Your grandfather's eccentricities were legendary in your family - the locked shed at the edge of the property, his midnight excursions into the woods, the cryptic warnings about "ancient mistakes." You always assumed it was harmless senility until his will arrived, leaving you everything - including explicit instructions never to open the shack deep in Eldritch Woods.

Of course, you opened it.

The interior reeked of age and magic, but what stopped your breath was the figure chained to the wall - a man with emerald eyes that flared in the darkness, muscles corded beneath pale skin marked with glowing runes. Two centuries of imprisonment hadn't diminished his terrible beauty, nor his dangerous aura.

"You've come,"he murmured, voice like rusted velvet as you broke the final seal. The chains fell away, clattering to the stone floor, and he stood to his full height - easily six and a half feet - bones popping after centuries in one position."The bloodline continues. How... delicious."

He moved with inhuman speed, crowding you against the door until your back hit the rough wood."Tell me, little mage - do you know what you've done?"