The Drévnite do not hunt out of hunger alone; they hunt to remind the world who rules it. When Inder spares a single child during a massacre meant to erase a valley, he does not do it out of mercy, but curiosity.
The girl does not kneel or beg.
She tries to kill him.
And that changes everything.
my naruto blog: @belit0
For fifty years, the mountain had slept.
That was how the lowlands described it; not because nothing had stirred at its summit, but because the Drévnite had not descended. Absence, in their case, was not peace, but reprieve.
The mountain’s shadow still cut across the valleys at certain hours, stretching unnaturally long, swallowing fields and roads alike. Nothing lived above a certain altitude; herds refused to graze too close to the slope. The land itself remembered being hunted, and the castle was not visible from below, not truly. What could be seen were fragments: a broken crown of stone when storms split the sky, the suggestion of towers when the moon hung low and pale, never whole, never honest. Shepherds swore the mountain shifted when watched too closely. Roads curved away from it without reason. Snow lingered there long after spring had softened the valleys, as though the cold were hoarded, guarded.
Those who climbed high enough felt the change before they ever reached the gates. Sound thinned. Wind died abruptly, strangled by the rock. Even the birds abandoned the airspace, leaving the ascent unnaturally quiet, each step swallowed by the mountain’s vast patience. Legends claimed the stone had been hollowed not by tools but by time itself, carved inward by something that did not need light or warmth. Children learned their name only when they were old enough to understand fear. Before that, it was “the place where Gods do not look”.
If one was brave enough to climb, the gates, when reached, offered no drama. No guards. No warning. They stood open more often than not, vast slabs of iron scarred by centuries of weather and war, as if daring the world to remember what lived beyond them. Crossing their threshold did not feel like entering a building. It felt like being taken: air growing heavier, colder, pressing close to the skin, carrying with it the smell of old stone and older sins.
Inside, time had not softened anything.
The cold did not drift or circulate; it settled, absolute and unmoving, as if the mountain itself had exhaled and never drawn breath again. Corridors stretched inward like veins, lit sparingly, guiding the unwary deeper rather than through. The castle did not echo with life. It absorbed it. Sound dulled. Thought slowed. Even memory felt quieter there, as though the walls demanded reverence not through threat, but through inevitability.
At its heart lay the map room, buried deep within the castle’s core. A chamber older than the outer walls, carved when the mountain was younger and more alive. Stone arched overhead like the inside of a ribcage, blackened by centuries of smoke and candle soot. The air was cold enough to bite, not with the clean sharpness of snow, but with the damp, lingering chill of something long sealed away. Every sound, footsteps, breath, the whisper of fabric, was swallowed quickly, absorbed by the rock as though the room refused to remember anything unnecessary.
Maps layered the walls in overlapping logs of conquest and erasure. Villages that no longer existed. Rivers that had changed course. Borders drawn, redrawn, and abandoned. Some were marked with symbols no one living could still interpret. Others bore stains that were not ink.
At the center, the table waited.
Inder stood there as he always did when the cycle turned, impossibly still, estimating. His human guise was precise to the point of severity. No ornamentation. No indulgence. He looked like a man who could pass through any village without drawing a second glance, which was precisely what made him dangerous. What he kept hidden—the wings folded into nothing, the claws reduced to pale hands, the eyes dimmed to something almost ordinary—was not restraint.
Uriella had taken her place near the southern wall, where the oldest maps hung. She studied them with the patience of someone who understood that violence was most effective when applied thoughtfully. Her wings were tucked close, disciplined, their presence implied rather than displayed. She said nothing at first, but her attention moved in deliberate patterns, tracking routes, distances, proximity to trade roads and churches. When she spoke, it was without urgency, as though the decision were already half-made. —They have forgotten,— she said, fingers resting lightly against a parchment depicting a valley dense with markings. —Not our names. Our rules.—
Her voice did not carry judgment. Only assessment.
Across the room, Izhra was incapable of stillness. He leaned against a column carved with sigils worn nearly smooth, his bat-like wings partially unfurled in open defiance of the enclosed space. Shadow and membrane shifted behind him with every small movement. His long hair was loose, his expression alive with a restless, predatory amusement that had no patience for slow debate. —Forgotten?— he echoed, a smile curling lazily. —No. They’ve convinced themselves we were never real.—
He crossed the room in an unhurried prowl, boots striking stone with careless confidence, stopping just short of the table. He did not touch it, never did. —Look at them,— Izhra continued, voice smooth, almost fond. His gaze skimmed the map Inder had laid out: newer than most, marked with fresh settlements clustered too close together, too bold, too bright. —They build higher now. Louder. Bells every morning, prayers every night.— He glanced toward Inder, eyes sharp. —That kind of faith curdles beautifully when it breaks.—
Uriella turned her head slightly, dark eyes cool. —Indiscriminate feeding leaves scars that heal too quickly. Fear spreads better when it has a shape.—
—Fear spreads fastest when it’s personal,— Izhra countered, grin flashing. —One night. One town. No survivors to explain it properly.—
The silence that followed was not tension, but gravity.
They were waiting for Inder’s decision. He moved one marker on the table. Just one. The soft scrape of wood against stone sounded far too loud in the chamber, a noise that echoed not in volume but in consequence.
Both of them went still; this was the moment that mattered.
Fifty years ago, he had chosen a river settlement and erased it so thoroughly that maps had struggled to catch up. A century before that, a fortified town whose lord had believed stone walls and relics were enough. Each cycle left its mark on the world, subtle but indelible, like a hand closing around a throat and releasing just before death.
—This valley,— Inder said at last. His voice carried the weight of inevitability, of something that had been repeating itself long before either of them had learned the pleasure of argument.
Uriella stepped closer, studying the placement. Her nod was slight, but immediate. —Isolated. Small enough to disappear. Close enough to trade routes for the story to travel.—
Izhra’s smile widened, slow and sharp. —And old enough to think itself safe.—
Beyond the castle walls, the mountain listened. Far below, in a town that still believed monsters belonged to bedtime stories and sermons, candles were being lit. Doors were being bolted more out of habit than fear. Parents were calling children in from the dusk. And high above them, in a room that had decided their fate before the first stone of their homes had ever been laid, the Drévnite ended their dormancy.
The departure was not announced. The castle simply opened itself to them. Stone terraces cut into the mountain’s spine fell away beneath their feet, descending into nothing but wind and cloud. The air at that height was thin and vicious, cold enough to flay skin from bone, yet it bent instinctively around them, recognizing what it carried. Inder stepped first, coat stirring as the night took him. The transformation was subtle, almost restrained, his shoulders rolling back, the weight shifting through his spine, until the wings unfurled.
They were vast. Black upon black, membranes catching the faintest glint of moonlight, stretching wider than the ledge itself. When they opened fully, the wind recoiled, forced aside by the sheer displacement of power. His claws followed, lengthening, darkening, curling with deliberate precision, the only other concession to what he was. Everything else remained painfully human: the tailored lines of his Victorian coat, the crisp fall of fabric his wings had avoided, the calm, composed silhouette of a man who did not need to bare himself to be feared.
Uriella followed without haste. Her wings unfurled more narrowly, controlled, elegant in their symmetry. They did not beat unnecessarily; they adjusted, corrected, and held her steady as she lifted into the night. She took the air like a surveyor, already scanning the slopes below, the valleys beyond, tracking light, movement, patterns. Her posture never broke. Even in flight, she conserved herself.
Izhra launched last, and the mountain suffered for it. His wings snapped open with violent enthusiasm, the air cracking under the force of them. Snow tore loose from ledges. Loose stone screamed as it tumbled into the abyss. He laughed as he took to the sky, the sound sharp and unrestrained, carried far enough that if any living thing had remained on those slopes, it would have fled. He flew low at first, deliberately skimming close to the rock face, letting the currents of his wings tear at whatever dared stand in his path; dead trees snapping like brittle bones, abandoned watch posts collapsing into ruin. —Gods,— he called over the wind, voice bright with indulgence, —I missed this.—
Uriella angled sharply to avoid the debris he sent spiraling. —You’re going to announce us halfway across the province.—
—That’s the point,— Izhra replied, banking hard, spiraling upward again, delight evident in every reckless movement. —Let them look up.—
Inder cut through the sky in a straight, unwavering line, wings beating with slow, devastating power. Below them, the land unfolded: forests thinning into fields, rivers silvered under moonlight, clusters of villages huddled like frightened animals, lucky to avoid their attention this time.
After minutes, the town revealed itself in stages. First the lights, sparse and trembling. Then the rooftops, sloped and uneven. Finally, the palisade that surrounded it, more symbolic than defensive, wood weathered and old. A place small enough to believe itself invisible.
Vesgrad. The place did not wake all at once.
The first sign was not sound, but pressure, an abrupt, suffocating weight that pressed down on roofs and lungs alike, as though the night itself had thickened. Dogs began to howl, frantic and broken, straining against chains until throats bled. Somewhere near the eastern fields, a horse screamed and tore free of its stall, bolting blind into the dark. Windows rattled. Candle flames guttered low, then steadied, uneasy.
Not a storm wind, not the rolling breath of weather moving in from the hills, but something violent and directional, a sudden tearing rush that slammed through the village streets with no warning. Shutters burst open. Thatched roofs peeled back in strips. Loose tools and buckets lifted and scattered as if hurled by an invisible hand. For several long seconds, Vesgrad existed in stunned silence, the kind that follows an explosion before sound catches up.
People stepped outside because humans always did. Because curiosity outpaced survival. Because nothing in their small, careful lives had prepared them for what was descending.
He did not land so much as impact, slamming into the center of the square in a detonation of stone and splintered wood. Cobblestones erupted upward. The bell tower shuddered, its iron throat choking out a single, warped note before the rope snapped and the bell crashed down inside its housing. The shockwave tore outward, knocking villagers flat, sending doors slamming back against walls, driving breath from lungs in panicked, choking gasps.
For a heartbeat, there was only dust and ringing ears.
He rose from the wreckage laughing, stood amid the ruin like a thing finally unchained, wings fully spread, membranes still thrumming with residual force. His eyes burned, fully black and hungry, sweeping over the square as people staggered upright, faces turned skyward in dawning horror. He inhaled deeply, savoring the scent: fear sharp and metallic, blood already blooming where bodies had struck stone. —My,— he breathed, voice rich with delight, —this is a good one.—
Uriella descended next, cutting cleanly through the chaos. She touched down at the edge of the square with controlled grace, boots barely disturbing the debris. Her gaze flicked once over Izhra’s destruction, assessing, cataloging, adjusting, before she moved, efficient, almost elegant, as she stepped into the panicked flow of villagers spilling from their homes.
A man clutching a pitchfork, hands shaking too badly to raise it. A woman dragging a child who had frozen in place, eyes wide, breath stuttering. Uriella caught them both, fast and precise, turning them aside from the street as if guiding dancers off a floor. Feeding followed swiftly, cleanly, her expression cool, intent, a faint, dark satisfaction settling in her eyes as bodies slumped soundlessly to the ground. —Try not to collapse every structure in sight,— she called toward the square, already moving on. —It limits the terrain.—
Izhra was already airborne again, skimming low through the streets, wings clipping rooflines, tearing through awnings and beams. He delighted in the chase, in the way people screamed louder when they realized running only made him smile wider. He landed among a cluster of men who had armed themselves with axes and farming tools, head tilting as if in curiosity. —Bravery tastes soooo sweet, gentleman,— he said pleasantly.
Inder arrived last. The ground submitted beneath him. He settled on a rise overlooking the square, wings spreading wide and slow, casting the village below into a vast, crawling shadow. Stone cracked quietly beneath his weight. His claws flexed once, then stilled. In the firelight and chaos, he looked almost ordinary. Dark coat immaculate, posture composed, face unreadable. From where he sat, Vesgrad unfolded in all its doomed detail: the panicked routes people chose, the way fear narrowed thought, the efficiency with which Uriella culled, the ecstatic violence of Izhra tearing joyfully through the night. Inder watched without interference, without haste, gaze sharp and distant, as though measuring something far beyond the bodies piling in the streets.
The village burned, and for the first time in fifty years, the world remembered the Véchnite. Destruction spread outward in uneven rings, each one collapsing into the next. Fires climbed greedily along rooftops, licking at beams still damp from evening dew. Walls gave way in sections, not all at once, but with the slow, tortured groan of structures that had believed themselves permanent. People fled in patterns that made sense only to them; toward wells already fouled with ash, toward alleys that narrowed into dead ends, toward doors that would never open again. From above, it was all terribly predictable. Panic bent them inward, reduced choices to instinct, stripped away thought until only movement remained.
His brother carved through the streets like a living calamity, laughter breaking loose between screams, wings battering the air hard enough to hurl bodies and debris aside with equal indifference. He killed loudly, extravagantly, leaving ruin in his wake not out of necessity, but pleasure. His sister moved elsewhere, quieter, deliberate, correcting the chaos just enough to keep it efficient, stepping in where the other wasted time, redirecting the flow of fleeing villagers with small, precise adjustments that ensured no pocket of life remained untouched for long.
Inder observed it all with distant attention, noted the way the fire caught faster near the grain stone, the moment when the village’s resistance, pitiful though it had been, simply ceased, replaced by raw flight. It was the same as it had always been. Different names. Different faces. Identical endings.
Then something disrupted the pattern.
It was not immediate. It did not announce itself. At first, it was only an inconsistency, a trace beneath the heavier layers of blood and smoke and terror. Inder’s awareness shifted, slow and methodical, isolating it from the surrounding noise. It was not fear. Fear had a familiar texture, thin and frantic, spiking and collapsing as people realized the futility of escape. This was denser. Sustained. Carried forward on sheer refusal.
Not the fleeting kind born of desperation, nor the hollow bravado of men clutching tools they barely knew how to use. This was something more forceful, more consuming, pressing outward instead of folding in. It did not scatter under pressure. It pushed back. Inder’s gaze swept the village again, searching not for a face, but for the source of that disturbance. He expected to find a body braced against a wall, a survivor cornered too long, perhaps a woman whose grief had tipped into violence, a father fighting for his family. His attention moved from one cluster of movement to another, dismissing each as the wrong shape, the wrong weight.
The anger did not diminish. It moved. That was when he noticed the child. She did not stand still long enough to be seen easily. She ran through the streets with reckless determination, slipping past falling beams and stumbling bodies, shouting into the night with a voice already frayed from overuse. Her clothes were torn and darkened with soot, streaked with blood that was not all her own. She called out again and again, the same two names, as though repetition alone could pull them back from the dead. Each time she was forced to stop—by rubble, by fire, by the sudden appearance of something monstrous—she fought forward again without hesitation.
Pain registered only as fuel, Inder knew. The anger surged with her movement, unmistakably hers. He felt something shift, subtle but undeniable, a pause in the long, unbroken rhythm of his existence. He had seen countless children die. Most froze. Most screamed. Some simply went quiet. None burned like this. None carried such violent intent in a body so small, so fragile, as if she were a vessel filled beyond capacity with something that had no place in her. He descended from his vantage without urgency, wings folding back as his boots met the ground. The village continued to die around him, unnoticed. His attention narrowed, tracking her path as she veered through the destruction, drawn closer with every desperate turn.
Not immediately as what he was, but as an obstacle, a presence too solid to ignore. Her head snapped up. Her eyes met his, blazing with a hatred so raw it bordered on devotion. She did not slow. She did not falter. She charged him as though he were the last thing standing between her and the world she intended to tear apart with her bare hands. He watched her come, ancient and unyielding, confronted not by fear or pleading, but by a child carrying enough fury to give even him pause, a reminder, unwelcome and unforgettable, that some things refused to die quietly, no matter how small they were.
But then the violence, the air, shifted, pressure bending subtly as another awareness locked onto the same aberration he had isolated. Hunger sharpened elsewhere in the village, attention tearing loose from blood and noise, converging with predatory inevitability.
Izhra. He felt the younger vampire’s trajectory through the currents of the night, fast, careless, eager, cutting low and direct toward the source of that rage. It was how his little brother had always been, drawn to intensity like flame to oil, obedience a secondary consideration at best. He let the moment stretch, measuring not the other’s intent, but his own reaction to it.
The child kept running, small body driving forward on will alone, unaware of the shadow dropping in behind her, of the sudden narrowing of space that preceded death.
—No,— Inder said harshly. The word was insufficient. He replaced it with something older. —Moyata svyat.— The phrase did not function as speech so much as a declaration. It carried the weight of possession as it had once been understood, not ownership of flesh, but of boundary. Sacred. Untouchable. Removed from the reach of others by decree older than hierarchy. The sound moved through the night like a hand closing, halting Izhra mid-attack with brutal finality. Inder felt the resistance flare and collapse. He tasted his brother’s irritation, his surprise, his instinctive desire to push back, then the sharp, familiar withdrawal as understanding settled in. The presence peeled away, redirected, swallowed again by the chaos of the hunt without argument.
The child remained untouched, unaware that death had been within arm’s reach and dismissed. She reached Inder moments later. Her fists struck him in a flurry of weak, furious blows, hitting his legs, his waist, anywhere she could reach. The impacts were meaningless, but the intent behind them was not. She screamed at him, voice raw, words tumbling over each other in broken pleas and accusations, demanding her parents be returned as if he were something that could be compelled through sheer refusal to accept loss.
Inder did not move until her strikes began to falter. Then he lowered himself, folding down to her level with deliberate care, and extended one clawed hand. It came to rest atop her head, fingers spreading through tangled hair, holding her away with effortless distance. She clawed at his arm, struck where she could, tried to push past the barrier of his reach, fury spilling unchecked from a body too small to contain it.
Curiosity deepened into something more deliberate. He let the last of his restraint fall away. The change rolled through him slowly, purposefully, eyes draining of their false humanity until they became voids that swallowed light whole, pure black, fangs lengthening, ears sharpening, wings stretching to their full span behind him. The night bent around the silhouette he revealed, monstrous and absolute, an image crafted over centuries to break minds and scatter courage.
He waited for the flinch, the scream, the collapse into terror that always followed. But the child stared up at him, chest heaving, eyes blazing with undiluted hatred.
And then she hit him again.
Inder laughed. The sound tore free from him, deep and resonant, startling in its fullness, echoing over the burning ruins of Vesgrad. It carried disbelief, something dangerously close to wonder, as though he had discovered a flaw in the world’s design and found it fascinating rather than offensive. He leaned closer, studying her as one might study a phenomenon long thought impossible, his voice low, ancient, shaped by centuries that predated the language she spoke. —Tell me your name,— he demanded.
The child spat blood and ash onto the stone and glared up at him. —No!— she shouted, voice breaking but unbowed. —I won’t!—
Inder regarded her in silence, head tilting a fraction, as though considering a curious animal that had just bared its teeth instead of fleeing. Around them, Vesgrad continued to die, beams collapsing, fire chewing through homes, screams thinning as throats failed. Fear had finally begun to bleed into her scent. It would have been impossible not to. Any living body hurled into this kind of proximity with him would react. Her pulse skittered. Her breath came in sharp, uneven bursts. Yet the fear did not eclipse the rage. It coexisted with it, braided tightly, neither conquering the other.
Inder felt something like amusement surface, slow and unfamiliar. —So,— he said, voice calm, almost conversational, —you will not kneel, and you will not name yourself.—
She lunged again, nails scraping uselessly against his arm. —I’ll kill you!— she screamed, the words torn straight from her chest. —I’ll kill you, monster!—
The laughter that rose in him was quieter this time, darker, threaded with intent. He bent, seized her with one hand, and before she could draw another breath, the ground vanished beneath them.
His wings struck the air with punishing force. The village fell away in a rush of heat and noise as he surged upward, carrying her with him into the frozen night. Wind tore at her clothes, at her hair, ripped screams from her throat and scattered them uselessly across the sky. She fought him even then, small body thrashing, fists slamming into his arm, teeth snapping blindly when she could reach nothing else.
Higher they went, the air thinned, the cold biting hard enough to draw a sob from her despite herself. Fear surged in major waves then, pungent and undeniable, her body finally reacting to the truth of height, of falling, of the vast nothing yawning beneath her.
Inder understood then, and dismissed the feeling just as quickly. She wasn’t scared of the monster, but of the circumstances. A disrespectful little warrior.
To prove his point, he opened his fingers.
The scream ripped free this time, raw and helpless, her body tumbling end over end toward the distant glow of fire below. Inder counted the heartbeats (one, two, three), sensing the way terror spiked, how instinct finally overwhelmed fury…
…and caught her by the wrist an instant before the ground would have ended her. Her body jolted violently as he arrested the fall, a strangled cry tearing from her lungs. She hung there, suspended between sky and death, chest heaving, eyes wide.
And then she tried to hit him again. Inder stared at her, something cold and delighted settling deep within him. —Yes,— he murmured, more to himself than to her. —There you are.— He did not repeat the exercise. He had learned what he needed. Whatever this child was, whatever fault line had cracked open inside her tonight, it was not something fear alone could erode.
It would take time. Shaping. Pressure. Entertainment, he thought distantly. For a few fleeting years.
He turned in the air, wings adjusting, and set a new course, away from Vesgrad, away from the ruin already written into the earth. There was one place his kind did not touch. One village that never stopped believing. One door that remained barred not by hope, but by preparation.
They landed at the edge of the forest just before dawn threatened the horizon. Inder set her down roughly and let his wings fold away, his form settling back into its human shell as though nothing monstrous had ever existed beneath it. The child sagged but did not fall, swaying on her feet, eyes still locked on him with feral hatred.
He walked her to the house himself. It was modest, reinforced, warded in ways subtle enough to escape careless notice. When he knocked, the sound carried finality. The woman who opened the door went rigid the instant she saw him. Her hand moved instinctively toward the weapon at her side. It stopped only when she noticed the child standing between them, shaking, bloodied, alive.
Inder inclined his head slightly. Respect, of a kind. —I will not kill you tonight, Aya Petrove— he said evenly. —Nor burn this place. You know why.—
The woman’s eyes —Aya— flicked from him to the girl and back again, fury and calculation warring in her expression. —What is this, you demon!— she demanded.
—A beginning,— Inder replied. His gaze dropped briefly to the child. —Raise her as a hunter. Teach her to hate us properly. Make her strong enough to stand before me without shaking.—
Aya’s jaw tightened. —Why would I harvor a child chosen by the devil? Take your foolish attempt at a trap away, monster!—
Inder smiled, thin and genuine. —You stubborn woman… Raise her,— he pushed the kid forward, into Aya’s arms. The woman avoided touching her, stepping back and away, —and I will finally have something worth killing me.—
—Why would I believe you’re giving us a chance against you? After centuries of your putrid existence? Why now?
He stepped back into the dark, already dissolving into distance, —for I find myself growing weary, and pray, tell me… what creature is more dangerous than a vampire deprived of amusement, Aya Petrove? Make her worthy, and perhaps you shall be prepared when we descend,— leaving behind a girl who would never sleep without remembering the sky, and a woman who understood, with terrible clarity, that the Drévnite had just placed a blade in her hands and asked her to sharpen it.
