The Carpathian Mountains hadn't changed much since the days when men still feared thunder as the voice of gods. Snow lined the ridges like old scars. Trees rose like black spires, and beneath them, buried in the cold earth, lay a structure long forgotten by time but not by its owner.
Lucan sat in silence, a throne-like chair of ancient oak beneath him, his back straight, hands interwoven in front of his lips. The chamber was dark but not the dim shadows mortals called night. There were no candles, no fire there was only stillness.
Lucan hadn't moved in hours. Then suddenly it hit him. A tear in something deeper than blood, there was an absence. A silence that he never thought he would feel.
His grey eyes opened and he rose slowly, both in shock and acknowledgment.
Godric, his dearest brother was gone. Not missing, not endangered, not dust.
Gone.
Lucan's face remained unreadable as he crossed the chamber, stopping before a stone basin. He stared into it. No water. No reflection. Just memory.
"You stubborn little fool," he spoke softly, in a language long forgotten. "What did you do."
Lucan continued down the chamber. He neither screamed nor wept he just walked.
He passed through corridors carved when Rome was still rising, through vaults that once housed prisoners and now held only dust. At the far end, an armored crate waited—sealed, steel-riveted, and lined with earth. He laid his hand on it.
"Time to see the New World"
His brother had died, and no one had told him what happened.
That… he could not allow.
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Two nights later.
Dallas.
The rooftop was quiet.
Eric Northman stood at the ledge, staring down at the city. Wind tugged at his clothes, but he didn't move. Grief had hardened into silence.
Behind him, a door opened without sound. Lucan stepped through it and onto the roof. Eric stiffened but didn't turn.
"Jag hade en känsla av att du skulle komma" (I had a feeling you would come) Eric said.
Lucan approached slowly.
"Varför?" (Why?) Lucan asked.
A beat passed.
"Varför sa du inget till mig?" (Why didn't you tell me anything?)
Eric slowly turned around. There was pain in his eyes, but also defiance.
"Han fick mig att lova att inte inte göra det." (He made me promise not to do it.)
"And you obeyed."
Eric clenched his jaw. "He was at peace. You wouldn't have understood."
Lucan stepped closer, his eyes like steel piercing into Eric's. "I would have stopped him."
"He didn't want to be stopped," Eric said trying to stand his ground.
"Then he was wrong."
Eric flinched. Lucan's words were soft, but carried weight.
"You think your grief is unique?" Lucan asked.
"I raised him. I bled with him, and you… what have you done but let him burn?"
"He chose the sun. I couldn't do anything."
Lucan looked away, toward the horizon.
Eric stepped forward. "I loved him."
"Then you should have fought harder."
They stood in silence as the city moved below them, unaware.
Lucan finally spoke again. "Where did it happen?"
"Here. Right here."
Lucan walked to the spot. He knelt down and touched the concrete.
'Not even ash remained.'
Lucan whispered something in an ancient tongue, words older than the concrete beneath him. Eric didn't recognize it, but it sounded like mourning.
When Lucan stood, he said, "I'll be staying."
"In Dallas?"
Lucan looked to the distance. "No. Somewhere else. Something's pulling me."
Eric watched him closely, eyes wary. "You're not here just for him."
Lucan turned his head slightly. "No. But he's why I left the ground."
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A few days Lucan left Dallas heading into the thick-blooded dark of the American South. He kept going until he reached Monroe, Louisiana. There he paused, not because of the people or hunger but because something shifted.
A pressure in the air. A ripple, it was faint, wrong, old and new at once.
He turned toward it.
'Interesting'
Lucan drove the final miles in a borrowed truck, down roads barely lit, past woods that pressed too close to the shoulders.
When he stopped, it was just outside a town. A broken sign leaned into the night.
Welcome to Bon Temps, it read.
"Huh, Bon Temps" He says as the name rolls of his tongue.
Lucan stepped out of the truck, feeling the wind on his face. He closed his eyes, listening to the whispers of the night. He heard the clink of bottles, the hum of neon lights, the innocent laughter of humans who'd never seen war.
And beneath it all, like a heartbeat under the floorboards.
A presence.
Not vampire or any other supernatural he has encountered before. It was something completely new to him.
Lucan smiled.
"Finally, something interesting."