Lucian Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Lucian Nightshade owned nothing that proved he had ever been born. The estate his family built stood two valleys east, and strangers slept in his father's rooms. To take it back, he needed papers naming him as heir. But the man who could sign those papers had died a hundred years ago, and every record of Lucian had rotted or burned with the decades. A vampire does not age. He also does not appear in any ledger written after the night he was turned. So he came to the narrow shop where a scribe copied and mended old documents. The sign above the door read Backstreet Scribe's Shop. Scrolls leaned in the window. Ink bottles crowded a shelf. Lucian ducked through the low doorway and set a heavy purse on the counter. The scribe did not look up from his page. He was a small man with ink-stained fingers and a jeweler's glass wedged in one eye. "I copy what exists," he said. "I don't invent men from nothing." "I existed," Lucian said. "I need a birth record for the Nightshade line. Dated to my living years." The scribe finally raised his head. He studied Lucian's pale face, then the purse. "Nightshade," he repeated. "That house has been empty of Nightshades for generations." He tipped coins into his palm and counted them. "Empty on paper. You'd need a deed of birth, sealed, aged, and matched to the old registry hand. That last part is the trouble." "Then match it." The scribe pulled a cracked leather book from beneath the counter. Inside were sample scripts, each a copy of some dead clerk's writing. He turned pages until he found one marked with a faded crest. "The Nightshade registrar. I traced his hand years ago, off a will." He tapped the page. "I can forge the record. But a forged birth alone won't hold. Any lord's court will ask how a man born a century past still breathes." Lucian said nothing. He drew back his sleeve. His skin held no warmth, no color, no pulse. The scribe watched, then looked away. "Then we don't claim you were born recently," he said slowly. "We claim the estate passed wrongly. That the true heir vanished and was never declared dead." He dipped his pen. "I'll write you as the missing son, returned. The birth record proves the son existed. Whether you're truly him is a fight for the court, not for me." He worked through the night. By dawn he laid the finished page on the counter, ink dry, seal pressed, edges browned to look old. It named a Nightshade son, born, unaccounted for, presumed lost. Lucian lifted it. For the first time in a century, something on paper said he was real. "Take it to the estate," the scribe said. "But know this. The people living there won't hand back their home to a dead man's ghost. They'll want you buried again."