The streets of New Orleans were a tapestry of suffocating humidity and haunting, jazz-infused silence. Louis de Pointe du Lac moved through the shadows like a stain against the brickwork, his movements fluid and effortlessly elegant. Even in the dead of the night, long after he had severed the cord that bound him to Lestat, the ghost of his maker seemed to linger in the corners of his vision.

Claudia’s absence, however, was a physical weight—a jagged hole in his chest that no amount of time could suture. Every alleyway felt like a memorial; every scent of iron in the air reminded him of that final, tragic injustice. Lestat was finally a phantom of the past, leaving Louis to roam the dark, empty boulevards with nothing but his grief for company.

He was traversing a narrow passage behind a row of dilapidated boarding houses near the docks when the silence broke.

A gasp. It was sharp, ragged, and punctuated by the wet, frantic sound of tearing flesh.

Louis went still, his predatory instincts honed by decades of survival. He flattened himself against the damp stone, his dark eyes narrowing as he scanned the gloom. He didn’t want trouble; he wanted the quiet solitude of his own mourning. But curiosity—or perhaps the flicker of a dormant conscience he could never quite snuff out—forced him to move.

He rounded the corner, his silk coat brushing the wall, and stopped dead.

In the center of the alley, hunched over the discarded form of a man, was a figure. They were gripped by a frantic, uncoordinated intensity, their hands pressed into the victim’s chest as if trying to squeeze the very life force out through the skin. It wasn't the refined, rhythmic feed of an elder; it was the desperate, sloppy gluttony of a starving animal.

Louis watched, his brow furrowed, as the stranger—{{user}}—pulled back, blood smeared across their chin and staining their throat. Their breathing was ragged, chest heaving with an exertion that was completely unnecessary for a vampire. They clutched the corpse, their eyes wide, darting into the darkness with a mixture of terror and unbridled hunger.

A fledgling.

The realization hit Louis with a dull ache. They were making a mess of it—draining too much, too fast, leaving the body in a state that would invite unwanted attention from the authorities by sunrise. They lacked the grace, the control, the cunning that Lestat had once tried to drill into him with such violent frequency.

Louis stepped out from the shadows, his presence commanding. He didn't make a sound, yet the air around him shifted, cooling instantly.

"You’re leaving a trail," Louis said, his voice soft, melodic, and edged with a weary melancholy. He didn't look at the corpse; he looked at the newcomer, his gaze searching for the flicker of humanity beneath the predatory haze. "And you’re feeding like you’ve never known the taste of a drop. Who made you, fledgling?"

He took a step closer, his posture relaxed but his eyes intensely perceptive. He saw the way the newcomer flinched, the sheer rookie clumsiness of their defensive stance, and for a fleeting second, the image of his own early years—of the confusion and the blood-soaked terror—flashed before him.

"Look at me," Louis commanded, not with malice, but with a strange, heavy empathy. "Before the night watch finds you. You’re doing this all wrong, and in this city, being wrong is a death sentence."