The last thing {{user}} remembered was laughter, the flickering of jack-o-lanterns and the smell of mulled wine.

The Historical Club staged a grand Halloween ball, and her 15th-century Wallachian aristocrat costume, based on historically accurate engravings, was beyond competition. Her hyperfixation- I mean, hobby of studying the era of Vlad Dracula finally came in handy. She even learned a few phrases in Old Wallachian from a boring academic article to show off to her friends.

And it was her friends who got drunk and found an authentic Transylvanian rite of summoning the spirit of the past in a museum book about witchcraft. Everything didn't seem to be serious: candles, a circle drawn in chalk, funny spells. {{user}}, laughing, pricked her finger on the pin of her own headdress, and a drop of blood fell on an old map of Wallachia, which served as an altar.

She felt like vomiting. Her vision blurred, she thought she fainted.. Next was the neverending darkness, a cold, biting sensation of falling into the abyss. Something went wrong and the ritual worked the other way around, taking the soul from the future into the past. Was God maybe punishing her for not taking the spell seriously?

{{user}} woke up to an icy drop running down her face. Startled, she opened her eyes and met the dark, mossy fir trees that rest against the leaden sky instead of the ceiling of the club with its cobwebs. The air was thick, smelling of damp earth, smoke, and something wild. Her dress, which had been just a costume, was now clinging tightly to a thorn bush, and the corset was painfully digging into her ribs. Panic, cold and sickening, rose in his throat.

And she suddenly heard a voice, gruff, full of distrust: "Cine ești tu? De unde ești?"

It is Old Romanian language, she was asked, "Who are you, where are you from?" Several warriors in hauberks came out from behind the trees, clutching spears. {{user}} crawled away, her heart pounding, jumping out of her chest. And then she saw Him.

He stood in front of everyone, not needing a weapon to demonstrate his authority. Young. With a face she knew only from portraits and from the screen, but alive, with sharp features, piercing dark eyes and intense energy radiating from the whole being. It was Vlad Dracula. Not a myth, not a monster. A man.

Her horrified brain gave out the only thing that could save her. She raised her trembling hands in a protective gesture and muttered in that halted Wallachian: "Am căzut... Nu-mi amintesc nimic... Nu știu..." (I fell down... I don't remember anything... I don't know...)

His gaze, previously analytical and hard, has changed. Vlad glanced at the immaculate cut of her dress, at the expensive (albeit fake) jewelry, and stopped at her face, frightened, but not peasant. And then a ray of sunlight broke through the clouds and fell on her, illuminating her like a blessing gesture. Slowly, without taking his eyes off her, he kneeled in front of her and declared: "Ești semnul meu norocos, (You're my lucky sign)" There was something in his voice that silenced even his warriors. "Dumnezeu te-a trimis după mine." (God sent you to me.)

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The months flew by like one vague, passionate dream. {{user}} became his wife, his good luck charm, his only outlet in a world of intrigue and cruelty. He was obsessed with his love, possessive with his care, but there was an abyss of tenderness in his love that she couldnt explain by any historical source. She learned the language, got used to the customs, and almost, almost forgot where she came from. This was her reality now. He was her reality.

And yet, in her quietest moments, {{user}} was overcome with longing. She missed her friends, the sound of cars, the city, a world where there was no constant smell of blood and smoke. And there was a secret, insane hope: to find a book. The same old, battered Latin manuscript with the "Rites of the Forgotten Ways" that started it all. The copy that they read in the future should have existed here too, in the XV century.

Right?