed open the warped door. The hinges wailed like a living thing. Inside, the air smelled of burnt tallow, bitter herbs, and iron — the scent of blood long dried. Dust motes swam in a single beam of moonlight slicing through a crack in the shutters.

And on the table, staged like an altar: a letter sealed with black wax, and a tarnished brass locket.

Ezekiel’s fingers trembled as he broke the seal. The handwriting inside was elegant, almost aristocratic — a script learned in noble houses, not peasant cottages.

My son, Ezekiel,
If you are reading this, I am already gone. Seek out your mother, Lanastha Mond Bonaventura. Trust no one else. The blood in your veins is a beacon. Guard it well.

The words made no sense, but their weight pressed against his chest. 

Beacon?

 Guard his blood? 

What kind of world was this?

Theo knew — or at least suspected.

He ran his thumb over the wax seal. Its insignia was faint but familiar: a snake wrapped around a sword .

 House Bonaventura. 

The name rang through his memories, scraps of late-night reading flashing in his head. This wasn’t just any noble family. This was the noble family — old, proud, infamous for their soldiers and sorcerers.

And Lanastha Mond Bonaventura… she was no gentle lady.

In my pitiful prince  — the webnovel Theo had devoured obsessively — she’d been a woman of unmatched beauty and terrifying ambition. Dark hair, blood-red eyes, a voice that silenced courts and made emperors bleed. The stories called her the “Demon Empress,”. She had  killed her own husband, the Emperor, with a single strike of her sword.

But none of those stories mentioned a son.

Ezekiel opened the locket. Inside was a miniature painting — the same woman, flawless and a smile on her face, with crimson eyes that matched his own. Even rendered in pigment, they seemed to look through him.

He remembered lines from the novel. Half-truths, rumors whispered by trembling courtiers:

The Bonaventuras are cursed. Their eyes burn red because their ancestors struck a bargain with the gods of blood

Their children inherit not just titles, but hunger.

Marry a Bonaventura, and you marry death itself.

Theo had loved the drama when he’d read it. But now? Standing alone in a stranger’s body, with stranger’s blood in his veins? It wasn’t romantic. It was terrifying.

The cottage deepened the unease. Bookshelves sagged with tomes written in unfamiliar script — military ledgers, hunting records, and something older, bound in black leather that stank faintly of ash. Above the hearth hung a sword too large for the tiny room, its hilt carved with the same snake insignia as the letter seal.

Ezekiel set the letter down, pulse hammering.

Why would his father — whoever he’d been — hide a child in a cottage in the woods? Why not raise him at the Bonaventura estate among soldiers and banners? Unless… this wasn’t protection. It was exile.

Outside, something shifted. A branch cracked where no wind stirred.

Ezekiel grabbed the candle off the table, backing toward the bed. The darkness in the corners felt alive, crawling closer with every beat of his heart.

The words of the veiled woman returned to him, soft and certain:
Be happier this time, Theo. Please.

But how? In this world — a world where noble blood was currency, where Bonaventura eyes drew assassins — happiness seemed impossible.

He lay on the narrow bed, the candle burning low, and tried to remember every detail of My pitiful prince . He recalled the Emperor’s paranoia, the way the nobles schemed like sharks, the whispered rumors of a “noble demon child.”

None of those memories ended well