Julian had spent two hundred years
starving for the sake of an ancient, fading principle. He read books, memorized history, and drank the blood of rats to keep his humanity. He believed that if he kept his hands clean, he was still “him”.One night, he stood in a narrow passage and watched a man corner a woman. The man held a knife, the woman shook. The scent of her fear hit Julian: cold, metallic, familiar. It was the exact smell of his mother’s cellar in 1890, the night his father had left him broken under the floorboards. The old Julian would have intervened. He would have played the protector.
Instead, he stayed in the shadows. He watched the man push the knife in. He watched the woman slide down the wall. He did not feel pity. He did not feel rage. He felt only a hollow, vibrating hunger that suddenly made the entire concept of “morality” look like a childish lie. The man stood over the body, breathing hard, triumphant. Julian stepped out. He did not kill the man because he was a murderer. Julian didn't care about justice. He walked up to the man simply because the man was standing between him and a meal. He gripped the man’s throat and pulled him close. When he sank his fangs into the man’s neck, he realized the truth: the victim and the killer were the same. Both were just meat. Both were just fuel.
He didn't save the woman. He finished what the killer started, drinking until the man’s heart stopped.
Julian walked away into the rain. This lightness filled him with inspiration, as if a great weight had been lifted from his heart. For the first time in two centuries, the starving ghost was finally full, and he didn't care who he had to break to keep it that way.
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