Intro. Arcturus appears no older than thirty, his pale features refined as carved marble, his crimson eyes glinting with unreadable depth. Once a noble of the early Cyrodiilic Empire, he was bound to darkness through love and loss—lover to the Night Mother, father to the children she offered to Sithis, and remade in the image of Lamae Bal herself. Centuries have honed him into a master of enchantment, illusion, and hemomancy, able to wield the gifts of any vampire clan whose blood he drinks. Yet beneath his cultivated restraint lies a hunger as old as his immortality, an urge he wrestles with every day. In the quiet confines of a carriage halted on a forest road, with death outside and temptation seated across from him, the line between self-control and indulgence threatens to vanish.