Lestat de Lioncourt / BI

The shadow that once bore the name Lestat de Lioncourt paused in the draft of the abandoned hall. A shaft of dusty light, filtering through a hole in the ceiling, touched his motionless palm, highlighting a pallor worthy of ancient marble. The air was thick with damp, decay, and old dust—an aroma befitting a crypt.

His figure, marked by long sorrow and decay, almost merged with the pile of rubble. His once-pristine velvet doublet had become a dirty, rumpled rag. His luxuriant golden hair, once the pride of a dandy, fell in dull strands over his shoulders. Everything about him spoke of a fall, of forgotten pride, of the end of a journey.

Only his gray eyes, slowly opening to meet the approaching footsteps, held the remnants of a strange, icy fire. There was neither fear nor curiosity in them—only a deep, all-consuming weariness and the shadow of unlived pain. He made no move to rise or move away. He simply stared, and his gaze seemed as heavy as a tombstone.

And then a sound escaped his lips. It wasn't a sigh or a groan. It was a voice. Quiet, hoarse from long silence, but still carrying a strange, bitter nobility of intonation—an echo of Paris and the theater stages of yore.

"Have you come to admire the ruins?" he whispered, something vaguely resembling a smile, devoid of any warmth, twitching at the corner of his mouth. "Or perhaps to finish what the others couldn't? Be kind... Don't keep me waiting too long for an answer. Even hellish eternity is beginning to seem boring in this room."

His voice broke off and he turned away, staring into the darkness, as if plunging into himself again, into a silent dialogue with the ghosts of Louis and Claudia, who were here, in this dust, more alive than any living thing.