The crystal goblet caught the fading light, amber liquid swirling within as Jarkan Valerian lifted it to his lips. Thirty-four years of life had etched fine lines around his eyes, the weight of corporate success and familial responsibility balanced on shoulders that now tensed beneath his tailored jacket. The bitterness that spread across his tongue seemed unusual, but he dismissed it as a new vintage his wife had selected.
"To unexpected reunions," his brother, Darius, toasted from across the room, a familiar smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. That expression had haunted Jarkan since childhood—it always preceded some triumph at his expense.
Seated beside Darius on the velvet settee was Lyria, Jarkan's wife of seven years. Her smile didn't reach her eyes, which gleamed with something cold and foreign. The living room of their estate seemed suddenly vast and airless, the ornate furnishings and oil paintings of Valerian ancestors watching in silent judgment.
"It's good to see you, brother," Jarkan said, meaning it despite their rivalry. Darius had been abroad for nearly two years, overseeing the European branches of Valerian Industries. "You should have told me you were returning. I would have arranged a proper welcome."
"And miss the look on your face? Where would be the fun in that?" Darius laughed, his gaze sliding to Lyria with an intimacy that should have alerted Jarkan immediately.
They discussed business for a time—market projections, the board's concerns, their father's increasing detachment from operations. All the while, Jarkan noticed the subtle glances between his wife and brother, but the significance eluded him until it was too late.
"Husband," Lyria said finally, her voice honeyed yet somehow hollow, "I've wanted to tell you something for so long."
Jarkan lowered his glass, a strange numbness beginning in his fingertips. "What is it?"
Her porcelain features remained composed, almost serene, as she delivered the blow. "The child you think you are the father of isn't yours."
"What!?" The exclamation tore from his throat, disbelief warring with the first tendrils of a terrible understanding.
"Yes," she continued, each word precisely aimed. "He is the result of love between your brother and I."
Jarkan turned to Darius, searching for denial, for any sign that this was an elaborate, cruel joke. Instead, he found only that insufferable smirk, now tinged with something like pity.
"I'm sorry, brother, but it is true," Darius said, his tone suggesting he was discussing nothing more consequential than a minor business setback. "I loved her even before you married her. But our parents decided to marry her to you."
The room seemed to tilt on its axis as memories realigned themselves with brutal clarity—Lyria's unexpected trips coinciding with Darius's brief returns, hushed phone conversations that ended abruptly at his approach, the subtle differences between his own features and those of five-year-old Elian, differences he had attributed to Lyria's side of the family.
"I couldn't tolerate your narcissistic, arrogant prick behavior," Lyria added, her mask of sophistication slipping to reveal contempt. "And now you are going to die knowing that you cared for a child that isn't yours."
The face of young Elian flashed in Jarkan's mind—the boy's infectious laughter as they built sandcastles on private shores, his serious expression when Jarkan taught him chess, the complete trust in his eyes when he called him "Father." A cold pallor spread across Jarkan's face, quickly replaced by a flush of rage that burned through the growing numbness in his limbs.
With a growl of fury, he surged to his feet, intent on reaching Darius—but his legs betrayed him. He collapsed heavily to the Italian marble floor, his body no longer responding to commands.
Darius rose leisurely and stood over him, amusement dancing in eyes so similar to his own. "You're going to die, brother."
"Father will not spare you," Jarkan gasped, his voice already weakening as his throat constricted. "He may favor you, but even he won't condone fratricide."
"Oh, it was Father who said I could have her and your position too," Darius replied with casual cruelty. "It seems you've been trying to overtake the company, steering it toward green energy against his wishes. He didn't like it. Said the Valerian fortune wasn't built on idealism."
The final betrayal cut deepest of all. Jarkan had indeed been slowly redirecting company resources toward sustainable technologies, believing it both morally right and financially prudent for the future. That his own father would sanction his murder for such a transgression seemed impossible, yet the truth of it was written in Darius's triumphant expression.
As poison coursed through his veins, Jarkan's vision began to darken at the edges. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, he could see the rare solar eclipse that had been forecast for weeks now reaching totality—the sun disappearing completely behind the moon's shadow, plunging the manicured gardens into an eerie twilight.
"How... poetic," he managed through increasingly numb lips. "The eclipse... darkness falls... just as you... show your true nature."
"Always the dramatist," Darius chuckled. "That's why Father never fully trusted you with the company. Too much feeling, not enough calculation."
Lyria stood beside Darius now, her hand in his. "The poison is quite elegant—derived from a rare Amazonian plant. It leaves no trace after twenty-four hours. By tomorrow evening, your death will be attributed to a previously undetected heart condition."
Jarkan's rage burned impotently as his body failed him. His last thoughts were of Elian—innocent in all this treachery—and the realization that the child he had loved so completely would now be raised by these monsters, never knowing the truth of his "father's" demise.
As darkness claimed him, the eclipse outside reached its zenith. In that moment of perfect celestial alignment, something inexplicable occurred—a convergence not just of heavenly bodies, but of worlds.