TARGOVISTE, ROMANIA
858 A.D.
During the Dark Ages, in a quaint Romanian village, the Dimitru household welcomed the birth of two baby boys. They were Dragavei and Radu. The small family was overjoyed by the two bundles of blessings God had bestowed upon them, as they had endured many years of waiting for the wife, Zamfira, to carry a child to full term successfully. However, they did not realize that while one child was born human, the other was born of something darker and more ancient. He was a bloodsucker—the purest of his kind.
The origin behind this was inexplicable.
As time passed, both children matured, and Dragavei took the lead in their development. He grew quickly, excelling in everything and outpacing his twin. Although Radu tried to keep up, he was no match for the supernatural spurt Dragavei experienced. Because of the astonishing speed at which he developed, it was nearly impossible to believe that he and Radu were twins.
However, on their sixth birthday, the people came to know what Dragavei was, for when Radu stumbled and bruised his knee, his twin, unable to control his wild impulses, lurched forward at the smell and sight of blood, and sank his teeth into his brother's neck.
It was when his fangs first came out.
It was when his parents and others discovered what he was—not a blessing from the Creator, but a curse.
Bloodsuckers were not entirely unknown to them, there had been whispers and tales of such creatures before, but never had they seen one thrive in the sun like their own.
One thing became certain to the villagers—his very existence was a blasphemy against the divine, unlike anything they had ever imagined.
He was a monster from the bowels of hell.
An abomination.
Little Dragavei watched in confusion as his mother ran towards them and snatched his brother away from him. She ripped out a large portion of her dress and pressed it to his brother's neck, staring at him with an expression of utter mortification, while his father tried to calm the villagers who had suddenly doubled their numbers.
These were the same people who had rejoiced with them not long ago, yet their expressions had quickly changed into fearful ones, with some already holding pitchforks and torches.
Dragavei started to go to his mother, a hand outstretched towards her while the other vigorously rubbed against his eyes.
His eyes stung and ached, while his mouth still lingered with the taste of Radu's blood.
"Mamă" he wailed, baffled and frightened.
His mother paid him no attention, trying to revive his twin who had fallen unconscious.
Dragavei didn't like the way the villagers were glaring at him.
"Mamă!!!" he wailed again, inching another step forward when suddenly he was swept up by an angry-looking man.
Screaming out and fighting desperately, Dragavei tried to detach himself from the man all to no avail, then impulsively, he sunk his teeth into the man's shoulder, drawing blood.
It tasted unbelievably good, just like his brother's own. Horrified, the man let out a blood-curdling cry and threw him to the ground while yet another picked him up and hurriedly wound a piece of clothing tightly around his mouth.
"Tis a creature of darkness! Zamfira birthed a creature of darkness!" One shouted, hysterically pointing at Dragavei's mother. "In her longing for motherhood, she laid with the Lord of the Abyss!"
"Such beastly creature must not be allowed to draw breath!"
"Slay it we must! Slay it, else it grows older and in power, and brings ruin upon our village!"
Something strange was happening to his eyes. The sting in them worsened and he could feel his eyesight dimming, shading to a dull red. He scratched at his face furiously, willing the discomfort to stop, but it didn't.
When Dragavei opened his eyes, he looked at his parents for help, but they stared back at him like he was a monster.
His father's mouth hung open in shock, while his mother wept profusely. She turned from him and would not look at him again.
Radu was now awake but unaware of the ongoing commotion.
A woman amidst the mob gasped, pointing at him, fear written all over her face. "Demon spawn!!!" She screamed. "It bears the eyes of the devil. Slay him!!!"
Little Dragavei still didn't understand why he had attacked his precious brother. All he remembered was that he had tried to help him up and then, there was a sudden and overwhelming hunger that came with perceiving a whiff of Radu's blood.
As the villagers took him away, Dragavei screamed for his parents to save him, his hands shooting out desperately as he was whisked away.
"Mamă!!!" He screamed again. The tears coming from his eyes were strange— red and overwhelming. They blurred his vision.
"Tata! Nu-i lăsa să mă ia!" (Papa! Don't let them take me away!)
In horror, he watched the people who birthed him turn from him... the people who had once welcomed him into the world... the people who had wished him well that same day as he turned six, drag him towards the forest.
At that moment, Dragavei stopped resisting the people and fell into silence, shattered by the pain of his parents' betrayal.
It was the last time he lived a normal life.
The six-year-old bloodsucker was taken by the villagers, beaten to the brink of death, and thrown into the forest on the outskirts of his village, left there to rot.
But the ignorance and vile cruelty of the people became their undoing, for a vampire, especially the purest of its kind, did not get bested so easily. His wounds healed in no time, breath returned to his lungs, and as he rose from his own blood and dirt, a fierce hatred for humanity grew within him.
When he was a decade and five years old, in the dead of the night, Dragavei returned to his village and mercilessly slaughtered all its inhabitants, sparing only his twin, Radu who cowered before the monster his long-lost brother had become.
"S-spare me, brother. I shall serve you till my last breath, just s-spare me" Radu pleaded, his voice shaking with fear as he fell to his knees, bowing before his twin.
"You have wronged me in no way, Radu. I do not intend on killing you," Dragavei responded. His voice was surprisingly calm but in an eerie way. "I have no desire to repeat the harm I once caused"
Dragavei looked towards a sleeping chamber. "Where have our father and mother gone?"
Feeling a bit relieved that no harm would come to him, Radu sat up on his haunches and replied morosely, "They both succumbed to an ailment that afflicted half the village. More than twelve months have passed since their suffering ended." his head dipped. "They have found peace in a better place."
"An ailment?!" Dragavei was enraged. He released a loud growl that shook the ground. "A mere disease robs me of my vengeance?!"
The powerful vampire then turned his back and wept tears of blood.
"I do not wish their suffering be brought to an end," he said, his eyes cold and lacking emotion. "I wish for it to endure, and fate dared to steal that from me."
As Radu paled in fear, Dragavei lowered himself till he saw eye to eye with his brother. "You shall become what I am or you shall die like the rest of them"
Radu put up no objection, accepting his fate, and Dragavei turned him into a vampire.
Together, they departed from the pile of ash and smoke that was once their hometown.
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BRASOV, ROMANIA.
YEAR 1239.
Dragavei was passing through the small town of Brasov three hundred and sixty-six years after his village's massacre.
Alina Cazacu, an effervescent young scholar had her nose buried in a book when she ran into him in the market square.
"Oh, goodness! Do forgive me kind sir" she said hurriedly, before Dragavei could utter a word.
"I was rather invested in reading about the fair that is to take place in the neighbouring village of Sighisoara and I lost..."
The woman stopped to assess him and smiled in embarrassment "You do not care, do you?"
She bent to pick up the books that had spilled from her small sling bag in the event of the push. "I'm sorry, I tend to blabber all the time"
She pressed the book she had been reading firmly to her chest and apologized "Forgive my garrulity. I am Alina"
"You're a scholar" he stated plainly, after taking in the sight of the number of books that had fallen.
He wondered how she had been able to fit all of them into her small bag.
"Yes, I am," she remarked, chin lifted high in pride. "I don't just love to read about places and people and how things came to be"
She slung the bag across her shoulders. "I like to understand the connections. It can be quite intriguing, can't it?"
"Indeed" Dragavei muttered, stopping to pick up an apple from a stall.
Alina continued. "I mean... isn't it fascinating..." She pointed at the sun. "... how far away that big ball of fury seems, and yet it still scorches our skin? Or how the stars of the night... and the moon, manage to light up our world, even from so, so far away?"
Dragavei's large bite into the apple interrupted her. Wearing a look of disgust and discarding the fruit, he turned to Alina, speaking in a disinterested tone, "I care not"
He couldn't stomach the apple because his palate had changed—grown accustomed to blood over the many years he had prowled the earth.
*Side note: For clarity, throughout the story, most chapters written in italics speak of past events or flashbacks that occurred before the main storyline.
They provide context to the story's present timeline.*