The room was dimly lit by a flickering oil lamp, casting shadows that danced along the wooden walls. Outside, the wind howled, as if mourning something long forgotten. Inside, the air was thick with tension and hope as a man sat at his wife's side, his hand gripping hers tightly. Her face, damp with sweat and twisted with the pains of labor, softened only slightly when she glanced at him.

"Hold on, my love," he whispered, his voice hoarse. He could feel her pain as if it were his own, every contraction a ripple of agony that cut through the eerie stillness of the night. The midwife moved efficiently, her hands stained with the labor of bringing life into the world.

A final push, a cry, and then... silence. The world held its breath.

A baby's wail cut through the night like a piercing trumpet, a sign of life. Relief washed over the man, and he collapsed forward, kissing his wife's forehead as tears welled in his eyes. They had been waiting for this moment for so long.

The midwife handed the newborn to his mother, wrapped in a thin, cotton blanket. The woman, pale and exhausted, managed a weak smile, her eyes full of wonder as she gazed upon her son. "What shall we call him?" she whispered, her voice barely audible.

The man looked toward the small window beside the bed. In the eternal darkness of their sky, lit only by ghastly glow of Crimson Moon, he saw something different, a streak of light across the night sky. He stared at it, transfixed, as if it were speaking to him.

"Lucian," he said finally, his voice filled with a reverence that seemed to still the air. "May his light shine like the stars of old." 

Unbeknownst to the new parents, as they spoke the name, a flicker of something unearthly passed through the child's eyes—a flash of light, brief and subtle, but filled with a great magic alien to this world.

A voice, not of the living but of the eternal, whispered in the stillness.

A soul for a soul... they who are untouched by the blight... the power to cheat the price of power, yet the ultimate price is paid in kind. Say thee name, summon thee forth with these words, and remember the light...

As the words were said, a contract was made, a crystalline shard of light appeared in newborn's hand. And so, with the name Lucian, there is a new hope in this hopeless world.