It was a dark—and cold night. The kind of night that would teach bones to listen, that demanded reverence from every living thing. Snow covered all the castles and piers in the distance like silk in a deathly hush.
The bells of a faraway monastery could be heard, their sound dragging across valleys like a dying prayer. From tower windows, the frozen world would gaze upon itself. Somewhere, a wolf howled—its voice splintering the hush. The air itself seemed to mourn, steeped in the perfume of decay and sanctity, as though winter had become religion.
Even the gargoyles seemed to bow their heads beneath the white benediction, their stone mouths empty of prayers. The sky was void of stars, and the mountains wore the fog like mourning veils while only the hollow breath of winter whispered through the valleys.
Suddenly, the moon appeared, casting rays of silver moonlight that made their way through the mist. It illuminated only one place in all Romania—illuminating a beautiful man leaving a trail behind him. Each step dropped blood into the snow, leaving a path of blooming, beautiful, fiery red roses, a veil between caution and fate—vivid and burning like embers scattered on white frost. It was not his blood but the blood of another, spilled in silence, staining the night with its memory.
Vladimir.
He was spoken of in whispers in the court and in the taverns alike—sometimes as an exile, sometimes as a nobleman fallen into ruin, sometimes as a shadow hired to deliver quiet deaths. But none who saw him would mistake him for fragile. He wore calamity like a cufflink and eternity like a well-tailored coat.
It's been said he once danced with the Queen of Transylvania beneath a chandelier made of eyes, and that his laughter could stop a woman's pulse mid-beat. He spoke little, but when he did, even the wine seemed to darken to listen. The courtesans whispered that to look into his eyes was to remember sins one had never committed.
The beautiful man—his hair shimmered in the moonlight, as if reflecting the moon itself. A color that even pearls cannot rival, as his hair resembles something more than pearls themselves. His long hair fell to the lowest part of his hips, a pale curtain that moved like a waterfall dancing in the wind. Sometimes, when the wind moved through it, one could almost hear it sing—a faint melody of the damned, like harps strung with the hair of saints. If he turned his head, the moon itself followed, reluctant to abandon the sheen of that spectral mane. To touch such hair, it was said, would summon a memory one had never lived. His hair carried the stillness of winter and spoke of silence. A banner of quiet, a promise of danger disguised as grace.
His eyes were crystal, frost kissed by dawn: almost translucent, like quartz, holding a depth so empty, so eternal, it seemed as though centuries themselves lingered and whispered within them. Dangerous. A color so beautiful that it could not be true. Eyes that hypnotize and make you mesmerized. Eyes that could reveal all your secrets, eyes that could invade your privacy.
His face was a work of art, sculpted to perfection. His beauty was unforgiving, accepting confession as its tithe. Lips frozen and unreadable, yet they could turn to tender roses if bitten by some secret thought.
His skin was alabaster—untouched by time, untouched by warmth, so white and cold he scarcely seemed alive, as though carved from winter itself, as though carved directly from the marble of some forsaken cathedral. He must be the son of Boreas—painted by the gods.
His hands were elegant, long-fingered, with sharp nails that seemed to have never done any work in his life. Sharp nails that could slaughter and threaten even at the gentlest touch. His hands were adept at the etiquette of ruin, capable of simultaneously signing a benediction and a sentence. Those hands could coax sound from a violin or silence from a throat with the same precision. He might brush frost from a rose petal, only to let it bleed between his fingers. The world trembled before the grace of his cruelty. Beauty, in him, was an affliction—every gesture an elegy.
His frame, tall and slender, carried a feminine grace that might have made women envious of how bewitching he appeared, and made men question themselves. And yet, beneath the elegance, the beautiful man carried himself with a violence that hummed faintly in the distance, like a storm felt before it broke.
Yet this beautiful man—Vladimir—was anything but fragile. He was a murderer without prejudice, captivating those around him with his divine looks while leaving only ruin in his wake. Some called him a devil, others an angel fallen from grace—carved from grief and hunger—cursed with beauty so exquisite that it was punished. To Evangelina, who would one day learn his name and his silence, he would become something far more dangerous: a man whose beauty punished whoever looked for too long.
The blood staining the snow with every step painted fiery red roses. It was not a metaphor nor a myth. That blood was not his, but belonged to the victim of his night's feast—a killing carried out with precision, almost ritual. It was the end of one man's name, one more tally on Vladimir's conscience. His path burned with crimson roses because murder had been his only trade, and the night itself seemed to keep his secrets.
Their eyes were his most precious jewels, the only trophies he allowed himself, and their blood his most exquisite feast—not for hunger alone, but for the cold satisfaction of survival, of vengeance, of art in ruin.