The Blue Castle

The rushing had stopped.

Haruki stood in a courtyard paved with smooth, gray stones, bordered by walls that reached up into a sky now cloaked in rolling clouds. What light there was – if it could even be called that – bled from the castle itself. The stonework was a shade of blue so deep it nearly drank his very eyes, and yet it glowed faintly, casting a hue not unlike moonlight filtered through dark ink. The walls shimmered as if they were wet, but when Haruki touched the surface, it was cold and dry. Unnatural. Not carved, not built, but as if they were grown.

He stepped forward cautiously. The castle loomed above him, its towers tapering not into spires but into sharp curves that curled back toward the ground, like thorns bent under their own weight. No banners. No torches. No sound of guards. Merely silence – and the faint hum, as though the very walls were resonating with a low, unending chord.

He crossed an archway without doors and entered the great hall. The shadows here moved. Not rapidly, but with a slow, deliberate shifting, as though something unseen was pacing far beyond the corners of his vision. The floor was made of glassy stone, its surface reflecting his footsteps in distorted fragments. Pillars lined the hall in unnatural symmetry, their surfaces etched with swirling patterns that almost seemed to shift when he wasn’t looking.

Room after room passed, some circular, some angular, all empty. The air felt still but alive, like being inside the lungs of something sleeping. Then, finally, he entered a chamber so vast it swallowed sound. A circular arena, ringed by blackened stone benches that spiraled upward like an inverted amphitheater. No dust. No decay. Nothing.

Haruki had seen this in films and video games before, all fantastical artistry from the dark imaginations of talented men. But looking into this scene with the realest sensation landing on his face – the reality of the fantasy now tainted with an unfriendly vapor of dread.

And now, without any warning, the air bent.

It was not a gust, not a noise, but simply pressure, like the entire atmosphere leaning slightly forward.

A figure emerged from the far side of the arena.

It moved slowly, deliberately, with the grace of something that had no need to hurry. The first thing Haruki noticed was the robe – deep indigo, almost black, with silver lines that flickered like constellations stitched into the fabric. The second thing was its height.

Five meters, at least. Maybe more. It didn’t walk so much as glide across the floor, though its steps did make a sound – a faint echo like bones brushing together. When it came close, it bent, folding its spine in a way no human spine should, craning down with impossible flexibility until its shadow covered Haruki entirely.

The hood shifted, revealing nothing within. No face. No glow. Just depth. Like staring into a well with no bottom.

“Sweet, succulent,” the figure’s voice was soft but immense. Curiosity pouring out of him like honey.

Haruki didn’t move. His breath caught in his throat. Every instinct screamed at him to run, but his feet wouldn’t move. His mind was still catching up.

“I… where am I?” Haruki said, barely managing the words.

“Your mind… is intriguing. The scent of your thoughts… pungent. Silky, silver, sensory.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Tell me, littering little lice, what are you? I have not tasted anything as luscious in quite some time.”

His claws approached, caressing Haruki’s being. Long lanky fingers, more skeleton than even flesh, with the dry skin hugging close to what was left on his frame. And the claws themselves – stretched far and long, at least a whole meter long, seemingly growing longer in the dark.

Every single siren and bell inside Haruki’s mind was now ringing from all four directions, telling him the danger that was slowly flooding and invading his mind. But something within Haruki was freezing him, perhaps something foreign – but most likely it was simply his own weakness.

“Talk now – little piglet. Let me hear you closer, and closer.”

“Get away from me!”

Pushing his long claws away, and now, there was a pause.

Then vibrating from the darkness – came laughter. It wasn’t loud, not even overtly cruel, just somehow… wrong, perverted. It echoed around the chamber, from the walls, the pillars, the dimly lit torches, and even the floor beneath his feet.

“Oh, come now, little louse… fear – me – not. I am… a being of gifts and magix… magicks.”

“Like… some kind of video game wizard?”

“Yes… YES… yes, haha. How did you know what I am called? Now that… is delicious.”

Falling onto the ground, and raising his hand up in protest:

“Please… just… let me go.”

“Why? Why go? When I come bearing… gifts…”

The laughter grew louder now, curling into a coil. As if it had ripened into something thicker, something too full of pleasure to remain still. The monster’s posture shifted, subtly at first. The long, robed figure bent lower, spine groaning like warped wood, its hood drooping to mere inches above Haruki’s head.

And then he saw them.

Two slits tore open beneath the shadowed hood – no eyes, no face, just a sudden parting of darkness.

And from that abyss emerged fangs.

Not canine or from any animal Haruki had ever seen. They weren’t even symmetrical, nor were they precisely biological in their geometry. They were long and uneven, jagged like broken obsidian, curled like needles forced through flesh. Glimmering wet. They clicked as they emerged, scraping over one another, tasting the air with an anticipation that no longer tried to hide its intent.

Only one single word came to his mind upon witnessing this vile sight, something that came to him almost supernaturally:

Vampiric.

Not like the romantic predators of books, games, and comics. These were parasitic, grotesque things meant to puncture and drain and keep the body alive while the soul kept on begging.

Crawling on the stone floor, Haruki rushed toward the other direction.

And he ran.

No plan. No direction. Just raw instinct, surging forward like a scream bottled in the heart. Behind him, there was no roar. No thunderous explosion. Only the sound of fabric dragging lightly across stone, graceful as silk, gaining on him without urgency. Like death that had all the time in the world.

Haruki sprinted through corridors that bent in impossible directions. Stairs that looped halfway through a flight. Doors that led back into rooms he’d just left seconds before. The castle had no logic. It was a place designed to trap, not to house.

Once, he glanced back.

The Wizard was there.

Crawling now. No longer walking. Its limbs too long to move upright in these tighter spaces, it folded itself like a spider, elbows clicking against the stone, claws screeching against the walls as it chased. Not with speed nor precision, but curiosity.

All of which overwhelmed Haruki’s thoughts, however, to the point where tears flooded his eyes, leaving his mind nothing but the goal to run and run and run and run. Wishing from the bottom of his heart that perhaps, if this was some faraway distant fantasy land, that someone from the shadows would spring forth to save him. Just like the manga he had read.

A knight, a superhero, anything.

And still…

The only sound he could hear was his rapid footsteps. As well as his own breathing.

No one else’s breathing, no one human anyway. Just him alone, uninterrupted.

“Oh, little spark… little twitching morsel. How you flee! How you flutter! The panic. The flavor!”

The Wizard spoke again. No longer from a single mouth, but from everywhere, as though the walls had grown tongues, and the air had grown teeth.

Haruki didn’t respond. He simply couldn’t. His lungs were screaming, throat raw, vision half-blinded by tears. He stumbled down a corridor that turned upon itself like a spiral, the ceiling folding inward. Each step felt slower. Each breath more shallow.

“Such delightful fragility,” the Wizard whispered, now to his left. “Tell me, do your bones know how easy they are to snap? Does your heart know how loudly it beats when tasted from afar? Come closer… I want to hear…”

The corridors pulsed with that voice. Shadows stretched longer than they should, curling like fingers across the walls. The blue light from the stone darkened to violet, and then to something deeper.

Black with screams.

Memories of victims?

Haruki tripped on some stairs that hadn’t been there a moment ago. He fell hard, shoulder slamming into cold stone, pain flashing bright behind his eyes. He tried to rise, and behind him, the laughter rolled like thunder through honey:

“Run, run, run.”

Haruki scrambled forward.

One hand, then the other. No longer thinking, just moving. The corridors twisted again, the color of the walls now breathing, blue to red to violet to ash.

And then, a flicker.

A breeze.

For the first time since this nightmare began, there was something that wasn’t the castle. Something alive. Something natural.

A scent: pine, soil, damp leaves.

A sound: wind in branches.

A new darkness: not the smothering, warped kind. The real kind.

The night.

He lunged toward it. A crooked, open arch stood before him, not glowing, and barely maintained. Stones moldy of rot that seemed to keep on spreading with every second of the disappearing moonlight.

Tripping on a rock, Haruki hit the dirt hard, shoulder-first into roots and moss. His lungs heaved in open air. The wind bit at his face. All around him, trees loomed – tall and wide, untouched by constructed stone. The forest was dark, but it was true. Untamed, but also unshaped by those inhuman claws.

Behind him, the castle was still there, glowing of that blue.

The Wizard was nowhere to be seen. And thoughts rushed through Haruki’s mind, forcing him to wonder how it was he even escaped in the first place. He was no hero, he was not extraordinary, and surely any hidden ego inside would’ve claimed some kind of secret potential like all the anime he had seen.

But truth be told – if he was honest with himself, the only explanation that made sense: was that the Wizard let him go.

For what reason, his mind could not even begin to comprehend.