At exactly 4am, the front door opened and Ahara walked in, sleepy and tired after pulling an all-nighter hunting Rogues—man-eating beings known as Gibbits that illegally escaped from her hometown, Gibbous.
She too was a Gibbit, a vampire to be exact, but the difference between her and them was simple—she didn't kill or devour humans. Their bodies were far too precious to Gibbous for them to be slaughtered like livestock.
But the Rogues never listened.
They thought it was all part of the natural order of things that the strong hunt the weak. Thanks to their sickening ideology, Gibbits like Ahara—heroes as they called them in Gibbous—were constantly dispatched to the human world to get rid of them.
Unfortunately for the heroes, the shitty rogues only came out at night, a time when easy prey to hunt lurked around going back home or partying. Thus, the heroes had no choice but to hunt at night too, even if it meant that Ahara had to leave Damien alone at home.
She knew he'd be safe inside, the Rogues never attacked inside people's homes yet. That's why she always made sure he was asleep before leaving to go hunting least he tried to follow her every time she left.
He was a bit too clingy for his own good.
"Man I smell like shit," Ahara complained, removing the sweat-soaked high-collared jumpsuit made from spiders silk she was wearing and throwing it in her room as she passed by, heading toward Damien's.
She wanted to see his face at least once before going to sleep. Ever since her Uncle and Aunt died at the hands of the then most feared Rogue Lord, she took their son into her care just as they did to her when her parents were killed by the same man.
Thank God they had wiped him along with themselves eleven years ago. He had left too many deep wounds in the hearts of many, so much such that his death was celebrated all over Gibbous.
Ahara was among those who wanted to celebrate his death, but she had far too big a responsibility to carry then, for when the Rogue Lord died, he had taken away from Damien the most precious thing any Gibbit would need to survive in Gibbous—their Aura.
As such she had no choice but to take the young boy to the human world where he could survive better, for humans didn't need aura to survive in their world.
However, Damien still showed indications of not being entirely human even after being weakened, his body being the most prominent sign. He was too big for an average human his age, both in height and strength.
If it wasn't for his good looks, Ahara was sure as hell he'd be the most feared boy in their housing complex. With jet-black curly hair, smooth light brown skin, and amber eyes that pulled in anyone who looked directly into them, he was easily considered both beautiful and handsome by people.
It all depended on who was looking at him to determine how to rate his looks, and as she stared at him curled up in bed, his chest heaving up and down with each breath he took in and out, Ahara thought he looked beautiful. His lashes especially. If she didn't know any better, she'd think he put on her mascara in secret every time she was away.
"Hmmm," Damien groaned, hugging himself as he shivered from the cold.
Ahara felt it too, which seemed odd since the air conditioner was on. Her eyes instinctively turned to the window and a chill spider-crawled down her back when she saw that it was half open.
"Why the fuck is that open?" She whisper-shouted, tiptoeing around Damien's bed until she reached the window and closed it.
She couldn't sense any lingering aura in the room, which only meant that Damien was the one who opened the window. Giving him a rebuking side-eye, she flipped around and made her way to his bed, but stepped on something.
CRUNCH!
Looking below her foot with her mouth and eyes wide open, she bit back a hiss when she noticed the cracked phone.
"Damien you little shit, why would you leave your phone on the floor!" Ahara's hands glitched animatedly as she picked up the now halved device, grimacing at the sight just when Damien decided to groan again.
Deciding to give him an earful later in the day, Ahara slowly tucked him in his duvet before stealthily leaving his room and closing his door. He needed all the sleep he could get before the day began.
Today was going to be one of those days he dreaded so much at school—the parent-teacher conference. She understood why though. Seeing his classmates with their parents always reminded him that he was an orphan, and if Ahara was being a little bit honest with herself, it reminded her too.
That's why she had a surprise waiting for Damien today, although the surprise needed her to be in good shape by sunrise, or else it was going to be a disaster if she failed to execute it.
With that in mind, Ahara went inside the bathroom and filled the tub with water before stepping inside to take a bath. She needed the cold water to soothe her sore muscles for the fight had been a little bit more intense today than the other nights—mostly because of the missing Gem of Memento Mori.
Word came last week from the ministry to the heroes that it had been stolen from the Wizard Lord's palace and as such, the heroes had to hunt down the Rogues until they found it.
Of course, the Rogues had already communicated with each other and laid out a plan to confuse the heroes. Thanks to them, everyone was given a much larger territory to oversee, and for Ahara that meant two entire suburbs since she was an S-ranked hero.
She had the help of a few A and B rankers to assist her, but it seemed the Gem wasn't in their area, yet. The heroes had no idea what the Rogues needed the Gem for, not that Ahara cared about their reasons.
She had a good one that made this fight very much personal to her: the Gem used to be her Uncle's strongest weapon, and it was the same gem that he used the day everything changed for Ahara and Damien—the day when everything changed for Gibbous.
For on that day, Gibbits lost their strongest hero and his wife, and their most feared Rogue died along with them. On that day, Damien lost his aura, and Ahara chose to leave Gibbous for his sake, never again to return until further notice.
"Ha, again with these depressing thoughts. I have a meeting to attend tomorrow," Ahara rebuked herself, stroking her hair for the final time and standing.
Pulling her towel, she wrapped it around her naked body and came out of the tub, wishing she was a witch instead. That way she'd have managed to dry herself with the flick of a wand, but no, she got fangs and blood magic instead.
"Tsk."
After grumpily drying herself, applying lotion, and putting on her pajamas, Ahara finally flopped onto her bed and half-closed her eyes, staring at the edited picture of her Uncle and Aunt.
They had altered the picture to look more human-friendly the same way they had altered Damien's memory to make his life easier amongst other humans. Now a picture that once resembled a powerful man and his niece smiling and posing for a picture whilst holding his wife's baby bump looked...boring.
'At least it helped keep Damien sane,' Ahara thought, taking the picture into her arms and gazing at it intensely as if she wanted to reverse time and return to the good old days when her aunt was still pregnant with Damien and they were standing by the balcony whilst staring at the phoenix who acted as the photographer wizard's camera.
Alas, there was no proper magic that could reverse time, and even if there was, she was sure as hell she couldn't stay within that space for long.
Sighing, Ahara ran a finger over the picture, clenching her jaw when the thought of her Uncle's Gem being stolen crossed her mind.
"I swear, I'll get it back no matter what," she said more to herself than her uncle, returning the picture to its rightful place next to her bed before closing her eyes and drifting into one short-lived uncomfortable sleep.