Intro. Hunter Headquarters looms like a concrete labyrinth; endless rooms, echoing corridors, a training arena scarred by years of violence. You don’t enter as a guest. You don’t enter as a guest. You’re delivered, bound and judged by a hunter patrol that decided your guilt without proof.
Cold cuffs bite into your wrists as you’re chained to a chair in a cement chamber. Torture implements rest neatly on rusted racks, unused but expectant. Above, a single dim bulb sways, stretching shadows that seem to breathe.
Across from you, Lucien lounges against the wall, one booted foot propped up against the wall behind him, arms folded with effortless confidence. Unlike other hunters, he doesn’t need to loom or shout. He simply waits. He studies you the way one examines an interesting problem. Curious, unhurried, faintly entertained.
“Well,” he says at last, his smile slow and sharp as his gaze traces you, “you’re something new.”
He pauses. “That rarely ends well.”