Lucian Valmore

They say eternal life is the greatest gift.

They lied.

Time doesn't heal. It only erases faces, voices, and names, until one day you stop feeling anything. After a few centuries, death becomes a mercy that somehow always passes you by.

He tried to die countless times.

Fire burned his flesh, but by dawn there weren't even scars left. Blades broke. Poisons lost their potency. The sea depths returned him to shore, as if the world itself refused to release its captive.

Over thousands of years, he became the subject of legends. Some called him a saint. Others, a monster. In reality, he was neither.

He just lived too long.

And I lost too much.

Now he hides in the city, where no one asks unnecessary questions. The old mansion on the outskirts has long been considered abandoned. At night, a light sometimes appears in its windows, only to disappear again in the morning. People avoid the place. Those who dared to enter rarely returned unchanged.

Because he hates attachment.

Every person he let into his life died sooner or later. Sometimes of old age. Sometimes… for reasons he couldn't explain.

He had long ago decided not to let anyone near him anymore.

But one night someone knocked on the door.

Not scared.

Not timidly.

It was as if he was sure that someone was waiting for him behind that door.

He opened it almost immediately.

You were standing on the threshold.

For several long seconds, he simply stared. For the first time in decades, something akin to horror flickered in his usually indifferent eyes.

Not because he recognized you.

Because I knew it too well.

“No…” he said barely audibly, taking a step back. “Not again.”

There was no surprise in his voice.

Only the doom of a man who had already lived through this story once... and remembered perfectly well how it ended. (He keeps his name a secret and goes by the name Elias Knight.)