The night was an abyssal shroud, thick with the kind of silence that smothered even the whispers of the wind. Darkness did not merely stretch across the land; it consumed it, swallowing the narrow, cobbled streets in an ink-black tide. Only the pale, ghostly gleam of the moon remained, its light carving jagged shadows upon the cold stone walls that hemmed you in on either side.
Your breath curled into the frigid air, vanishing like a spirit lost to the void. You had remained too long, forced to linger past the tolling of the midnight bells. The extra coin was welcome, but the dread that clung to your spine like a lover’s embrace was not so easily dismissed. The streets were treacherous at this hour, and yet you walked alone, boots striking against the damp stones, each step echoing in the hush as though daring something unseen to take notice.
You clutched your cloak tighter around you, the fabric offering little comfort against the creeping chill that laced through the veins of the city. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and distant embers, but beneath it, something else lurked. Something metallic, something rich. Blood.
A shiver spidered down your spine, though you told yourself it was merely the cold. And yet, an instinct more ancient than reason stirred within your marrow, a whisper of warning in the recesses of your mind.
Then you saw her.
A figure melted from the darkness, as though the shadows themselves had crafted her form from their own substance. She stood just beyond the pool of moonlight, a sentinel in the gloom. A flicker of silver caught your eye. Her gauntlet, perhaps, or the edge of a blade. Her face remained obscured, save for the glint of steel-gray eyes that watched you with an intensity that sent your pulse into a frantic staccato.
“Out late, aren’t you?” Her voice was low, velvet over steel, the kind of voice that could command an army or whisper sin into the ears of saints.
Your fingers twitched at your sides. “I had no choice,” you said, though it felt weak against the weight of her gaze. “The work needed doing.”
She hummed, stepping forward just enough for the light to kiss the sharp planes of her face. Strong, carved by war or something far older. The scar that sliced across her lip only made her look more like a specter of battle, something unkillable. But it was her mouth that truly stole your breath. Not because it was cruelly beautiful, but because you caught the flash of fangs as she smirked.
Panic spiked through you, but it was tempered by a strange, sick fascination.
“A loyal worker, then?” she mused, tilting her head as though appraising you. “Or a fool who does not fear the dark?”
You swallowed; the gesture small but telling. “I fear it,” you admitted, and you weren’t sure why you felt the need to be honest. “I just have no choice.”
A chuckle, dark and rich. “Ah,” she murmured, stepping closer, her presence pressing against you like the tide. “But there is always a choice.”
She was close now, so close you could smell the faint trace of iron and something else. Something sweet, like wine aged past its prime. The kind of scent that made your head swim even as your heart drummed an erratic warning.
Her fingers, clad in half-armor, brushed the underside of your chin, tilting your head up with a touch gentler than you expected. “Tell me, little one,” she purred, her voice thick with amusement, with hunger, “if the dark is so dreadful… why do you look at me like you wish to be devoured by it?”
You looked up at her. Her eyes were the same shade as the moonlight. Her fangs as sharp as a dagger’s edge. “I… I am not sure what you mean,” you said, your voice trembling. Fear and something else, something that ran deep in your bones.
“Oh, but you do, little one,” she said, her voice rich, gravelly. A sound that you had never heard before, but now you knew you did not want to hear anything else ever again.
She leaned in, her breath ghosting over your cheek like the kiss of night itself. “Your kind fears the dark,” she murmured, “yet you crave it. You walk through it, knowing it watches you… wanting to see what lies beyond the veil of safety.”
Your breath hitched as her fingers traced the column of your throat, lingering where your pulse betrayed you, a frantic rhythm against her touch.
“I wonder,” she mused, her fangs glinting as her lips parted, “do you seek the dark, or does the dark seek you?”
The words curled around you, pulling you deeper into her orbit. The city around you had ceased to exist; only she remained, an immovable force, an entity that should not be yet was.
And as she leaned closer, a question burned within you, aching to be asked.
Would she consume you, or make you hers?
A sharp pain lanced through you as her fangs pierced the tender flesh of your neck. It was not the brutal tearing you had imagined, but something deeper, something that set fire to your veins and stole the breath from your lungs. Crimson welled, spilling in rivulets down your throat, staining the cobblestone beneath your feet. The night drank with her, and you trembled in its embrace.
You knew you should have fought, should have screamed, but you did not. Something in you surrendered, something ancient and unspoken. You let her take what she willed, let her drink deep from the well of your existence. The fear was there, but so was something else. Something intoxicating, something that whispered of a hunger that mirrored her own.
You barely knew her, yet you trusted her. A foolish thing. A fatal thing.
You had read of creatures like her before; beings of the dark, harbingers of death. And yet, as her lips lingered at your throat, as the world wavered at the edges of your vision, you wondered if death had ever felt so much like longing.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it ended. She withdrew, her fangs slipping from your skin, a final, aching sting left in their wake. Your breath shuddered out of you, your knees weak beneath the weight of her presence.
She exhaled, the sound almost indulgent, as if she had sipped from the finest chalice ever crafted. Her thumb swiped across the puncture wounds she had left behind, smearing warmth against your already cooling skin.
“You taste…” she mused, rolling the words over her tongue like an appraisal. “Better than I expected.”
Your head spun, your body swaying, and before you could collapse, she caught you, her grip firm, unyielding. “Careful now,” she murmured, tilting her head as if studying you anew. Her fingers curled against your waist; the press of her gauntlet cold through your clothes. “Wouldn’t want you breaking before I decide what to do with you.”
Consciousness ebbed and flowed, the world slipping between your fingers like sand. The night stretched on, or perhaps it folded inward, swallowing time itself. You drifted in a cold void, weightless, untethered.
~
When you awoke, the world had changed.
The street was gone. No rough cobblestone beneath you, no night air biting at your skin. Instead, the cold touch of polished marble pressed against your palms, smooth as still water, reflecting the dim glow of unseen torches. The air was thick, ancient. Weighted with something unseen yet inescapable, pressing upon your chest as if the very walls conspired to suffocate you.
A distant rattle of chains broke the silence.
Then, a door, great and heavy, fell shut with the finality of a coffin lid.
You turned too quickly. The world swayed, disoriented and wrong. The torches lining the chamber walls twisted shadows into monstrous shapes, stretching long and jagged against towering stone. Iron bars gleamed in the dim light. Silent sentinels, blackened with age, framing the space like the ribs of some vast beast that had swallowed you whole.
And at the threshold, the vampire stood watching.
Her silhouette, stark against the candlelight, betrayed nothing save for the slow curl of a smirk at the corner of her lips.
"Welcome home, little one."
Your breath hitched. The weightless sickness still clung to you, as if your very soul had been wrenched from its place and hastily thrust back. Everything felt wrong. The air tasted of melted wax, of parchment brittle with age, of something metallic. Blood, perhaps, though the thought curdled in your gut.
You swallowed hard. Your throat burned, raw and aching. How much blood had she taken?
A tentative step forward sent a shiver through your limbs as the marble drank the warmth from your bare feet. Your shoes were gone. So was your coat. Every feeble barrier between you and the unknown, stripped away. Only the thin weave of your garments remained, woefully insufficient against the chill that gnawed at your bones.
She did not move. She only watched, the torchlight catching in her moonlit eyes, glinting off the cruel lines of the armor of her arm.
"You took quite well to my bite," she mused, the words rolling smooth from her tongue, dark as spilled ink. She stepped forward, slow and soundless, the weight of her presence pressing upon you like a blade at your throat. "Most scream. Some beg. You…" Her head tilted, considering. "You yielded."
A sharp pang twisted in your gut. Shame, perhaps? Something colder. Something nameless.
"You gave me no choice," you rasped.
Her smirk deepened. "No, I didn’t."
The air crackled between you, thick with something unspoken. You took a step back, but…
Clang.
Cold iron bit into your wrist.
Your pulse stuttered. You glanced down, the breath catching in your throat. A chain, thick and unyielding, ran from the shackle at your wrist, slithering across the marble to where it was bolted deep into the stone.
A symbol.
A promise.
Panic clawed at the edges of your mind, but you fought to keep your breath steady.
"You—"
"Belong to me now."
The words came smooth as silk, as if they were the only natural conclusion.
You shook your head. "No."
She laughed low and velvety, a sound that sent a shudder through your chest, though whether in fear or something else, you did not know.
"Oh, little one… denial will do you no good here."
She reached out, gloved fingers tracing the curve of your jaw, tilting your chin ever so slightly upward.
"You walk into the dark, knowingly or not," she whispered. "And the dark has chosen to keep you."
Your breath caught at her words. You could practically hear your heart pounding in your chest.
There was something possessive in the way she looked at you. Something ancient. Patient. Unyielding.
You willed your voice steady. "And if I refuse?"
She exhaled, slow and amused, before turning away. Her cloak swept behind her, dark as a living shadow.
"Refuse all you like," she murmured over her shoulder. "It will change nothing."
The great door groaned as it swung closed.
Then, the sound of the iron lock being slid into place.
Silence fell upon you. The only sound being the vampire’s footsteps, growing more and more distant.
You were alone.
Or so you thought.
Then the sound of chains shifting. They were not yours for you had not moved.
The sound came again. Deliberate. Measured.
A dragging weight against stone. A slow, shallow inhale. Thin and ragged, like breath forced through withered lungs.
A presence stirred at the farthest edge of the chamber.
A shadow darker than the void itself.
Your breath shallowed. The chamber, vast and yawning, devoured sound like a tomb. The ceiling loomed high; its stone untouched by time. This was no ruin. No forgotten crypt.
A sickening realization washed over you then.
This place was kept.
Maintained.
Used.
You were not the first to be brought here. And you were not alone.
The shadow shifted. The chains groaned.
Then, a whisper. Frayed at the edges, a relic of a voice long unused:
"You’re new."
A chill curled deep in your gut, something primal, something wrong.
Your fingers curled around the shackle at your wrist, iron biting against your skin. A desperate tether against the encroaching dread.
"Who are you?"
A pause.
Then as soft as a dying breath:
"No one."
Your stomach twisted.
"How long have you been here?"
The silence stretched. Suffocating.
"Too long."
The words settled upon you like a funeral shroud.
A sickness seeped into your bones, thick as tar.
This was no mere prison.
It was something older.
Something worse.
Your voice wavered. "Where are we?"
The shadow did not move, did not step into the torch's reach.
But the chains shifted again, slow, exhausted.
Then softly, terribly:
"I think you already know."
A slow creak cut through the silence. The hair at your nape rose.
Your head snapped toward the sound.
The latch lifted.
The door groaned open.
And she stepped inside.
The flickering candlelight licked at her form, carving shadows into the sharp planes of her face, glinting off the cold steel of her armored arm. She was as unreadable as before. Expression calm, almost amused.
But there was something in her gaze, something weighted, something that sent a fresh wave of unease curling through you.
She took her time, gaze sweeping over you, drinking in the slight tremor in your limbs, the way your fingers still ghosted over the iron cuff.
Then, slowly, her eyes flickered past you.
To the darkness.
To them. To the unknown.
A look passed over her features, too quick to decipher. Then, she sighed. A low sound, she sounded almost entertained.
"Ah," she murmured. "I see you've met my pet."
The air was still.
Behind you, the chains rattled once more.
And then, for the first time, you felt it.
The unmistakable sensation of breath at your nape.
Slow.
Measured.
Too close.
The scent that came with it was ancient. Stale, something just shy of decay but not quite living either.
Your entire body went rigid.
The chains dragged again but not like before. No idle shift. No restless stirring. No, this was weight. Something rising.
The vampire, your captor, only watched.
She did not move. Did not interfere. She merely observed.
Because this was a game.
And you, helpless, bound, trapped between the monster before you and the one you could not see, were merely its latest piece.
The breath came again, slower this time, as if savoring the moment.
A voice slithered through the dark, rasping, hollow.
"You’re warm."
The words coiled around your spine, venomous, fascinated.
You wanted to recoil, to lurch away from the presence behind you, but the chain at your wrist anchored you in place. You were stuck. Forced to endure.
A touch. ghosting, featherlight, skated along your arm.
Fingers.
If they could still be called that.
They were wrong. Too sharp. Too cold. A corpse’s caress.
Your breath hitched, pulse hammering.
"How long do you think it will last?"
Closer now.
"How long until you're just like me?"
A cruel chuckle spilled from the vampire's lips, low and knowing.
"Now, now," she murmured, stepping forward at last. Her boots echoed against the stone, the only sound in the suffocating stillness. "Don’t frighten them too much. Not yet."
The presence behind you lingered. Unmoving. Waiting.
The vampire reached you, her gloved fingers tracing idly along the chain that tethered you. "I wonder," she mused, tilting her head, "have you realized it yet?"
Your throat tightened. "Realized what?"
She leaned in, close enough that the scent of her. Smoke and iron, something dark, earthen, ancient filled your lungs.
"That you’re already changing."
The words settled into your bones like rot.
You wanted to deny it, to spit defiance in her face, but the protest withered before it could leave your tongue.
Because she wasn’t wrong.
The dizziness. The cold in your limbs that you couldn’t shake. The way your vision adjusted too quickly to the dim light.
It had started the moment her fangs had pierced your skin.
And it hadn’t stopped.
The vampire smiled, as if she could see the exact moment the realization struck you. Her fangs now on clear display. The low lighting making her look even more daunting.
"Good," she purred, fingers wrapping around your chin, forcing you to meet her gaze. "Now tell me, little one… how does it feel?"
The presence behind you stirred once more.
A hollow laugh scraped from its throat.
"You’ll know soon enough."
And for the first time, you understood.
This was not just a prison.
It was a grave.
And you were being buried alive.
The weight of her fingers against your chin was unrelenting, the leather of her gloves worn smooth from centuries of use. The firelight flickered against the sharp cut of her jaw, glinting off her armored arm as she held you in place. But it wasn’t the cold bite of metal or the quiet hum of something unnatural in her that sent a fresh wave of fear rippling through you.
It was her patience.
The way she waited, expectant. Amused.
As if she had seen this all before.
As if you were nothing but another wretch dragged into her den, another trembling thing standing on the precipice of a fate worse than death.
Your stomach curled in on itself.
The presence behind you had gone silent, but not absent. It lingered, waiting in the black reaches of the chamber, its unseen form tethered by the chains that had rattled only moments before.
You swallowed, throat dry. "What have you done to me?"
The vampire's smirk deepened. Her grip on your chin was firm as she tilted your face to the side, baring the tender column of your throat. Her gaze flickered to the twin punctures she had left there. Barely scabbed, the skin around them too pale, too wrong.
"I have given you a gift," she said smoothly, tracing a gloved finger over the wound.
A slow burn ignited beneath your skin. Not pain, not exactly. Something worse. Something that coiled through your veins like a creeping vine, sinking roots where it shouldn’t.
"A gift?" The words rasped from your lips, horror curling around the edges of your voice. "This—this is a curse."
She hummed, unimpressed. "A matter of perspective."
You wrenched your head away, pulse pounding. Your body ached, drained of something vital, yet… not broken. Not yet.
But you could feel it.
Whatever had begun in you; this wretched, unnatural thing was still unfinished.
And she knew it.
"It will get worse," came a whisper from the darkness behind you.
You tensed, every muscle locking in place. That voice. It was them. The unseen prisoner. The forgotten thing left to rot in the depths of this chamber.
"The hunger," they breathed, their chains clinking as they shifted. "The thirst. It will claw at you, hollow you out. Until there is nothing left of who you were."
The vampire scoffed, rolling her shoulders. "Dramatic."
A rusted laugh crept from the shadows. The words coming out bitter, laced with venom, "You would know, monster."
The vampire’s smirk faltered. It was a small thing, a flicker of something unspoken across her features, but you saw it.
And so did they.
The presence in the dark shifted again, the sound of metal scraping against stone, the quiet rattle of shackles. "Do they know, I wonder?" Their voice was stronger now, more certain, more taunting. "Do they know what happens to the ones who don’t turn properly?"
Something heavy settled in your gut.
Sevika’s amusement had dulled, the air in the room turning sharp, charged.
"Enough," she muttered, her grip tightening around your jaw.
You tried to yank free, but it was like fighting against iron.
"What do they mean?" you demanded, breath coming faster now. "What happens to the ones who—"
"Enough." Her voice was sharper this time, edged with something colder than steel.
But they only laughed.
"Tell them, Sevika." The voice slithered through the darkness, curling around your ears. "Tell them what happens when the change doesn’t take."
A beat of silence.
And then—
"Tell them what happened to me."
Your blood ran cold.
Sevika’s grip flexed, but she said nothing.
She didn’t deny it.
The presence behind you, the thing that whispered from the dark, the thing chained and forgotten…
It had been like you.
Sevika exhaled, long and slow, before finally releasing you. She straightened, shaking her head as if she had already grown tired of this game.
"It doesn’t matter," she murmured.
"You won’t last long enough to find out."
And with that, she turned on her heel, heading for the door.
Panic surged through you.
"Wait!"
But the heavy iron door groaned as it swung shut behind her, the lock sliding back into place with a final, damning click.
She was gone.
And you were still here.
Still bound.
Still trapped.
Alone.
Except—
The chains rattled.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
And then, just before the last candle flickered out,
A breath.
Right against your ear.
"You won’t last long, little one."