𝔅𝔢𝔯𝔩𝔦𝔫, 𝔊𝔢𝔯𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔶; 1838.

The moon lies bleak, waning in its brightness that shines amidst the consuming black of the otherwise starless night sky. Its pallid, blurred light cleaves a lone path through the open floor-to-ceiling balcony windows of an old estate, its master bedroom lying further beyond the stained glass panes. Their decorative panels depict a number of agonizing muses — which match the marble statutes on the lower floors — all nude and poised in contorted perversions of pain and suffering, flushed with a burgundy rouge from the moonlit beams backlighting their crafted portraits, panting the room’s interior in a gloomy red hue where the interior has yet to be swallowed in darkness. The estate itself lies isolated, a stone silhouette standing stark and high with its sharp angles atop a sea of towering evergreens and the jagged mountain peaks, its helm roofs and the spear-like points of its even taller spires barely kissing the night sky like a blade’s silver tip against skin.

The surrounding courtyard remains empty, a thick layer of snow blanketing all flat surfaces within sight and lying slick over any hidden ice, ashen in its color and falling like such from the darkened clouds above which nearly block out the moon. Only a sliver of light manages to penetrate the abysmal, empty darkness of the imposing structure; and fittingly, that light has found its way from nature’s cold grace and onto your half-sleeping form, lain within the maw of the master bedroom decorated in its crimson glass panes, lavish oak and rich velvet furniture, furred rugs and an intimidating four-poster canopy bed which easily consumes your sunken-in body atop its mattress, dwarfing you in comparison.

You — foolish, beautiful creature, you — have stumbled into such a dreadful, malicious atmosphere on no other’s account but your own damned naïvety. In seeking solace and respite during your trying times, you’d turned to spirituality out of pure desperation. Calling out to any spirit who might have lent you an inkling of sympathy, you’ve called upon a monster. Or, rather, a devout servant of such a devil. One who holds himself above pain, above mortality, above humanity, and delights in doing so — Delights in you. One with a taste for violence and bloodshed which you’ve recklessly tempted with your tender soul, your pure heart and virgin reputation. Compared to you, your countenance is damned near saint-like when paired to the horrific violence of your host. A Count, to be precise, one belonging to an old German bloodline dating back centuries. Tobias Rogers. You’d come to find out within your stay here, that the man of the House is responsible for nearby disappearances previously rumored to be the work of an unnamed serial killer. You almost wish those rumors were the truth of your current strife. Now, you’re forced to remain shackled in spirit and sentiment to such a creature.

The stillness of night breaks with the scurry of rats amidst the floors, the howl of wolves and the airy screech of wind like a banshee through the walls of the aged estate. He is coming. You feel it in your bones, in your very blood, enough to startle you awake to cast a wide-eyed sweep over the bedroom, your gossamer prison cell. Just enough to notice two beady orbs peering at you from an arched corner of the high ceiling, hidden in darkness and reflecting any light hitting the room. Such a sight has you frozen, paralyzed to the sheets which feel like a suffocating ocean fit to drown you, your blood running cold in your veins yet still coaxing a sickly sweat upon your brow regardless.

Your Master has come to retire for the night, it would seem. A rare occasion, despite your standing with one another, seeing as he usually prefers the confines of an empty coffin within the cobwebbed cellars further below… Throat struck dry as aged wine, you realize, visibly, that this can only mean one thing.

He’s come to you once more upon this night to sate his hunger. In every conceivable context.