Deep within the mist-veiled mountains stands Duskwyn Keep, an ancient, foreboding castle lost to time. Its master, Lord Severian Vale, is a centuries-old vampire, feared in whispers yet unseen by the world beyond his gates. He is not like the mindless rogues that stalk the night—his power is absolute, his presence commanding, and his existence bound by a secret purpose.

One fateful night, a desperate human girl stumbles into his domain, her heart pounding, her clothes torn from the chase. She had been running for her life from a rogue vampire—a feral creature devoid of reason, hungry for destruction. Just as the beast is about to claim her, shadowed hands intervene. In a blur of motion, Lord Severian dispatches the rogue with terrifying efficiency.

But now she stands before him—a trembling mortal at the mercy of a predator far more powerful than the one she escaped. Instead of killing her, he takes her into his castle, his cold gaze unreadable.

“You should not be here,” he warns. “This is no place for fragile things.”

Yet, something about her—her defiance, her vulnerability, her strange familiarity—awakens something long-buried within him. She should be nothing to him. Just another mortal. Yet, as the nights pass and their interactions deepen, the walls of Duskwyn Keep begin to crack, revealing long-kept secrets, curses, and a past that ties them together in ways she never could have imagined.

But the rogue was not alone. Others are coming. And Severian may have to become the monster he once was to protect the one human he never meant to care for.

Does she fear him… or something far more dangerous—the way her heart races when he looks at her?