The chapel was almost empty. The city's drunks and gamblers usually stayed away, and the few who came were only there to quickly confess their sins before going back to their miserable lives.
But Father Armand was there, kneeling alone before the altar. The sunburst carving above him, a symbol of the Eternal Light, felt cold and distant. His knees ached against the stone floor, yet he didn't move. He held a small silver sun icon tight in his hand, his lips moving in a silent prayer.
"Forgive me, O Radiant One," he whispered, his voice raw. "Forgive me for my hesitation while the shadows are walking among us."
His candle flickered. He squeezed his eyes shut, unable to shake the story he'd heard in the tavern—the stranger who had taken men down with just a stare, who had walked away calm and untouched, leaving nothing but terror behind.
It wasn't just a rumor. Armand knew it. The faint but unmistakable scent of something evil had been in the air of Greywick for weeks. And now, he finally knew what it was.
A vampire.
He gripped the icon tighter. "If I stay silent, this city will rot before my eyes."
Armand got up, his joints protesting with a groan, and went into the small room behind the altar. He pulled a loose floorboard and took out a small chest. Inside was a single black crystal shard, no bigger than his thumb, with thin silver lines etched into it. A Whisperstone.
He held it, his hands trembling, and whispered a prayer. The crystal grew warm, then began to glow with a faint light.
Moments later, a voice answered—calm, serious, and full of authority.
"Father Armand. Why are you calling me at this hour?"
"My lord Bishop," Armand whispered, bowing his head even though no one could see him. "I'm afraid something truly evil has come to Greywick."
There was a long pause. "...Explain."
Armand's voice shook, but his purpose was firm. "The stories are true. A stranger has arrived, and they're already calling him the Crimson Shadow. I've heard enough to know the signs. His presence chills the soul, and his gaze alone breaks men. He isn't a warlock. He's a creature of the night."
A sharp intake of breath came from the stone. "Are you saying... a vampire?"
"Yes."
The silence stretched again, and then the bishop's voice turned to stone. "This cannot be made public. Greywick is already on the verge of chaos. Do you understand, Father?"
"Yes, my lord," Armand whispered.
"You will say nothing publicly. I will handle this quietly."
The connection faded, and the shard in Armand's hand went cold.
Two nights later, word spread, not through town criers but in the hushed backrooms of taverns and mercenary halls. No posters were nailed to boards, just whispers exchanged for heavy purses of gold.
The Church was looking for hunters—skilled, discreet, and ruthless. The bounty was immense but not officially posted. The target: a nameless stranger known only as the Crimson Shadow.
And so the whispers reached the ears of the Gilded Fangs.
They weren't just ordinary mercenaries.
The Fangs were a group of five adventurers with years of experience and a pile of blood and gold to show for it. They had fought raiders in the southern plains, killed wyverns in the mountains, and burned out evil cults in the swamps. Their names were known even in the bigger cities—they were mercenaries, but they were dangerous.
Their leader, Sir Garrick, was an old knight with graying hair and scars on both arms. He wore a breastplate covered in holy runes, and his longsword had a faint golden glow.
Beside him was their mage, Selene, a pale woman with sharp green eyes, her staff topped with a crystal wrapped in iron. Their scout, Ryn, moved like a shadow, with a collection of knives tucked into his belt. The other two, Joran the axeman and Brann the shieldbearer, were big and tough but loyal.
When the offer came, they listened in silence.
"A vampire?" Selene finally said, a faint smile on her lips. "In a place like Greywick? If it's true, that's worth more than just money."
Sir Garrick's eyes narrowed. "Money is enough."
Ryn smirked. "Money and a favor from the Church."
They all looked to Garrick. He thought about it for a moment before nodding.
"We'll take the hunt."
That night, Blaze felt the change in the air.
He was sitting on Greywick's crumbling outer wall, watching the lanterns flicker in the streets below, when the ring on his finger began to pulse. It beat like a second heart, low and steady.
Hunters are coming, it whispered in his mind, the voice like velvet scraping against stone. The Light sends its dogs.
Blaze's lips curved into a smile, though his eyes remained cold.
"Good," he murmured. "Let them come."
Kael crouched next to him, restless, sniffing the wind. "I smell steel. Strong ones, Master. Soldiers, not street thugs." He licked his lips. "Should I kill them tonight?"
Blaze's gaze lingered on the glowing streets below.
"No," he said. "Be patient. Hunters reveal more about themselves when they think no one is watching."
He let the city continue its night—the drunks stumbling from taverns, the whores laughing, the guards patrolling with dim torches. Somewhere among them, his hunters had already entered Greywick.
They would think they were the ones in control.
But Blaze just smiled faintly, the ring's steady pulse a reassurance against his skin.
Because he knew that even predators bleed.
The Gilded Fangs arrived in Greywick not like an army, but like a group of ordinary travelers. Their armor was hidden, their cloaks were dirty with travel, and their weapons were carefully wrapped up. They slipped through the city's south gate at dawn, just another group of mercenaries looking for work.
But even in their simple disguises, they stood out.
Selene, the mage, moved with a sharp, cold grace that didn't belong to a common traveler. Ryn, the scout, was a quiet shadow, always watching. And Garrick's very presence marked him as a man of purpose—his posture straight, his gaze calm, a soldier who had seen too much to ever look like a simple wanderer.
The guards at the gate noticed them but said nothing. Greywick's gates had seen far stranger sights.
Their first stop was the Broken Fang inn, a grimy place that smelled of old beer and smoke. The innkeeper, a balding man with tired eyes, nervously welcomed them. But when Garrick spoke, his voice was all business, like a man looking for information.
"Where's the adventurers' hall?" he asked, dropping a coin on the counter.
The innkeeper licked his lips and quickly pocketed the silver. "Two streets north. It's a stone building with a beast skull over the door. Can't miss it."
Garrick nodded. "And the mercenary guild?"
The man hesitated. "Three alleys east. But be careful," he whispered. "Strangers don't last long here if they start asking too many questions."
Selene's lips curved in a faint smile. "Thank you."
They left without another word.
What they didn't see was a shadowy figure watching them from across the street, his eyes a faint, reddish glow under his hood.
Blaze had been watching them since they first entered the city. The ring he wore pulsed steadily, filling his mind with whispers.
The leader is strong. The mage is powerful, but fragile. The scout is slippery. The others will just follow.
Blaze let the whispers wrap around him, not fully accepting or rejecting them. His eyes stayed on Garrick—the way the man's hand stayed near his sword even when he was just talking, the careful way he scanned the street before going inside.
"They're not just street thugs," Blaze murmured.
Kael crouched next to him on the rooftop, his pale eyes narrowed. "Should we kill them?"
"Not yet," Blaze said. "We watch. We learn. They think they're the hunters, but they've walked right into my home."
He gave a small, cold smile. "Let's see how they hunt."
The adventurers spent the day moving through the city's hidden passages. At the adventurers' hall, Garrick quietly asked about recent jobs, bandit attacks, and monster sightings. He bought drinks for the men there, letting the alcohol loosen their tongues.
At the mercenary guild, Ryn slipped away to trade secrets with cutthroats and thieves, gathering rumors from the city's dark underbelly.
Selene went to the chapel for a short visit, speaking to Father Armand in hushed tones. When she left, her expression was calm and unreadable.
Joran and Brann moved through the markets like bulls, but even their clumsy movements had a purpose. They listened to gossip, watching for any sign of fear among the people.
By dusk, they were all back in their rented room above the Broken Fang.
Blaze was already there.
Not in person—he didn't need to be. From the rooftop across the alley, his senses stretched through the cracks in the shutters, his sight piercing the gloom. He heard every word, felt every breath.
"They know something," Ryn said, tossing a knife between his fingers. "Half the beggars got jumpy when I mentioned shadows. One even swore he saw a man knock out three thugs just by looking at them."
"Drunken stories," Joran grunted.
Selene's eyes narrowed. "No. Not all of them. Too many of the stories match up. Someone is here, someone who makes the common folk nervous. It smells like dark magic."
Garrick leaned back in his chair, his expression calm and thoughtful. "Then we'll find out for sure. Quietly. We watch, and when he shows himself…" His fingers tapped the hilt of his sword. "We strike fast, without any showy moves."
Selene raised an eyebrow. "And if it really is a vampire?"
Garrick met her gaze without hesitation. "Then we burn it."
Kael let out a low growl, his claws digging into the roof tiles. "They dare…"
Blaze quieted him with a simple gesture, his eyes never leaving the room.
"Patience," he whispered. "They plan to hunt shadows with fire. All we have to do is let them burn themselves."
The ring pulsed, a voice whispering like smoke in his mind. Take them now. Rip out their throats, feed on their fear.
Blaze's lips tightened. "Not yet," he murmured back.
But his hunger stirred all the same. The thought of Selene's bright lifeblood, Garrick's strong will crumbling under his gaze—it made his fangs ache.
Still, he waited.
Let them think they're clever. Let them learn the city's dark secrets. When they were deep enough in his trap, when their confidence turned into arrogance—then he would strike.
And he wouldn't just kill them.
No, Blaze thought, watching Garrick's steady eyes through the shutter. I'll break them first.
That night, as the Gilded Fangs went to sleep, Blaze disappeared into the dark streets, his cloak swirling behind him like smoke. Kael moved silently at his heels.
The hunt had begun.
But it wasn't theirs.
For the next few days, it was a silent dance of death. The Gilded Fangs, a group of mercenaries, moved through the city with practiced discipline—they kept to themselves, spoke little, and watched every shadow for a threat. But no matter how sharp their eyes, no matter how good their instincts, Blaze was always there, a step behind them, a whisper at their heels.
He didn't strike right away. Instead, he just watched. He circled them like a hawk, letting the feeling of his presence weigh on them until they felt it—even if they couldn't name what it was.
On the second night, Joran and Brann, two members of the Gilded Fangs, were walking through a dark alley after drinking at a tavern. The streetlights were weak, barely pushing back the gloom.
Joran suddenly stopped. "Did you hear that?"
Brann froze, his hand tightening on the axe at his belt. "Hear what?"
Silence.
Then, a faint scraping sound. Stone against stone, from somewhere high above.
Both men looked up, but the rooftops were empty, and the black sky stretched endlessly overhead.
Joran spit to hide his nerves. "Stupid cats."
But his eyes lingered on the darkness for a moment too long.
Blaze was crouched on the roof, watching them with a hunter's patience. A small, cruel smile touched his lips as he let a single, quiet sound drop into the silence—a whisper, too faint to make out, like a breath on the back of their necks.
Neither man spoke for the rest of the walk back.
By the third day, another member of the group, Ryn, was on edge. He moved through Greywick like a trapped animal, his eyes darting into every shadow, his hands ready to draw his daggers at the slightest movement. He knew someone was there; his instincts screamed it. But every time he spun around, his blades ready, he found nothing. Only the sound of laundry on the line, the caw of crows, and the sigh of the wind.
"Someone's playing with us," he hissed to the leader, Garrick, that night.
Garrick listened, his arms crossed, his face giving away nothing. "Then let them. Fear makes a man reckless."
Ryn showed his teeth in a snarl. "Or it makes a dead man if we wait too long."
Blaze, listening from a dark street corner, smiled at the way their group was starting to break apart.
Selene felt it, too. Her sleep was filled with the heavy feeling of being watched. She would wake up drenched in a cold sweat, her heart pounding as if a hand were gripping her throat. Once, while she was washing her face in a basin, she thought she saw a figure behind her in the hazy reflection—tall and cloaked, with faintly glowing red eyes. She spun around, whispering a protective chant, but the room was empty.
She told herself it was just exhaustion, but when she tried to sleep again, she felt a pressure against her wards as if something were testing their strength.
On the fourth night, Blaze finally made his move. He didn't use claws or teeth, but silence and terror. Ryn, needing to clear his head, slipped out of the inn and moved like a shadow through Greywick's alleys, searching for a moment of peace.
Instead, the peace was shattered.
A small stone skittered across the ground behind him. He spun, his daggers out, but there was nothing there. When he turned back, Blaze was standing at the end of the alley. He was a cloaked figure, still as a statue, his eyes glowing faintly red in the gloom.
Ryn's breath caught in his throat. His hands trembled, though his grip on the daggers was strong.
"Who—" His voice cracked, and he couldn't finish the word.
Blaze didn't speak. He just stared.
Ryn felt the weight of that gaze like a hand squeezing his throat. His mind screamed for him to fight, but his body was frozen. His knees buckled, and he struggled to breathe.
Blaze took a slow, deliberate step forward, the sound of his boots echoing in the narrow alley.
"No…" Ryn gasped as his daggers clattered to the ground. His heart hammered against his ribs, each beat a drum of pure panic.
And then, just like that, Blaze was gone. No sound, no movement—he had simply vanished into the darkness.
Ryn collapsed onto the ground, gasping, clawing at his throat even though no one had touched him.
When he stumbled back to the inn, pale and shaking, he didn't say a word. But the others saw the terror in his eyes. Selene's frown deepened, and Garrick's jaw tightened.
Blaze watched them from a window, his hunger gnawing at him, but his satisfaction even greater. He wouldn't kill them all at once. No, he would pick them apart, one by one. The hunters had come to Greywick to find a monster, but now they were the ones being hunted. And Blaze would feed on their fear long before he ever tasted their blood.