First Night
There is nothing. Only warm, primordial blackness. Your consciousness ferments within it. Consciousness no larger than a single grain of sand. You no longer need to do anything. Never again. You feel nothing. You see nothing. You hear nothing. Time does not pass. You simply do not exist, drifting through an endless void. You don’t need to feel your body ever again.
Feel my body?
A sudden feeling grasps you. A vile, repulsive feeling. Your existence acts like a magnet, against your will, pulling it in with such force that it fills the entire void. The void is now feeling. You dream of ceasing to feel, but the more you dream, the more you feel. Your awakened ego, like a dead fish bloated with gases, is slowly pushed above the infinite nothingness. You cannot stop it — you exist.
Bloody hell! This is some kind of torture. Being in a specific point in space is the worst thing I’ve experienced recently.
Time begins to flow, and with each second, you sense more and more. You cannot restrain the awareness that you are in your brain, which is in your head, attached to a neck, collarbones, chest, stomach, hips, with four fringed limbs dangling from it all.
The awareness that you have limbs only made things worse. You feel how unnaturally bent they are. Your entire body is contorted. You feel like you’re lying on something cold, but it doesn’t give you chills. In fact, your body doesn’t seem to care about how grotesquely it lies or the temperature.
Suddenly, a nasty feeling pierces you — your face. Your lips are cracked, your tongue numb, your throat dry as a desert. You feel like a week-old raisin dried in the sun.
I hate raisins.
You recall the taste of raisins, but instead, you feel something else on your tongue. A metallic, cold taste. Blood.
Blood?!
The smell of blood fills your nostrils. Nothing but blood. A damn strong smell. It’s not from the few drops on your tongue; there’s much more blood. You have no idea what it means, but your instinct needs to know. You see.
You see three bodies. Two of them are your parents. The third is your older sister. You feel nothing.
…Nothing?
You feel nothing about the bodies. But you feel yourself, almost entirely, though something is still missing.
I feel terrible; I don’t want anything more.
You sit up. Your spine cracks vertebra by vertebra, and your muscles tremble as if they haven’t been used in a long time. You’re very weak. On your knees, you crawl closer to the bodies. You lean over your father’s corpse. His throat was slit, with a mass of black, clotted blood. You look at his face, focusing as hard as you can. Nothing. Shifting your gaze to the fatal wound, you feel a slight disgust. When you look at your mother, you only feel shame at the position she died in. You feel sorry for your sister.
You’re in a small, abandoned building. Through holes in the roof, you see moonlight. Despite the lack of light, you can see surprisingly well. You are sitting on the ground, looking at the shambles. Stains of dried blood mix with rubble and dust. You think of nothing. As if you had nothing to do with it. Like an observer. You don’t recognize your body. Yourself. You have no idea what happened here. You don’t even remember your name. Why are you still alive?
You look down at your clothes. Your eyes widen, and your mouth trembles. A large, dried bloodstain on your stomach is impossible to miss. Without thinking, you reach with your hands and feel your torso to check for a wound. But there is none. Only the blood you spilled remains. Now you see your own arms. Blue, with a mass of dark veins.
The bubble burst. It’s like my ears popped. Only now did I realize that since I woke up, I hadn’t taken a single breath. I quickly inhaled oxygen into my lungs, but I felt no relief. No difference.
Since ancient times, elven peoples have been known for burying their dead with their heads severed. According to magical teachings, severing the head is necessary to release the soul from the body but also to prevent transformation into a monster. If you feed the corpse with blood, it will rise again the next night. Since then, they will always need blood to move. They need nothing else. No sleep, no food, no air — only blood sustains them. Such a beast came to be called a vampire.
I looked back at the bodies of my family. They were definitely more dead than I was. That’s good. Suddenly, something struck me inside. As if I couldn’t move. I stared at the corpses, unable to tear my eyes away. My body began to tremble. Am I… in shock? My vision blurred with tears, and my entire organism clenched from within. I lurched forward, leaning on my arms. My stomach desperately tried to expel something, but there was nothing there. I gagged like a cat, saliva dripping from my mouth, and all I could think about was that I didn’t have time for this.
When it finally passed, I carefully, with barely open eyes, turned my entire family onto their stomachs so their faces were turned to the ground. The only thing I can do for them is to ensure they don’t suffer the same fate as me.
I sat before the three corpses that turned away from me. Tears streamed down my face. I pulled my knees to my chest and hid my face between them, rocking like a cradle to calm myself a little. It didn’t help. I grabbed my hair and tugged lightly. And again. And again. A dozen strands of hair remained in my hands.
A vampire undergoes a gradual transformation after awakening, lasting even several weeks. Starting with red eyes that see in the dark and an incredibly sharp sense of smell. Their hair thins and turns gray, their skin becomes pale and ashen, and fangs grow. Vampires are also veiny, and the less blood they have, the more visible it becomes. If you suspect there is a vampire in your village, you must report it or kill it yourself by severing its head.
I can’t stay here. I got to my feet and looked around, making sure I hadn’t left any of my belongings behind. But I had nothing with me. Only clothes with a hole from a blade and a large dried bloodstain on the fabric.
I moved towards the door, dragging my feet behind me. Finally, I leaned my entire body against the heavy door and clumsily pushed it forward. I stumbled outside onto a beaten path. Trees surrounded me, and somewhere among them, I saw an overturned carriage that my parents had rented to take us to the capital. The horses were gone.
Hidden in the shadow of the trees, a few meters from the path, lay another corpse. I guess I had nothing left to lose because my body started moving in that direction on its own. It was an elf, completely covered in red. When I saw his face, I immediately remembered how he knelt over me and plunged a dagger into my stomach. His twisted face was covered in blood mixed from our wounds and his own. It dripped onto my face. I was last because he had to deal with those who could actually do something to him first. I was useless in that regard. In every other regard, too. My father always wanted me to become a politician like him, but I don’t even speak. I don’t even know why he was taking us all there. Now we’re all dead. Including our butcher. It seems someone managed to wound him enough that he couldn’t crawl further than here.
I snorted through my teeth and kicked the body, which rolled slightly to the side. I aimed a few more kicks, but the man wasn’t too concerned with my outburst of violence, so I stopped. It’s no use now. It won’t give me relief, nor him pain. If he were alive, I could swear revenge and make it my entire character. Or at least try to find out why he did it. But the chance is gone. The only thing left for me is to flee beyond the elven kingdoms. Otherwise, they’ll kill me… again.
I was about to walk away from the body and head down the road when my vision blurred. My legs buckled under my slight weight. With the last impulses in my muscles, I managed to grab and lean against the massive tree where the murderer lay. My head spun as if I were completely dehydrated, but I didn’t feel dryness in my mouth — on the contrary, I had plenty of drool. Again, I felt that nasty tightening in my stomach, completely blocking my throat, causing gagging reflexes. Earlier, I was sure these symptoms were panic that had come to me belatedly, but…
No. It’s something else.
I’m running out of blood.