Chapter 1: The Chains of Mercy
The pain lingered in the air long after the screams had faded.
Ethan stirred on the cold marble floor, his fingers brushing against the smooth stone as consciousness slowly returned. His body felt heavy, as though the weight of grief and death wrapped itself around him like unyielding chains. The memories were fractured but sharp, slicing through his mind like glass—his coven surrounded and burning. Every face he had come to know and cherish turned to ash under the force of the Volturi's wrath.
Yet he was alive.
"You must forgive our methods," Aro's smooth, lilting voice pierced through the fog of Ethan's thoughts. "It was not personal, I assure you."
Ethan blinked hard, his vision adjusting to the dim, flickering torchlight of the grand chamber. At the center of the room stood Aro, regal, enigmatic, and terrifying in his calculated elegance. His crimson eyes glimmered with something between mischief and triumph as his pale hands clasped delicately in front of him. Around him stood his loyal guard—Felix, towering like a shadow; Demetri, with his predator's grace; Jane and Alec, angelic faces that couldn't hide the cruelty etched into their souls.
"I chose to spare you, Ethan," Aro continued, stepping closer, his voice low and persuasive. "Your gift... extraordinary. It would have been a tragedy to crush such potential underfoot. Don't
you agree?"
Ethan swallowed hard. The chaotic murmur of his abilities whispered in the back of his mind, images flickering and fading, too fast and disjointed for him to grasp. He hadn't asked for this second chance—hadn't begged for mercy. Yet here he was. Alive. Breathing. While his coven was gone, reduced to nothing but smoke and scattered memories.
He wanted to scream, to question the mercy of the ancient vampire standing before him... but Aro's gaze suffocated his defiance. There was no choice here. No escape.
"Thank you," Ethan rasped, his voice hoarse with newly awakened bitterness. "For sparing me."
Aro's smile widened, but the gesture felt hollow. "Ah, gratitude—a noble response. But the truest mercy, Ethan, lies in guidance. You are lost, adrift in a world cruel and unfamiliar. Let us help
you find your place within it."
The words slithered around him like silk, but their weight felt like iron. Before Ethan could reply, Chelsea emerged from the shadows, her eyes locked onto his with an intensity that made his limbs freeze. There was no physical touch, no manipulation he could discern, yet he felt her power wash over him like a tide. It was subtle, but suffocating—a warmth that wrapped around his fractured soul.
Suddenly, the bitter anger over his survival began to shift into submission. The fierce independence that defined him softened into obedience. And for the first time since his coven was slaughtered, gratitude swelled within Ethan's chest—not born of choice, but of compulsion.
"Yes," Ethan muttered almost unwittingly. "I... I want to belong."
Aro's expression glowed with satisfaction, but his voice betrayed nothing more than quiet understanding. "You will, young one. You are home now."
From that moment, the Volturi's cold crimson banners may as well have been engraved across Ethan's heart.
Over the coming weeks, Ethan was immersed into the dark abyss of his new "family." He was introduced to the key members of the Volturi guard, each one both awe-inspiring and fearsome in their own sinister way. Felix towered above him with brute strength, ever smirking as though amused by Ethan's frailty. Demetri greeted him with an unsettling charm, his sharp eyes gleaming with endless calculation. Jane's expression rarely wavered from its icy disdain, and her twin Alec observed him with quiet indifference—but Ethan knew beneath those young faces lay power unimaginable.
Aro, of course, remained the omnipresent puppeteer, his touch light yet omnipotent. And Ethan was not foolish enough to miss the fact that Chelsea's influence never truly left him. Her unseen binds tightened with every passing day, strengthening his sense of loyalty to the Volturi, until the idea of leaving was not just impossible, but unthinkable.
His induction wasn't a ceremony—it was a trial.
Demetri was tasked as his handler, and the tall tracker wasted no time in throwing Ethan into the deep end of Volturi expectations. Combat drills in the echoing black depths of the fortress were brutal. Demetri's words were cutting and relentless, Felix's sparring sessions even more so.
But it was Aro's politeness in those moments that unnerved Ethan most. The elder leader never raised his voice, nor did he scold, but his quiet praise—
"Fascinating, you have done well"—carried an edge, as if failure was not an option.
And then, there was his curse.
His "gift."
Aro delighted in it, summoned him to the upper chambers almost daily to test the limits of his power. Ethan's rare ability to see fragmented moments of the unwritten future made him invaluable—or so Aro said. To Ethan, the gift felt more like a punishment. His hazy visions came without warning, slipping through his grasp like shadows beyond his reach.
"Focus,"
Aro murmured one evening, his pale hand resting on Ethan's shoulder as a condemned vampire was thrust before him.
"The threads of the future are your canvas. Paint me a picture, Ethan. Tell me, does he live to see another sunset?"
"I don't..." Ethan's voice cracked as a sharp pain stabbed behind his eyes. The vision flickered—ashen, fading forms in the corner of his awareness.
Why couldn't he piece them together?
Why wouldn't they listen?
"I can't control it!"
Aro's expression didn't falter, but there was a dangerous edge to the silence that followed.
"You will learn," Aro said finally, his hand never leaving Ethan's shoulder.
"You are too precious to squander. And I? I am a patient man."
Ethan lowered his gaze, shame and frustration roiling within him. Every part of him wanted to rebel against this life, to fight against the artificial bonds wrapped around him. But that urge withered before it could flourish. Chelsea had made sure of that.
And so, day by day, Ethan slipped deeper into the Volturi's shadow, the chains of mercy tightening their grip until they became too heavy to resist.