From the Private Journals of Dragomir
Entry: The Ascent (1563-1610)
**
1563 - The Pharmacy
I cannot live on animal blood forever. It sustains but does not strengthen. I feel myself thinning with each decade, like soup left too long on the fire. Something must change.
The village has a healer. Old Marta, who knows herbs but little else. She sells tinctures for fever, poultices for wounds. Her medicines work slowly, if at all. The villagers suffer needlessly.
One night, I visit her. Not to feed—she is too old, too noticeable—but to talk. I offer my services. I know herbs, I tell her. My mother taught me. This is true. The memory of her cooking is still the clearest thing I own.
Marta is suspicious but tired. She lets me help.
I begin by adding a single drop of my blood to her strongest tinctures. The difference is immediate. Fevers break in hours instead of days. Wounds close overnight. The villagers notice. They start asking for the foreign healer by name.
Within a year, Marta works for me.
**
1567 - The Merchant
Word spreads. Villages beyond ours send their sick. Then towns. Then a city.
I cannot be everywhere, so I train others. I teach them which herbs to mix, which words to say. I give them small vials of my blood—diluted, measured, precious—to add to their medicines. They think it is a secret ingredient, a family recipe. They do not ask where it comes from.
The money flows. I buy land. I buy buildings.
The local apothecaries try to ruin me. They spread rumors: the foreigner is a witch, a devil, a fraud. Their customers ignore them. The proof is in the healing. One by one, my rivals come to me. They cannot beat me, so they join me.
I let them. I am generous. I pay well. Loyalty bought is still loyalty.
**
1572 - The First Judge
He comes to me in secret, wrapped in a cloak, his face hidden. A judge from the regional court. He is dying—growth in his gut, the physicians say. Months left at most.
"I heard what your medicine did for the mayor's wife," he whispers. "She was given last rites. Now she dances at weddings. I want the same."
I give him the strongest dose I have ever offered a human. Pure blood, undiluted, mixed with honey to hide the taste. He drinks it in my back room, hands trembling.
Within a week, he is healed. Within a month, he is mine.
He sends me patients from the courts. Wealthy men. Powerful men. Men who can pay in gold, in land, in favors. He also sends me something else: prisoners.I tell him they are to experiment the effect of my medicine on , I lied.
Men on their way to the gallows. Murderers. Rapists. Thieves who have stolen too much from the wrong people. He arranges for them to spend their last night in my custody. "For confession," he tells the guards. "The foreign healer is very devout."
I am not devout. I am hungry.
The first criminal I take in years tastes like fire and memory. I drain him completely—something I have not done since the old days—and for the first time in centuries, I feel strong. My senses sharpen. My thoughts clear. The animal fog that has clouded my mind for generations lifts.
I weep afterward. Not for the man. For myself. For all the years I suffered when I did not have to.
**
1584 - The Duke
He is young, barely thirty, but his blood is poisoned. Some sickness in the marrow. His physicians have tried everything. He comes to me as a last resort, carried on a litter, too weak to stand.
I heal him. It takes three doses over two weeks, more blood than I have given any living human. But he walks out of my house on his own feet, color in his cheeks, fire in his eyes.
He asks what I want as payment.
"I want nothing," I say. "Only your friendship."
He laughs. "You have it. Whatever you need, name it."
I name it slowly, over years. Protection. Contracts. Access to the prisons. A blind eye when my wagons move at night. He gives me everything, grateful, loyal, useful.
He also introduces me to his peers.
**
1591 - The Circle
By now, my network spans three kingdoms. I have judges in every major city. I have merchants who carry my medicines across borders. I have priests who bless my work from the pulpit. I have a duke, two counts, and a baron who owe me their lives.
They do not know what I am. They think I am a healer, a genius, a holy man blessed by God. They bring me their sick, their dying, their beloved. I heal them all. I ask for little in return. Their gratitude is enough.
But gratitude fades. Loyalty requires maintenance.
I begin inviting the most powerful to private dinners. Small gatherings. Intimate. I serve fine food, finer wine. We talk of politics, of war, of the future. They trust me. They confide in me. They think I am one of them.
They are wrong. I am something older. Something that owns them.
**
1603 - The Revelation
I choose the duke first. He is my oldest human ally, the one who owes me most. I invite him to my home after dark, dismiss the servants, and tell him the truth.
He does not believe me at first. Then I show him. My teeth. My speed. The way I can stop my heart on command. He watches, pale and trembling, and does not run.
"You could have killed me a hundred times," he whispers.
"Yes."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because you are more useful alive. And because I am tired of hiding."
I explain it to him simply. My blood heals because of what I am. The more human blood I drink, the stronger I become—and the stronger my blood becomes. The medicine that saved his life, that saves all their lives, depends on me being fed.
He understands before I finish speaking. He is a politician. He knows how the world works.
"You need prisoners," he says.
"I need what we had before. The old pact. Criminals. Outcasts. The condemned. Give me these, and I will give you medicine that makes kings jealous."
He thinks for a long moment. Then he nods.
"I will arrange it."
**
1605 - The Revival
The pact returns quietly. No treaties, no ceremonies. Just a flow of bodies in the night.
Murderers from the duke's prisons. Thieves from the count's dungeons. Traitors from the king's own cells, men who would be drawn and quartered anyway. They come to me in chains, and they do not leave.
I feed well for the first time in five hundred years.
My blood grows stronger. My medicines grow stronger. The demand grows stronger. Kings who once forgot us now remember. They do not know they are drinking vampire blood, but they know it works. They pay fortunes for it. They send their enemies to die for it.
I am careful. I take only what I need. I never feed on the innocent—not because I have morals left, but because I have rules. Rules keep me safe. Rules keep me fed.
The circle expands. More judges. More nobles. A cardinal. A king's advisor. They all know the truth now, or pieces of it. They all benefit. They all protect me.
I am no longer a survivor hiding in a village. I am a power behind thrones.
**
1610 - The Feast
Tonight, I host the inner circle. Twelve men who control the fate of nations. They sit at my table, eat my food, drink my wine. They do not know that the wine contains my blood—diluted, yes, but potent. It keeps them healthy. It keeps them loyal. It keeps them coming back.
After dinner, I take them to the cellar.
A man waits there, chained to the wall. A murderer. Tomorrow he would hang. Tonight, he is mine.
They watch me feed. Some turn away. Some cannot look. One watches with fascination, eyes bright, lips parted. He will be useful.
When I am done, I turn to them.
"This is what keeps you alive," I say. "This is what makes your medicines work. This man would have died anyway. Instead, he gives life to kings. Remember that when you sleep tonight."
They remember.
They always remember.
**
I am not what I was. I am not the frightened boy who drank animal blood in the forest. I am not the grieving survivor who watched his race burn. I am something new. Something patient. Something hungry.
The world thinks vampires are gone. Extinct. A memory.
Let them think it.
I am here. I am growing. I am waiting.
And one day, when they have forgotten again, when they are weak again, when they need me again—I will remind them what it means to make a pact with monsters.
I will remind them that monsters remember.