At first glance, she thought it was the son she had been waiting for.
But as the man stepped into the torchlight, Bianca saw the twisted, mocking light in his eyes, and the hope in her chest turned to ash.
“You!” she hissed, her voice cracking with a mix of fury and fear.
“I was worried you’d be too comfortable in your new home,” Eric said, his voice a low, melodic threat. “But it looks like the reality of your situation is finally starting to set in. That brings me a great deal of peace, 'Mother'.”
Bianca let out a bitter, jagged laugh. “Yes, enjoy your little victory while you can, you parasite. You can play at being the Duke for now. You can sit in his chair and wear his name. But the moment my real son returns—the moment Zenon brings him back from the North—your charade is over. You’ll be dragged from that palace in chains.”
She clutched the heavy platinum chain around her neck, the Brant family seal glinting in the dark. “This belongs to a Brant. Not a nameless bastard.”
“Mother,” Eric said, his smile widening.
“Don't you dare call me that! You are nothing to me!”
“Even now, you deny it,” Eric whispered, stepping right up to the bars. “Even with the evidence staring you in the face. Tell me, Bianca... what did your husband tell you all those years ago? When the labor was over and the room was filled with the smell of blood?”
Bianca’s expression froze. Her vision began to blur, the damp walls of the dungeon dissolving into a memory of a candlelit bedroom. She saw her husband, the late Duke, standing at the foot of the bed. He was holding a small, screaming bundle in his arms.
*“Twins, Bianca,”* his voice echoed in her mind. *“A curse. You know the law. One must be sacrificed so the other can thrive. If they grow up together, one will steal the other’s luck until both houses fall.”*
She had been too weak to fight. She had watched him take the second child—the smaller one—and carry him out of the room. He told her the boy would be sent to a noble family in a distant land, to live as a second son. Later, he told her the child had died on the journey.
She had buried the grief. She had poured every ounce of her love into the "surviving" son, Eric. But then, years later, her husband had brought home a "lookalike" child—a boy with the same blue eyes but a hollow, haunted gaze. He’d claimed it was his illegitimate son, born to a commoner mistress.
Bianca had hated that child. She had seen him as a mockery of her lost son, a "fake" Eric who existed only to remind her of her husband’s infidelity and her own failure.
“Eric Lennon Brant was born a twin,” the man before her said, his voice shattering the memory.
Bianca clutched her head, a scream building in her throat. “No! You’re lying! The second child died!”
“He didn't die,” Eric said, his blue eyes burning with a cold, resentful light. “He was sent to a 'noble family' alright—a guild of assassins in the South. He was raised in a slaughterhouse, learned to speak the language of knives before he could read, and had to kill his way through the gutter to see his tenth birthday. Your husband didn't want a second son. He wanted a weapon. He wanted a 'Soul Reaper' to protect the true heir.”
The realization hit Bianca like a physical blow. She looked at the man she had called a parasite, the "fake" son she had abused and despised for twenty years. She looked at his hands, scarred from a lifetime of combat, and saw the echo of her own features in the line of his jaw.
“I... I was so foolish,” she whispered, collapsing to the floor. “My husband... he lied to me.”
“He lied to everyone,” Eric said, his voice devoid of pity. “He brought me back to be a shadow for my brother. And you... you were the most loyal soldier in his war. You hated me because I wasn't the 'real' Eric. You called my eyes 'evil' and my presence 'filth', never realizing you were spitting on your own blood.”
“My child,” Bianca sobbed, reaching through the bars toward his feet. “I... I wanted you to live. I thought you were happy somewhere else!”
“Liar,” Eric spat. “You didn't care if I was happy. You only cared that I was gone. And even when I came back, you tried to destroy the only person who ever saw me as a human being. You killed my wife. You killed the child who would have finally broken this wretched cycle.”
He looked down at her with a broken, mechanical smile. “Congratulations, Bianca. You’ve finally succeeded in your revenge. You’ve ensured that the Brant line ends with me. Because once I’ve finished burning the Arguins and the Emperor’s faction for what they did to Cornelia... I’m going to follow her into the river.”
Bianca screamed in despair, the sound echoing through the lightless halls of the dungeon. “No! Don't say that! You’re the Duke! You have the power!”
She frantically pulled the family seal from her neck and threw it through the bars. The platinum necklace rattled against the stone floor.
“Take it!” she cried. “Take the seal! Never look at me again! Just live! Use the power to save yourself!”
Eric looked at the necklace. To her, it was a gesture of protection, a way to give him the authority he needed to survive. To him, it was one last rejection—a mother throwing a bone to a dog and telling it to go away.
He picked up the seal, his movements graceful and dead.
“I’ll take the power,” Eric said, his eyes fixed on the darkness beyond the cell. “But don't mistake this for a reconciliation. You will never see me again. And you will die in this hole knowing that you were the one who killed the last of your blood.”
He turned and disappeared into the shadows.
Bianca reached through the bars, her fingers clutching the empty air. “Eric! My son! Come back! Please!”
As her screams faded into a ragged sob, the sound of footsteps returned. A guard approached the cell, followed by a tall man in a traveler's cloak.
“You have five minutes,” the guard whispered. “And no violence.”
Bianca looked up, her eyes red and wild. The man pulled back his hood, revealing a face that was the mirror of the one that had just left.
“Zenon,” Bianca gasped, her voice failing.
But it wasn't Zenon who answered. The man standing with the Adjutant looked at Bianca with a cold, unfamiliar curiosity.
“It’s been a long time, Mother,” the man said.
Bianca froze. This man... he was Eric. Not the Soul Reaper. The "Real" Eric. The one who had supposedly disappeared.
“Zenon,” the newcomer said, not taking his eyes off the prisoner. “Tell me... which of us is she crying for now?”