Crimson Petals: Vlad the Impaler's Gentle Echoes

Previously

…“And in betraying your own blood?” Vlad’s eyes burned with a pain that was almost unbearable. He saw it then, the true depth of Radu’s transformation. It wasn’t just adaptation; it was a fundamental shift, a severing of ties that Vlad had believed were unbreakable. The tears that welled in Vlad’s eyes were not of weakness, but of a grief so profound it threatened to consume him. He had lost his brother, not to death, but to a far more insidious kind of vanquishment. He had lost him to the gilded allure of a world that promised much and delivered only chains, however finely wrought.