The Saint and the Failed Hunter
Williams Michael—known by everyone as Max—is the weakest hunter in the guild. He can’t fight, can’t hunt, and can’t even kill a chicken on his own. Mocked and laughed at, he survives by doing petty jobs: gathering herbs, escorting villagers, and running errands. The only reason he endures the humiliation is to care for his sick mother—and the quiet love he still holds for Victoria, his childhood friend who has become a revered holy saint living within the church.
When Max desperately asks for a higher-paying job to save his dying mother, the guild gives him what seems like a miracle: a safe, well-paid mission as a manastone harvester. Unaware of the truth, Max walks willingly into a lie. He is used as bait in a failed attempt to hunt a high-level vampire. The mission ends in massacre. The hunters die. Max is left unconscious among corpses—and reborn through a forbidden, incomplete soul exchange that turns him into something no longer human.
Declared dead by the world, Max awakens one week later to loss beyond measure: his mother gone, his name erased, and his body cursed with vampiric instincts he struggles to control. Though sunlight no longer kills him, it rejects him. Hunger stalks him. Fear follows him. And the church begins to sense a dark presence growing closer each day. Yet when Max reunites with Victoria, love still remains—fragile, forbidden, and dangerous. She feels something is wrong… but chooses to believe in the boy she loved.
As fate, faith, and blood collide, Max must hide what he has become while deciding whether he will live as a monster, defy the church that binds the woman he loves, or sacrifice everything to protect her.
Because sometimes, the cruelest curse is not becoming a monster—
but loving someone you can never stand beside.
