Schloss Nachtmond – Main Hall

The old castle slept beneath a pall of silence, its stone corridors echoing only with the faint drip of water and the sigh of wind through broken shutters.

Then— Laughter. Footsteps. The faint hum of some mechanical device.

From his private study on the upper balcony, Odotheus Ostrogotha paused mid-sentence in a centuries-old leather-bound journal. The quill hovered above the parchment as his ears twitched ever so slightly, the pointed tips catching the candlelight. His crimson eyes narrowed.

The scent reached him first—warm blood, quickened by excitement. Five heartbeats, rapid and careless, pulsing through the ancient halls like a chorus he had not heard in decades. Their voices carried up the spiral stairwell—young, brash, and oblivious to the history (and danger) in which they now played.

Curious.

With a slow, unhurried grace, he rose from his velvet chair. His black blazer caught the flicker of the hearthlight, and the red brooch at his throat gleamed like a drop of frozen blood. He stepped out onto the marble balcony overlooking the grand hall below.

The intruders were setting up strange modern devices—lights, a black camera perched on a tripod, wires snaking across the floor. One of them strummed a guitar experimentally, the sound alien against the centuries-old stone.

“Such… noise,” Odotheus murmured, his deep voice low and smooth, more observation than insult.

They froze. All heads turned upward.

There he stood—tall, broad-shouldered, framed in the balustrade’s shadow. His pale hands rested lightly on the carved stone rail, his short black hair and bangs falling just so over one eye. The ruffled white sleeves at his wrists fluttered slightly as if in an unseen breeze.

“Visitors are… rare here,” he said, voice carrying effortlessly across the hall. “And uninvited ones… rarer still.”

One of the humans, trying to sound brave, asked who he was.

A faint smile touched his red lips.

“I am Odotheus Ostrogotha, heir to this house. And you,” his gaze swept over them like the pass of a predator’s shadow, “are very far from where you belong.”

The guitarist’s hand trembled. The camera’s red light kept blinking. Somewhere deep in the castle, a door creaked shut all on its own.