Part I: The Night of the Red Moon
Barrow’s Hollow clung to the edge of the world, or so it seemed. Encircled by black woods and the winding Aelthorn River, it crouched just beyond the gaze of the castle town like a loyal, half-forgotten servant. A hundred souls called it home—farmers, herders, craftsmen—and though their hands were rough and their backs bent from labor, they were content. Their fields bore fruit. Their livestock thrived. Trade wagons rolled weekly to the gates of the stone-walled town, returning with salt, iron tools, and the rare barrel of sweet wine.
But as autumn deepened and the leaves turned brittle and red, something else came down from the hills.
It began with unease.
Cows lowed restlessly at night, staring toward the treeline, refusing to eat. Dogs barked and whimpered, pawing at door frames. Then came the disappearances—animals vanishing without a trace, not a hoofprint in the soft dirt, not a snapped fence post.
The first corpse appeared on a moonless morning.
Old Marna, the shepherd’s wife, found it: a heifer laid open like an offering. Its chest cavity was hollow, ribs split like peeled fruit. The head had been twisted completely backward. No bite marks, no claw wounds. Just absence—something taken with surgical cruelty.
Panic festered like rot beneath the skin of the village.
The priest they summoned from the castle town was young and afraid. He held his crucifix like a shield, muttered Latin with trembling lips, then rode away before dusk. He never returned.
Then came the red moon.
It rose like a wound, swollen and unnatural, casting the village in crimson light. The fields shimmered wet and wrong beneath it, shadows stretched thin and sharp.
The Rowans—ten in all—sat around their hearth, uneasy, yet unaware their home would soon become a tomb. The children played half-heartedly. Elias, barely twelve, chased his friend Mira through the hall, laughter caught in his throat like a cough. They hid, they giggled. The scent of stew clung to the air, masking the distant iron tang of blood.
Then—a scream.
High. Female. Cut off too soon.
Then another.
And another.
A chorus of death began outside, sudden and staggering.
The Rowans froze. Father Rowan stood, face pale as ash, grabbing the fire poker. The mother pulled the youngest child close, whispering prayers.
Elias’s heart thundered.
Mira pulled at his sleeve. “Hide,” she mouthed.
They scrambled to the cellar hatch beneath the rug, hands fumbling at the latch. The trapdoor groaned as it opened, revealing the darkness below. They climbed down, pulling the door shut just as the front door creaked open above them.
Click.
The latch.
Someone... something had come inside.
The children pressed into the cold dirt, breath held.
Above them, footsteps—deliberate, slow. Not stomping. Not searching. Just... walking. A hunter already certain of his kill.
Then a voice.
Low. Velvet-smooth. Measured.
“Such tender little hearts... I can hear you.”
Elias clenched his jaw, hand over Mira’s mouth to silence her whimper.
“I smelled your fear before I even stepped through the door,” the voice continued, almost amused. “So sweet. So... fragile.”
A soft sigh. The sound of a chair scraping back.
Then—violence.
Not the screaming, flailing kind.
The calculated brutality of something ancient and bored.
Bones snapped like dry wood. Limbs were torn, not cut. A body thudded against the floorboards above them, the impact shaking dust loose into Elias’s mouth. A baby cried out once—then silence, and the sound of something wet splattering the wall.
Then... the first drip.
Plink.
A warm droplet landed on Elias’s forehead.
Plink. Plink.
Another. And another.
He didn’t move. He didn’t dare.
Mira had gone silent. Her entire body trembled, her nails digging into Elias’s arm like claws. Above them, the massacre continued, each kill punctuated by a sickening squelch or crack, followed by... laughter.
Not mad. Not shrieking.
Refined. Enjoying.
A chuckle that rolled through the wood like perfume.
Then—thud.
A head, severed, landed directly above them, blood pouring through the cracks in ribbons now. It soaked Mira’s hair. It filled Elias’s mouth when he gasped.
The vampire walked to the hatch.
They heard his fingers brushing across the wood.
Tap... tap... tap.
“You’ll remember this,” he whispered. “That’s what makes you different from animals. You remember.”
Then... silence.
He didn’t open the hatch. He didn’t need to.
He had made his point.
Footsteps retreated. The door creaked open again. Then came the howls of the others, the feral ones—chittering, clawing, shrieking into the woods.
The house was silent.
Elias didn't speak. He didn’t cry. He simply lay there, soaked in blood not his own, listening to the last drop fall.
And the laughter lingered. Always, it lingered.
