The wind whispered through the crumbling bones of old Vienna, stirring leaves like echoes of a time long buried. Streetlamps flickered against a sepia night, their glow failing to touch the deeper shadows that clung to alleyways like secrets too dangerous to tell. Autumn had come with a vengeance, chasing warmth from the stone streets and curling around the spines of the city's buildings. In the heart of this sleeping metropolis, beneath spires forgotten by modern gods, walked a man who had long ceased being a man.
Adrian Vortigen moved in silence, his coat snapping behind him like the wings of a bat as he passed under the looming arch of St. Matthias Cathedral. The old church had long been abandoned, its bells silenced since the final war—a relic no one dared demolish, though no one could explain why. Time itself seemed wary of the place. Adrian's eyes, the color of an eclipsed sun, scanned the façade with dispassionate calculation. He had not come to remember, but to erase.
Inside, the air was stagnant. Dust floated like ash in the air, disturbed only by his presence. Candles long burned out left stains of wax like tears beneath rusted candelabras. Adrian walked the center aisle, his boots echoing with each deliberate step. He paused where the altar once stood, now little more than a cracked slab of marble veined with moss and age.
Here, in this forgotten sanctuary, a memory had anchored itself. A memory that had refused to die.
Her name had been Elena.
And she had loved him before she knew what he was.
Before she understood the truth.
He clenched his fist, and with it came the sound—like bones grinding against stone. Somewhere beneath the cathedral, something stirred in response.
The blood moon was rising tonight.
And with it came the prophecy that had haunted him for centuries: When the last blood moon rises, so shall the last vampire fall.
Adrian was no stranger to omens. He had outlived emperors, watched cities rise and crumble, witnessed the world forget the darkness that once ruled it. But this prophecy—whispered first by mad priests and later chanted by secret societies—had followed him like a shadow made flesh.
He was the last of his kind. The final chapter in a book written in blood.
And something had come to turn the final page.
A rustle in the pews. Barely audible to human ears, but a scream to him. Adrian turned, eyes narrowing.
A figure stepped out from behind a broken pillar. Not a threat—yet. A woman, no older than twenty, dressed in layers that didn't match the season. Her auburn hair was braided tight against her scalp, and her eyes—deep green and impossibly ancient—met his without fear.
"You're not supposed to be here," he said, voice like cold iron.
"Neither are you," she replied.
Adrian tilted his head. Her voice didn't carry the quiver of prey. She was not afraid, and that made her dangerous.
"You know who I am."
She nodded. "Adrian Vortigen. The last vampire. Slayer of Rome's Seven Priests. The one who turned the Tsarina's heart to stone. The devil that walks in daylight."
"So you believe the stories."
"I know them." Her hand slipped beneath her coat, not for a weapon, but something more arcane. "I also know you're not what they say."
Adrian stepped forward. "What do they say?"
"That you're a monster."
"And you don't agree?"
She paused, then slowly withdrew a book bound in worn leather. She held it out to him.
"This belonged to Elena."
His heart stopped—or it would have, if he still had one that beat in the human sense. Carefully, reverently, he took the book. The scent was unmistakable. Lavender and ink. She had carried this to her grave.
"Where did you get this?"
"She left it for me," the girl said. "My name is Mara. I'm her descendant. And you're not the only one being hunted tonight."
The cathedral groaned as if it, too, understood the gravity of what had just been said.
Adrian's mind raced. There were no descendants. Elena had died before she could bear a child—or so he thought. If what Mara said was true, it changed everything.
But more urgently, if she was being hunted… then someone else had found the trail.
And if they had returned, then the prophecy was not just an ending.
It was a summons.
"They found you?" he asked, stepping closer.
"I found them first," she said. "But I won't survive the next time. That's why I need you."
Adrian studied her—too sharp to be lying, too desperate to be manipulating him. She carried herself with the weight of bloodlines and war. Maybe she didn't know it yet, but something inside her burned with power. Perhaps a different kind of inheritance.
"The Order won't stop," she continued. "They think killing you will cleanse the world. But they don't know what happens if you die."
Adrian closed the book. "You do?"
She nodded solemnly. "If you fall, the seals break. The real monsters wake. You were never the curse, Adrian. You were the lock."
Lightning forked across the sky, illuminating the stained glass like a warning from forgotten gods. The storm had arrived, but something older was already inside with them.
The last vampire wasn't alone anymore.
And the blood moon had just begun to rise.