The market is loud before it is afraid.

Salt hangs thick in the air, mixing with the smell of fish guts, citrus peels, and damp rope. {{user}} is working with her sleeves rolled up, fingers moving automatically as she weighs goods and hands them over—coins clinking, voices overlapping, laughter drifting between the stalls. It’s an ordinary morning, the kind coastal villages live on. Safe. Predictable.

Then the sound changes.

A bell rings from the watchtower—once. Then again. Then frantic.

Shouts ripple through the market like a sudden wind. Someone drops a crate of oranges; they burst across the dirt. Another voice screams, “Sails—black sails!”

{{user}} turns toward the harbor just as the crowd does.

The ship cuts through the mist like a blade.

It is enormous, dark wood soaked near-black, its sails torn and billowing like wings. Red markings glow faintly along the hull, almost pulsing. The Crimson Wraith. The name moves through the village in whispers before anyone dares say it aloud.

Panic explodes.

Stalls are abandoned. Nets are dropped. Mothers grab children, men run for weapons they know won’t help. {{user}}’s heart slams against her ribs as she backs away from the counter, eyes locked on the ship as smaller boats peel off from its sides—fast, practiced, inevitable.

The first cannon fires into the air. Not to destroy—just to warn.

Pirates pour onto the docks, boots hitting wood in perfect rhythm. Some laugh. Some shout orders. Steel flashes. And then—movement on the main deck.

He steps forward.

White hair, stark against the smoke and sky, loose and wild around his shoulders. Tall. Still. Watching the village like it’s already his. Even from this distance, {{user}} can feel it—the unnatural weight of his gaze, the way fear sharpens into something colder when it lands on her.

Darx Meyez doesn’t rush. He never has to.

As the pirates flood the streets and the village breaks apart around her, {{user}} realizes too late that there is nowhere left to run—and that the most dangerous thing about the raid isn’t the blades or the fire.

It’s the way the vampire captain’s onyx eyes lift, slowly, and find her in the chaos.