The world didn't end with a bang.It ended with a whisper, a flicker, and then silence so deep it made your bones ache.
Boston was always loud—sirens screaming, drunks yelling, engines howling down cracked asphalt—but at 11:44 PM on June 6th, all of it stopped.Every streetlamp dimmed like a dying breath. Phones turned to static. Satellites failed. The internet vanished.
And above it all, a crimson moon rose.
Not red from dust or atmosphere, but red like something bleeding through the sky.
Aidan Cross didn't notice at first. His knuckles were too busy breaking another man's jaw.
Underground fights didn't wait for omens. They were held in the sub-basement of an abandoned church in Roxbury, lit by strings of cracked bulbs, walls soaked in mildew and cigarette smoke. Blood dripped into stained concrete, and the crowd pressed close, hungry for violence.
He liked the fights. They gave him something to hit that wasn't himself.
The guy in front of him—twenty-something, roided up, called himself "Vex"—was all talk until Aidan's elbow shattered his ribs.
It was over in twelve seconds.
Aidan didn't wait for the payout. He walked out through the back door, tugging a hoodie over his sweat-slicked hair. The Boston night hit him like ice. Unnatural for summer. He glanced up—
And froze.
The moon hung low and massive, like a swollen eye staring straight into his soul.
That's when the sirens failed.
That's when the world tilted.
He saw her near the dumpsters—small frame, curled up like a dying cat. No shoes. Pale skin. At first, he thought she was a junkie. Maybe dead. Until her head snapped up too fast.
Eyes like ink.Black. Reflective. Wrong.
She didn't speak. She moved.
Fangs tore from her gums as she launched at him—no warning, no sound, just pure, animal speed. Her fingers clawed at his throat, and for a second he felt real fear. Not because she was strong—but because something in him recognized her.
From somewhere else.From before.
His boot connected with her sternum mid-air. She flew back into the brick wall, hit hard, crumpled—and then began to reassemble. Bones popped into place. Her spine twisted back into alignment with a sickening crack.
No human could survive that.
She hissed—in Latin.He only caught two words: "Sanguis Dei."Blood of God.
Aidan staggered backward, pulse hammering. His left hand burned.
Literally.
He yanked back his sleeve—and stared.Veins glowing blue. Skin pulsing like circuitry. It was subtle, but real. Like a storm trying to break free beneath the flesh.
The vampire shrieked, recoiling like he was radioactive.
Something deep inside him remembered this. Not from training, not from war, but from dreams. From the fragments the military wiped from his mind after Moldova. The "cleansing operation" no one was allowed to talk about.
He hadn't imagined it.
He hadn't been hallucinating.
They were real.She was real.
And now she was dead—his glowing fist having slammed into her chest so hard it turned her into ash and smoke.
Silence returned.
But now it carried weight.
Not the silence of peace.The silence of watching.
Aidan looked up at the moon again.
Blood-red. Vast. Unblinking.
And in his ears, a whisper not his own:
"You were never meant to forget."