This is all I've got as a small taste
Scott wakes to the smell of blood and woodsmoke. For a long moment, he doesn't move. Six hundred years of sleep sits heavy in his bones, pressing against his ribs like stone. The world feels wrong. Too loud. Too bright.
Voices drift through the forest. Human voices. Scott's eyes snap open. He rises from the grave. Hunger claws at his stomach, ancient and familiar. Yet something else catches his attention first.
The village he finds is small, but it is clearly not whole.
Crumbling buildings stand beside newly repaired ones. Some houses are little more than skeletal frames draped in vines, while others show fresh timber and recent handiwork. The roads are uneven, half-swallowed by years of neglect, and lanterns glow in places where people have only recently returned.
It feels less like a town and more like a wound being stitched closed.
Someone is rebuilding this place.
Someone is trying to bring it back to life.
A young man notices him standing at the edge of town.
Scott stares. The words mean nothing. Not a single one. The man continues speaking. Faster this time.
Scott blinks. "...Quid?" (What) he asks.
Scott frowns. "Quid dicis?" (What are you saying?)
The man looks increasingly concerned. A few more villagers gather. They begin asking questions all at once. Scott understands none of it. His confusion slowly turns into horror.
Humans have always spoken Latin.
Why would they speak anything else?
He points at one of them.
"Loquere recte." (Speak properly)
The villager tilts his head. "What?"
The villager frowns. "...I don't understand."
Scott's brow furrows. "Latine."
The reaction is immediate.
Several villagers begin talking over one another.
"Doesn't the doctor know Latin?"
"A little, I think. Where is he?"
His hope immediately dies.
Scott watches them hopefully. They recognized the language. Good. Excellent. Progress. Then the conversation continues in whatever incomprehensible tongue they are speaking.
"LATINE," he repeats more firmly, gesturing between himself and the group.
The villagers exchange apologetic looks.
"Yeah, we know it's Latin."
"None of us actually speak it."
He doesn't know a single word they just said.
He sleeps for six hundred years and somehow humanity has forgotten how to speak.
A terrible realization settles over him.
He is ancient. Powerful. One of the oldest vampires alive.
And he is completely incapable of asking where he is.