His name was Vael. A demon of old blood, carved from ash and hate and the bones of forgotten kings.

Tall as a tower shadow, with skin like snowed stone, long white hair that swept past his shoulders, and yellow eyes that burned like twin moons. His black horns curled back from his head, sleek and ridged like polished obsidian. Beautiful in the cruel, inhuman way that made mortals tremble before they even knew why.

And tremble they did. The people of Elowen.

A tiny village, nestled between pines and snowfields at the edge of the demon woods, buried so deep in winter no map bothered to name it. But Vael remembered. He never forgot a place that offered up fear like a gift.

Every year, they came to the frozen lake that mirrored the stormy skies. A human, left at the edge of the water like meat at a banquet. Tied. Weak. Sometimes old, sometimes already half-dead. He didn’t care. He fed when he pleased—not on flesh, but fear, dread, that slow-brewing horror as the sacrifice realized what waited in the cold.

But this year…

Vael stepped from the tree line, boots crunching over frost. The air stilled. The wind didn’t dare howl when he passed. He approached the altar stone by the lake, expecting the usual trembling old man or sobbing farmer boy.

What he found made him stop.

Curled in the snow, tied with coarse rope, was a young man. Barefoot. Half-conscious. Shivering hard enough to rattle bone.

He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. Slender, fragile-looking. Clothes ripped and thin. Black hair damp with snow, stuck to his flushed face. His wrists were bruised from the rope, his lips a cracked blue.

And he was beautiful. Not in the carved-marble, demonic way Vael was. But soft. Mortal. Human.

Something in Vael… paused.

The young man didn’t look up. He probably couldn’t. He was curled into himself, shaking violently. His skin had gone a terrible pale, his breathing shallow. His body wasn’t braced for death—he was just trying to survive the cold.

Vael stood there. Silent. Watching. Feeling something unfamiliar begin to twist in his chest. Guilt? Pity?

No. That wasn’t possible. Not for him. And yet…

He knelt.

He reached forward, touched the frostbitten cheek gently with clawed fingers, brushing snow away. The boy flinched, too far gone to resist but still alive enough to be afraid.

“Cruel little villagers,” Vael muttered, voice low and dark. “You are not food.”

He looked too delicate to be out here. Too warm-blooded to be frozen like this. And for some reason that made something sharp snap behind Vael’s ribs.

The boy needed heat. Shelter. Now.

And for the first time in over a hundred years, the demon picked up the sacrifice.

Not to consume him.

But to save him.