The forest was tranquil, silent, quiet; its only sign of life were the hooting of nocturnal birds and the buzzing of insects. It was dark under the leaves of the trees, obscuring the bright light of a full moon, but the water of the river, unobstructed, remained glimmering. A night like this should be beautiful, peaceful, but unfortunately, we found ourselves in the dark forest of Riverbel.

A young blonde woman in her twenties, wearing a simple and raggy brown dress, found herself running through the forest with a basket full of herbs on her hands, disturbing the calm and stillness.

She had no choice, she made the mistake of staying in the forest for far too long. In the morning, she was searching for medicinal herbs for her sister, too ill to even stand. She wasn’t meant to stay for far long, but finding the herbs resulted into a quasi-impossible task, one that took far too long. When the sun began to set, she knew that she was in danger, that it was only a matter of time for the vampires to wake up, so she tried to escape the maze that was the forest. She, of course, failed miserably.

Now she was running for her life.

Her clothes got cut by branches, so did her skin but the pain was nothing, she kept going. She could feel herself getting tired, her legs were burning up, her mouth was getting dry, her lungs were about to collapse; but she needed to keep going, the other choice was accepting death. She turned around while she was running to see if she was being followed, she saw nothing, but she could hear the forest becoming unrested. The branches of the trees were beginning to shake, and it wasn’t caused by the soft wind.

Not seeing where she was going, even for what was just a second, lead to her tripping over a tree root. She fell to the hard ground, luckily not breaking anything, then quickly got up again. Noticing that the basket she was holding was slowing her down, she threw it away.

She kept running.

And running…

And running…

Until there was no were else to run.

She stopped on her tracks when she saw something drop from the trees in front of her. She immediately screamed. A humanoid bat creature with bright red eyes, dark fur and menacing fangs appeared. The monster was approaching her slowly, so she decided to turn around and find another way, but found two other equally terrifying monsters instead. All the color that was on her face vanished and she froze for an instant, before running to the side, for she wasn’t cornered yet.

Turning around while running again, she found a horrifying image: three monster flying over her like birds of prey. This action resulted in one last fatal mistake, though, as her body crashed directly into a tree. She fell backwards upon impact, and as she stood up she turned back to see her pursers once more. She didn’t see them for a second, before one of them appeared in front of her, smiling like a cat who caught its prey. She jumped backwards in surprise, when clawed hands grabbed her arms from behind.

She thrashed and yelled, begging for them to let her go, but they only laughed. She felt tears dripping from her eyes as she screamed for help, for anyone to save her from whatever cruel fate she was going to suffer through…

…But nobody came.

That very night, the Great Vampire Lord had claimed another victim.