Hades' Cursed Luna

Hades

I watched them strap in Elliot first, his eyes never leaving ours as the technician handled him with care. He tried not to show fear, but the way his hands were clenched gave it away. He was afraid.

I didn't know how to soothe him. His gaze darted between me and Eve, searching for something—reassurance, perhaps, or a signal that this wouldn't hurt. My tongue remained heavy in my mouth. I could only hope he could read my eyes and know he was safe, that nothing would happen to him while I was here.

But the truth stained the back of my throat like old blood.

I had failed him before. Failed to protect him. Failed to believe in him.

So what right did I have to offer comfort now?

But Eve—she was different. She crouched beside the scan bed, just outside the sterile border of the equipment. Her hand fluttered up slowly, fingers curving in a soft wave.

"It's just like a magic bed, sweetheart," she whispered, her voice barely above the hum of the monitors. "Close your eyes if you want, and when it's done, I'll be right here. We both will."

Elliot looked at her, then at me.

And I nodded. One small motion. One promise I would keep this time.

He slowly loosened his grip and let the technician place the neural cap on his head. His eyes closed, lashes trembling as the scan engaged.

The machine began to whir, a faint blue light sweeping over his body in clean pulses. I watched the monitors light up with information, strings of genetic sequences mapping out in real time.

Eve stood beside me now, her shoulder barely grazing mine. Her arms were crossed tightly, as if holding herself together.

Minutes passed before the chief geneticist, Dr. Vexa, turned toward us, her expression unreadable.

Dr. Vexa stepped forward, tablet in hand, the glow of data still streaming across the screen. Her lips parted, then pressed shut again as she recalibrated whatever clinical detachment she'd mastered over her career.

"You should see this," she said, voice taut.

She turned the tablet toward us.

At first glance, it was a standard sequence scan—helixes rotating, protein markers blinking, neural pathways highlighted. But then I saw the highlighted bands. One by one, they lit up like constellations.

"What are we looking at?" I asked, already knowing this wasn't ordinary.

"Stability," she replied. "Perfect, unprecedented stability. A hybrid structure that shouldn't exist without intervention. But there's no trace of forced bonding. No scars. No genetic war happening beneath the surface." She looked at Elliot—who was still laying perfectly still, like a soldier at rest. "It's like he was made this way from the beginning."

"Because he was," Eve murmured.

Dr. Vexa nodded once. "Exactly. His DNA evolved with both strains—vampiric and lycanthrope. Unlike Hades, he didn't need purging. There was nothing corrupted in the first place."

Elliot's blood sample was already under the microscope, sealed in an electromagnetic isolation pod. We watched through the lab's upper screen as the artificial Blood Moon sequence began—red light pulsing from the emitters, mimicking the precise radiation frequency expected during the Cataclysm.

Normal blood samples usually convulsed under it. Some combusted. Others mutated. But Elliot's?

It shimmered.

Golden threads pulsed through the plasma, reacting—not with distress, but absorption. Like it recognized the energy. Like it welcomed it.

"He's immune," Dr. Vexa confirmed softly. "The Blood Moon won't touch him."

The words hit me like thunder. Not just relief—but awe.

He was a child—and yet, somehow, he'd become something even centuries of alchemical warfare couldn't replicate: a perfect answer.

Then came my turn.

I didn't flinch when they drew my blood or strapped me down.

I had faced death.

I had faced myself.

But this… this was a reckoning I hadn't anticipated.

The scans began, and immediately the techs exchanged glances. Not alarm—fascination.

Dr. Vexa didn't wait. "Bring up comparison mapping. Hades and Subject E. Side-by-side."

The screen split. On the left—Elliot's double helix. Clean, elegant, luminous with hybridization. On the right—mine.

Similar. But not identical.

My structure was jagged in parts, rethreaded by time, trauma, and—most of all—the Fenrir Rite. But the result?

Identical function.

"The Flux is gone," she said. "Completely. But something remains. Fragments of the vampire DNA are still there. More than just scars. They've been… refined."

"Refined how?" Eve asked.

Dr. Vexa enlarged the screen. "Like Elliot, Hades's body isn't rejecting either half of his lineage. He's become fully hybrid. But while Elliot's was inherited and developed, Hades's was rebuilt. The Fenrir Marker purged the corruption and—somehow—restructured what was left into a functional, stable code. Your body didn't just heal. It evolved."

I looked at the electromagnetic exposure chamber.

"We test it."

Minutes later, my blood joined Elliot's under the radiation.

For one breathless second, the red light surged. A tremble rolled through the plasma. My jaw tightened.

Then—

Stability.

Just like Elliot's, my blood shimmered—like moonlight trapped in water.

Only… deeper.

"Yours is denser," Vexa murmured. "Like it absorbed more of the radiation."

I already knew why.

"I wasn't born with it," I said. "It had to be… forged. Which means it carries the memory of the war within."

Eve stepped closer, her fingers brushing the edge of the tablet.

"What does this mean?" she whispered.

Dr. Vexa straightened, her tone clinical, but her eyes couldn't hide her surpise and apprehension "It means you're both immune to the Lunar Cataclysm. Not resistant—immune. The moon can't twist what it can't destabilize."

I stared at Elliot through the glass.

He wasn't moving, just breathing. Watching the ceiling like it held answers only he could read.

The hum of the machine tapered off, soft as the silence that followed. It wasn't the heavy kind. It was... restrained. Waiting. Like the room itself was unsure what to do next.

"Unstrap him," I said, my voice lower than intended.

The technician obeyed without pause, removing the cap and gently releasing the straps. Elliot sat up slowly, his hair rumpled, cheeks pale, hands still clenched in his lap. Not scared anymore—just… bracing.

He slid off the bed with a practiced care that made something twist in my gut. Too practiced. Too familiar with tension.

Eve reached for him first. Her hand grazed his shoulder, then held it. Just that. No fuss. No soothing sounds or exaggerated praise.

He nodded once. She nodded back.

He turned to me next, his mouth parting like he wanted to ask something—but didn't.

Instead, he reached out and pressed the pad of his thumb against the inside of his own wrist.

Like he was checking to see if he was still himself.

I didn't speak. I didn't kneel or grab him or do the thousand foolish things clawing at my chest. I just stood there and waited, because anything else would've been about me.

Not him.

Elliot blinked, turned slightly toward Eve, then back to me.

"I'm hungry," he said.

That's all.

A breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding escaped me in a sound that wasn't quite a laugh.

"Me too."

He shrugged. "Is there still pudding?"

"Plenty," Eve replied.

He trudged out first, dragging his unicorn plushie by one wing, like the whole thing had been a mild inconvenience. I started to follow, but Dr. Vexa cleared her throat.

"There's more," she said. "One last thing."

I stopped mid-step. Eve lingered too.

Dr. Vexa tapped something on the side of the tablet. "We found something else in the cross-matched data—an imprint. A residue. Not active. Not sentient. Just... there."

"What kind of residue?" I asked.

She hesitated. "The same pattern we found in Eve's earlier scans, post-Rite. A trace… of something older."

She looked up, something reluctant simmering beneath her words.

"The signature matches Vassir."

Eve stiffened.

I didn't move.

Dr. Vexa continued, eyes flicking between us. "There's no conscious echo. No neural tether. But it confirms what you said earlier. He wasn't lying."

"What does that change?" I asked quietly.

"Nothing immediate. But it means your body, Hades, didn't just survive the purge—it absorbed what it could use. You are no longer a vessel… but something new, built from what was left behind."

Something new.

The words echoed, but not in awe. Not in relief.

In dread.

I didn't feel like something new. I felt like something unfinished. Unstable. Still burning at the edges from a fire that hadn't gone out.

My eyes drifted to Elliot again—small, warm, whole. His hand was in mine. When had that happened?

I hadn't noticed. But he had taken it.

And for a fleeting moment, I'd held on.

Until I didn't.

Until I realized what Dr. Vexa didn't say.

No neural tether.

Not yet.

No conscious echo.

Not anymore.

I let go of Elliot's hand.

He blinked up at me, confused, but I stepped back. One pace, then another, until I felt the cool press of the observation wall at my spine.

"I need more scans," I said. My voice wasn't steady. "Run everything. Neural mapping. Flux residue tracing. Endocrine fluctuations. All of it."

Dr. Vexa opened her mouth to protest, but I didn't wait. I turned from them—away from the boy I'd barely begun to know, away from the woman who'd stood beside me through damnation—and walked deeper into the hallway outside the lab, the echo of my steps too loud, too hollow.

I didn't want them to follow.

Because something in me was already stirring.

That same pressure I'd felt in the worst moments—when rage became clarity, when cruelty felt righteous.

Vassir.

Was he really gone?

Or was he still waiting, buried inside the cracks of my mind, in the seams of my DNA?

I gripped the edge of the corridor railing, bracing myself against the thought.

I turned my back on them.

I needed distance. I needed—

"Don't run."

Her voice stopped me cold. Then her hand—warm, unflinching—grabbed my wrist. I missed her touch, a part of me quivered from the contact.

I didn't look at her. "Eve, don't." she wanted to save me again. Of course, she wanted to.

But she moved in front of me, eyes burning.

"I should've told you sooner," she said, voice trembling. "Back in the cell—Vassir said something before he vanished."

I froze.

She didn't flinch.

"He said you're not just his vessel. You're his reincarnation."

The word hit harder than any wound I'd ever taken.

"No." My voice cracked.

"You were born with pieces of him. Not infected—born, like me and Elysia." she pressed, her grip tightening. "But that doesn't mean he owns you. It means you survived him."

I tried to step back, but she held on.

"He's gone, Hades. The purge didn't destroy you. It cleansed you, but a part of him was in you along. That is why you could contain him."

My hands curled into fists. "What if he comes back?"

"Then we end him," she snapped. "But I won't let you tear yourself apart for a ghost."

Silence cracked between us.

"You think I don't see the way you look at Elliot?" she whispered. "Like you don't deserve him. Like you're afraid you'll hurt him. But you won't. You already chose who you are."

I looked down at her hands—still holding mine.

Steady. Warm.

Mine were shaking until I let hers steady me.