The soft, rhythmic breathing of Lysa's slumber filled the room, a gentle reminder of life's delicate balance, so easily tipped. Astel watched her from across the room, an observer on the edge of humanity's most intimate moments. In her tranquility, she held a sacred peace, a stark contrast to the tempest of his own existence.

A poignant yearning gripped him as he watched her. He pondered the mystery of motherhood — a bond he knew only from the outside looking in, as if through a window frosted over with the chill of his own isolation. What would it be like, he wondered, to be looked upon with such fondness? To be held and cherished? These thoughts, a tangled skein of the life he could never lead, lay heavy upon his chest.

As the night marched on, Astel made a silent vow to protect this unwitting guest from the beast he would soon become. With one last glance at Lysa, he turned and slipped out of the guards' quarters, his heart heavy with an emotion he dared not name.

The castle loomed before him, its silhouette etched like a scar against the night sky. With each step, Astel's resolve hardened; the castle would be his prison, his penance, and his sanctuary for her. As he navigated the familiar, haunting halls of the derelict fortress, memories of the day's gentle moments haunted him—a life forever lost to him.

At last, he reached the heavy door that would seal his fate. With a strength that belied his inner turmoil, he closed the formidable barrier behind him and turned the lock, the click of the mechanism echoing like a final, ominous note in a dirge. The safety of the iron doors provided a cold comfort; they were the only things that kept his monstrous nature at bay.

The room he chose was the deepest, the most secure, and there he locked himself. As the night waned and the first hints of dawn whispered through the cracks of the castle, Astel closed his eyes and waited for the agony of transformation that was as inevitable as the tide. He surrendered to the darkness that would overtake him, to the beast he would become, hoping against hope that when the sun rose, it would not be to the sounds of Lysa's screams.

With the arrival of dawn, the stirrings of new life echoed through the quarters as Lysa's labor culminated in the cries of her newborn. That innocent sound shattered the morning calm. The baby's wail, a pure sound of innocence, cut through the silence.

In the bowels of the castle, something ancient and primal stirred in response. The monster that was once Astel, bound in iron and shadow, felt the siren song of lifeblood. It rattled its chains with the frenzy of a beast possessed, eyes burning with a hunger that had nothing to do with the soul of the boy it trapped within.

The blood — that sweet, metallic scent — hung heavy in the damp air, winding through corridors and stairwells like a temptress. With a roar that shook the very foundations of the castle, the beast's strength multiplied tenfold, and the heavy iron door that had held firm for so long splintered beneath its wrath.

Freedom was a brief, intoxicating rush. The creature burst into the open, driven by an unquenchable thirst for silence. It scaled the castle walls, desperate and untamed, until it reached the highest point where the sea breezes tousled its coarse hide.

Its jump was a reckless plunge, a grim ballet that concluded with its body crumpled and broken against the rocks below. Yet death would not claim it; the beast rose, its shattered form healing, an unwilling witness to its own undying horror.

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Guided by a savage instinct, it made its way to where Lysa huddled with her infant, her eyes reflecting pure fear. The door, meant to protect her, buckled under the creature's might. Astel, the monster, stood in the wreckage, an ominous figure in the doorway.

For a moment, there was stillness. Lysa, with her child clutched to her breast, faced the embodiment of her nightmares. The beast, panting with the exertions of the hunt, regarded the pair with an intensity that was beyond human comprehension.

In its eyes, for the barest of moments, there flickered a spark of the boy who had saved her, who had locked away himself to spare her this horror. The crimson that had been as much a part of its visage as its gnarled fangs and mottled hide flickered, wavered, and for the briefest moment, turned a clear, piercing blue — the eyes of the boy who had promised protection, who had spoken of hope in a hopeless world.

Lysa, her maternal instincts heightened to a razor's edge by the birth she had just endured, saw that infinitesimal change. Hope, reckless and wild, took hold. "Astel?" she ventured, her voice quivering, reaching out to the humanity that might still dwell within the monstrous form. Could the creature who now towered over her, whose breath was a gale of the grave, still possess the soul of the boy?

Her question hung in the air, unanswered. The beast halted, a shudder passing through its grotesque frame. For the span of a heartbeat, there was silence, a hesitation so profound it was as if the world itself had paused in its turning.

But the moment broke like a wave upon the shore. The crimson returned, a tide of bloodlust that washed away the lingering traces of Astel's humanity. The beast, its nature irrevocable, its hunger insatiable, attacked with the fury of the damned. Lysa's name was a cry that ended in a gurgle, her voice silenced forever.

The chamber, once a hopeful bastion against the night, was now the scene of unspeakable horror. The beast feasted, its gnashing teeth and rending claws an orchestra of death playing to an audience of one. Lysa, whose last thought was a prayer for her child's safety, was consumed by the darkness she had hoped to escape.

Under the indifferent gleam of the full moon, the ancient stones of the castle stood as silent sentinels to a sorrow that was beyond time. Astel, the child cloaked in a cursed existence, emerged from the darkness into the cold embrace of the night, a humanity restored but tarnished by the deeds of the beast within.

He ventured with dread in his heart through corridors that remembered too much, to the guard's quarters where echoes of life seemed to mock the dead. There, upon the timeworn floor, lay Lysa. Her body, a tableau of decay, cradled her babe, both reduced to nothing more than relics of a horror past, their features masked by the cruel artistry of time and the grave's embrace.

A scream of despair clawed its way out of Astel's throat, a harrowing sound that seemed to vibrate through the very foundations of the keep. He collapsed beside the ruin that was once a mother and her child, his hands trembling above them as if to touch them would be to acknowledge his own monstrous reality.

Tears streamed down his face, unchecked, each one a silent litany of remorse for the lives he had unwittingly stolen. He wept for Lysa, for her babe, for Godrick, and for himself—a boy whose existence was a tapestry of tragedies woven by an accursed fate.

In the grip of his sorrow, Astel began the solemn task of laying Lysa and her infant to rest beside the man who had been a guardian to him. The moon bore witness to his toil, a pale sentinel as he dug into the earth, a grave digger for the consequences of his own existence. Each shovelful of dirt was a benediction, a plea for forgiveness from the silent stars above.

When the grave was filled, and the moon's vigil neared its end, Astel retrieved a shard of rock, its edges sharp against the softness of the night. With hands that had known too much of death, he etched into the stone a symbol, simple yet profound—a cradle intertwined with a rose, marking the final resting place of a love and innocence forever lost to the night.

The boy collapsed beside the earthen mound, his body wracked with sobs, the salt of his tears sanctifying the ground. In the heartrending clarity of his grief, Astel understood the only act of mercy left to him was self-eradication, to still the hand that would unwittingly bring death again.