Year 1872, Estonia

The darkness eats the light. Time consumes life. Everything has an end. Everyone was born to die.

Ramses didn't believe that cruel reality. Even if those words came from a priestess who can predict the future. Those words were simply not applicable to him. Even if he closed his eyes to welcome the darkness, he couldn't do that permanently.

"Señor, everything is ready." The butler bowed courteously from where he stood. He's the only retainer in Ramses' household whose life was melting like a candle because he chose to be loyal to the human race. Either way, Julio fulfilled his responsibility well for the past sixty years. 

Ramses took the shovel from Julio without a word. He started to cover the deep pit with dirt beneath his feet. Inside the pit, there were countless bloody corpses. Man. Woman. Elderly. And even children. Everyone was a victim of the cruel fate he started.

Ramses didn't turn a blind eye to those gruesome images, and he carved them in his mind. He would carry those sins on his conscience for the rest of his life.

Meanwhile, behind them, you would notice the mansion on fire. Ramses commanded his remaining disciples to burn it. Inside the mansion, Benvorio, Leonardo, Samantha, Arianna, David, Conrad, Gaspar, and Minerva are shouting. They are all Ramses' family.
They are similar to him, and he's similar to them. They are all not humans. They stopped being one when time abandoned them and they called themselves immortals.

In Ramses' case, death could not recognize his body because it had been three thousand years since he witnessed the life and death of his friends and enemies. 

Most of his kind resided in a remote place in the mountains of Ebavere in Estonia. Ramses discovered this sanctuary after traveling to every corner of the globe for a long, long time. He was the leader of the household that was currently on fire. He built the Trinity clan from scratch with the help of those people he trusted.

Most of them were immortals like him. He created them and they became his brethren. But like the first group he created, their relationship became fragile in the face of life and blood. Yes. Immortals like them feed on human blood to survive. But it was against his principles to kill innocent lives. It's a contradiction to what they argued from the very beginning.

He also couldn't see it at first. How important are those trivial lives compared to him? The span of a human life seems so insignificant in the eyes of an immortal. But as he witnessed how those lives fight and continue to struggle in the middle of calamities, he understood that they also have the right to live. That humans have more reasons to exist than their kind.

Ramses never intended to build a group of monsters that were out of control. But it had always been the same and he had never learned his lesson from those mistakes. Perhaps it was heaven's way of telling him on his face that he was not a deity and he had no right to change the destiny of someone.

He found Benvorio on the verge of death when he fell from a cliff. Conrad and Samantha were victims of human trafficking. Gaspar was struck by lightning in the corn field. The siblings, Arianna and David, almost got burned in an arson. Leonardo was shot exactly in front of Ramses' mansion. And Minerva was thrown into the river after she got assaulted. 

Ramses just wanted to help them in his own way. He thought that he was doing the right thing. But instead of giving them a brand new life, he had blessed them with a curse to the point of no return. A curse with no remedy but a bleak end.

His brethren almost wiped out the villagers that resided near the mountains. They craved more blood, and they wouldn't hesitate to kill anyone who got in their way. Their rationality was overtaken by their instincts. He had no choice but to do what he had to do. Ramses had been doing it for thousands of years, yet killing his family still felt like losing limbs.

"Julio, I'll go inside," Ramses announced to the butler. He passed the shovel to him, then handed him his coat after removing it from his body.

"But Señor..." Julio's expression was conflicted. "You don't need to do this. You don't need to see them suffer."

"I need to." Ramses smiled bitterly at his loyal retainer. "I started this hell, so I have to end this hell personally." 

A presence rustled on the top of a tree all of a sudden. Together with the falling of the leaves, a light flutter came from the branches. In just a blink of an eye, Raven emerged on his bended knee in front of Ramses on his right. Raven was Ramses' right-hand man and the only immortal he had been with the longest. The way he jumped and moved was like a wind. Immortals are far better than ordinary humans when it comes to strength and speed.

"I only saved the life of a child, Master," Raven informed him.

"It's enough, Raven," Ramses answered calmly. "That one life is very important compared to the deaths we witnessed." He looked at his disciple. "Give me the Sapphrion." 

Rave paused for a moment. He looked at the bloody wound on his master's gut. That wound was caused by Ramses' family. Normally, it would be impossible for an immortal to injure their creator. But because their betrayal affected Ramses too much, he let his guard down.

"I'm fine, Raven. This wound won't kill me. You, of all people, should know that no one and nothing in this world can kill me."

Raven bowed his head. "I know, Master. I'm not doubting your power. I just don't want you to do something that I can do in your place. You don't need to dirty your hands."

"I want to do this. Let me end them with my own hands." 

- to be continued -