03 – Dawn Test

The first pale light of dawn appeared on the horizon, and Velmira stood at the window watching it slowly creep across the sky.

She had spent the night lying still, neither sleeping nor resting, just existing in that strange in-between state her vampire body seemed to like. The village was silent for hours, the last lights went out around midnight.

She listened to the steady beat of her heart as she fell asleep, the soft murmur of dreams whispering through the thin walls, and followed the patrol of a watchman making his rounds until he too had fallen asleep near the well.

Now the sky in the east was turning from black to deep blue, and her skin was already prickling with the feeling of pain she was about to experience.

The Moonveil Cloak lay across her shoulders.

She had spent hours examining its magic, trying to understand how Yggdrasil's magic had been translated into this world. The silver threads running through the fabric weren't decorative; they conducted something, channeled it, created a field of... protection? Absorption? The terminology from the game didn't quite fit what she was sensing now.

In Yggdrasil, equipment stats had been numbers on a screen: Sunlight Resistance +70%. Simple. Here, the cloak's magic felt natural and reactive, as if it was adapting to the threat as the sun came up.

Would it be enough?

There's only one way to find out.

Velmira took a deep breath, as she often did, and went straight to the window. She made sure that the first rays of sunlight would hit her there.

The wait was worse than she'd expected.

Each minute felt longer as the sky changed colour from blue to purple to orange. She could hear the village starting to wake up: a rooster crowing, a door opening, someone coughing and spitting in the cold morning air.

Then the sun appeared over the horizon.

Light touched her face, and Velmira thought it would hurt.

It came, but not as strong as before, because of the cloak's magic. Her skin felt warm and uncomfortable, as if she had been standing too close to a fire. The draining sensation started immediately — that vital essence leaking away — but slowly and manageable, nothing like yesterday's immediate burning.

She could endure this.

As the sun got higher in the sky, Velmira kept going, even though it was hard.

Five minutes. Ten minutes.

The discomfort increased, but it didn't become pain. Her ability to heal fought against the drain, and the two forces were balanced.

She wouldn't die. Wouldn't even be severely weakened. But if she stayed out in the sun for too long, it would make her tired, so she would need to find a shady spot to rest.

Still, it was freedom of a sort.

She moved away from the window and saw that the spell on the cloak was weakening when she left the sunlight. The magic was reactive, efficient, and activated only when needed. The design is great, whoever coded it in Yggdrasil. They probably never thought that the things they took from the raid boss would one day save someone's life in a real medieval world.

The inn was stirring below.

Heavy footsteps on stairs, the clatter of pots in the kitchen, voices calling morning greetings.

Velmira listened to the innkeeper arguing with someone about supply deliveries, a woman singing quietly while she worked, and children complaining about morning chores.

The rhythms of human life.

She had taken them for granted in her old life, hardly noticing her neighbours, the maintenance workers or the background hum of civilisation.

Now, every sound felt very important and strange, because she thought about everything she had lost.

She was thinking about this when she heard a knock on her door.

"Mage?" The innkeeper's rough voice.

"You awake?"

Velmira went to the door, but didn't open it.

"I am."

"Someone wants to speak with you. About that business with the farms."

"I'll be down soon."

She heard him make a noise as he walked away. There is no time to prepare. She would have to face whatever was waiting for her without knowing if her sunlight solution would work when it was checked, or if her disguise would survive being checked in daylight.

Velmira checked herself in the room's small, tarnished mirror — another test.

She had been half-afraid she wouldn't cast a reflection at all, but there she was: pale, red-eyed, inhuman, but visible. The cloak makes her look more like a eccentric traveller than a monster.

She adjusted her hood so that only her eyes were visible, then went to the common room.

Perhaps a dozen people were gathered, more than had been present last night.

Morning light came through the windows, and Velmira felt its weight right away, even inside. The Moonveil Cloak was protecting her, but she could feel the magic draining away.

Marta stood near the fireplace, arms crossed. Next to her was an older man wearing old leather armour and carrying a sword that looked as though it had been used a lot.

Maybe he was a captain in the army.

There were also several farmers there. They were men and women with faces that showed they had spent a lot of time in the sun and hands that had been rough from working in the fields.

And in the corner, a child was watching with bright, curious eyes. A girl of about eight or nine, with dark hair, holding a cloth doll. It was the same child who had been looking at Velmira last night, before her mother took her indoors.

Everyone looked up when Velmira came in.

"There she is," Marta said, sounding neither happy nor upset, but her eyes showed she was thinking hard. "The mage who travels at night."

The militia captain stepped forward and looked at her in a direct way, like a soldier.

"My name is Gareth. I lead the defence in Herzfeld and the surrounding farms." He stopped for a moment. "Marta says you offered to help with our problem with the predators."

"I said I'd think about it," Velmira said gently. "I'm not a hunter."

"But you're a mage. And you survived travelling alone on the road at night. That suggests capability."

Fair point. She'd walked into this by trying to keep up the pretence. Now she had to follow through or risk more suspicion.

"What exactly has been happening?" Velmira asked.

One of the farmers spoke up. She was a middle-aged woman with deep lines around her eyes, which showed she was worried.

"Started three weeks back. We found one of our sheep torn apart in the field. At first, we thought it was wolves, but..." She swallowed. "The way it was killed... There was no blood. Drained. Not like a wolf feeds."

Another farmer nodded in agreement.

"The same goes for my land. Two goats, killed on different nights. It's always the same: throats torn, blood drained, and the rest of the body left behind."

"And it only happens at night?" Velmira spoke in a calm and composed way, even though she felt a cold shiver run through her body.

"It's always night," Gareth confirmed. "We've posted watches, but this thing is clever. It goes to different farms, but never the same one twice in a row. By the time we arrive, it's gone."

"Any tracks?"

"There is," Marta said. "But strange... It's not like a wolf or anything I recognise. It has four legs, but its paw prints are wrong. It's too big and the claws are too long."

Not another vampire, then. Ugh. That was impressive. But it was still a blood-drinking predator, and Velmira was just there by chance.

Or was it?

The timing seemed wrong, but she couldn't see how the two things were connected.

"I'll need to see the sites," Velmira said. "The most recent kill, if possible."

"It happened last night," Gareth said. "There's a farm in the north, about two miles out. We can take you after you've eaten—"

"I'm not hungry."

The words came automatically again, and Velmira saw the same suspicion on many faces. Normal people ate breakfast. This is especially true for people travelling regularly, especially after they have had a good night's sleep.

"Are you still not feeling well?" the innkeeper asked, sounding doubtful about her earlier excuse of feeling unwell.

"My condition," Velmira said firmly. "I eat lightly in the evenings. I've learned to manage."

"Convenient condition," Marta said quietly.

Before the tension could escalate, a small voice piped up from the corner.

"Are you really a mage?"

Everyone looked at the child. Her mother, standing nearby, tried to make her be quiet, but the girl carried on, moving forward with a child's fearless curiosity.

"Elara, don't bother the lady—"

"It's all right," Velmira said, surprised at her own words. She got down on her knees, making herself the same height as the child. Elara's eyes were wide and brown when she was up close, and they showed that she was feeling amazed rather than afraid. Children are not yet taught to be suspicious. She had not learned to trust the feeling that told her something was wrong when they looked at her.

"I am," Velmira said gently. "A mage. Yes."

"Can you do magic? Real magic?"

"Elara," her mother warned, but there was less force in it now.

Velmira looked at the adults, then back at the child. A demonstration would help people believe her and might make some of the suspicion go away. It would be a small, harmless thing.

She held out her hand and concentrated, trying to cast one of the easiest spells she knew. In Yggdrasil, it had been a way to create a certain atmosphere, something roleplayers would use. It would be used for something different here.

"[Lux Noctis]," she whispered.

The spell activated instantly. A small sphere of pale blue light appeared above her hand, swirling gently and casting soft shadows on the faces of those watching.

Elara gasped with delight.

"It's beautiful!"

Marta's eyes narrowed. The farmers stepped back quickly.

"No staff," Marta said slowly. "bare-handed casting."

Damn. She had forgotten. In her previous observations of magic in this world, even simple spells required an assistant — a staff, a spell book, some kind of magical tool to channel and shape the mana. Her Yggdrasil magic worked in a totally different way.

"Different traditions," Velmira said, dismissing the spell. The light went out. "I studied in... distant academies. Eastern methods that focus on internal mana control rather than external tools."

It was weak, but she had no better option.

Marta wasn't convinced. "Eastern methods. Right. And these eastern methods teach you to cast without any tools, travel only at night, not eat like normal people, and look like something from a ghost story?"

"Marta." Gareth spoke in a way that made it clear he was worried, but he didn't disagree with what she was saying.

Velmira stood up and looked Marta in the eye.

"I said I'd help. If you'd rather I left—"

"No." Elara's mother spoke up, which surprised everyone. She put her hand on her daughter's shoulder to protect her. "If you can stop whatever's killing our livestock, we need your help. I don't care if you're strange. Strange doesn't mean evil."

"But that doesn't mean it's safe," Marta said.

"Three weeks of this," the woman said, her voice sounding angry. "We can't afford to lose any more animals. We were afraid to let our children play outside after dark for three weeks. If this mage can end it, I say let her try."

The other farmers seemed to agree quietly.

Fear was stronger than suspicion, at least for now.

Gareth let out a sigh. "Okay. We'll take you to the site. But understand, mage, we'll be watching you as much as we're watching for the predator."

"I'd expect nothing less," Velmira said.

They set out an hour later, a small group consisting of Velmira, Marta, Gareth, and two younger men from the army carrying spears.

It was a cold and bright morning, with frost still on the grass next to the road. Velmira kept her hood up, but the sunlight found her anyway, pressing against the Moonveil Cloak's protection.

The drain was constant but manageable. She could still function, walk, talk and fight if she had to. But she couldn't keep doing this forever. If she spent a whole day in direct sunlight, she would become weak and even vulnerable.

They didn't say much on the walk. Marta took them off the main road onto a smaller path that went between fields and pastures. Sheep were on the hillsides, watching the party go by. In the distance, Velmira could see the dark line of forest that surrounded Herzfeld, and beyond that, mountains rose against the northern horizon.

It's a beautiful country. It's peaceful. She could see why people chose to settle here, build their lives here, raise their children and grow old under these skies.

She would never get old. Never settle. She was always hungry, and this feeling made her feel even more unhappy.

"Here." Marta's voice stopped her thinking about her problems.

They'd reached a farm at the edge of the area that could be cultivated, where grassy fields gave way to rougher land.

A small stone house stood beside a wooden barn, both showing signs of hasty reinforcement — new boards on the doors, and windows shuttered despite the daylight.

A man came out of the building. He was grey-haired and bent over, and looked worn out.

"Captain. Marta. You brought help?"

"We brought something," Marta said noncommittally. "Show us."

The farmer took them to where a dead sheep was lying in the grass behind the barn. He covered the sheep with a sheet. He pulled back, and Velmira looked at the scene in front of her, trying to be calm and logical, ignoring the strong feelings she had when she saw it.

The sheep had been torn apart very quickly and efficiently. Its throat was badly cut, showing ragged wounds that suggested it had powerful jaws and claws. But the most surprising thing, the detail that made even the soldiers look shocked, was that there was no blood at all.

The wool around the wounds wasn't all tangled up with it. The ground beneath showed no pooling. The sheep's body was drained, emptied, as if something had consumed every drop.

Velmira knelt beside the carcass, examining the wounds more closely.

Her vampire senses picked up traces of the others' mana: a faint but real presence. This is not a natural way of killing for food. It could be something magical, but also something wrong.

"What do you think?" Gareth asked.

"The wounds are too clean," Velmira said slowly, thinking about what she could see.

"A natural predator—like a wolf, bear, or even a large cat—would leave more tearing and a mess. This is precise. And deliberate. Whatever did this knew exactly how to kill for maximum blood loss."

"So not wolves," the farmer said, his voice shaking slightly. "I told them. I told them it wasn't wolves."

Velmira stood up, brushing dirt from her cloak.

"The blood. Was it consumed at the scene, or..."

"It's gone," Marta said simply. "Every time there's no evidence, no proof. Like it evaporated into thin air."

It’s not evaporated. But they are absorbed and consumed completely. That suggested she had a magical way of digesting food, or something that was similar to her own vampiric nature.

The thought sent a chill through her.

What if there was another vampire? Or something worse?

"I need to see the other sites," Velmira said. "All of them, if possible. I'm looking for a pattern."

They spent the rest of the morning visiting farms and looking at places where animals were killed. There are three more sites, each of which shows the same exact brutality, the same complete lack of blood. Velmira thought about them, working out how far they were, what the land was like, and how close they were to the woods.

A pattern started to show. The attacks were in a circle, moving clockwise around the village's northern edge, and they always stayed within two miles of the forest. The creature — whatever it was — was smart, careful, and systematic.

By noon, Velmira was tired. The constant sunlight exposure, even filtered through the cloak, had made her more tired than she'd thought it would. She needed rest, shade, and — she felt sick just thinking about it — she needed to feed soon. She was hungry all morning, made worse by the effort and the sight of the blood-soaked carcasses nearby.

"That's enough for today," Gareth said, noticing how tired she was. "We'll go back to the village."

"No," Velmira said, holding herself up. "There's one more thing. Tonight, I need to be at the most likely target for the next attack."

"How do you know where that will be?" one of the younger members of the militia asked.

Velmira pointed to a farm that could be seen in the distance to the northwest.

"It's moving in a circle. The pattern shows that the next farm is this one. I'll wait there tonight."

"Alone?" Marta didn't believe it.

"I work better on my own. But you can position yourselves nearby if you want backup."

She looked into Marta's eyes.

"Trust me or don't. But this is how I hunt."

Gareth considered, then nodded slowly.

"All right. We'll be close, but we'll give you room. If you're wrong, if nothing happens—"

"Then we adjust. But I'm not wrong."

They went back to Herzfeld without saying anything.

The sun was starting to set, and Velmira felt the pull of the day slowly fade as the shadows grew longer. She'd survive the day, but just. Tomorrow, she should spend less time in the sun.

The village seemed busier than before. People were going about their daily lives as usual, not letting fear control them. Children played in the square, with adults watching them. A blacksmith's hammer hit an anvil. There was a delicious smell of bread baking somewhere, and Velmira felt a strange mixture of hunger and aversion.

She couldn't eat bread. They couldn't eat anything that they had produced with their own hands. But she could smell it and remember the taste of it.

Elara appeared out of the blue, as children do, running up with her cloth doll held tightly in her hand. Her mother called out to her, but Elara was already speaking.

"Have you found it? The monster?"

"Not yet," Velmira said, kneeling down again even though she was tired. "But I will. Tonight."

"Will you kill it?"

The question was asked directly, without any fear of the idea of death. Just curiosity about whether the scary thing would go away.

"If I can," Velmira said honestly. "If I must."

"Good." Elara looked at her with her serious brown eyes. "My mum says you're strange, but not bad. I think she's right. You have kind eyes."

Kind eyes. Crimson, slitted, predator's eyes. But to this child, they were kind.

Velmira felt something crack in her chest, some wall she'd been building since arriving in this world.

"Thank you, Elara," she said. "That means more than you know."

"Elara!" Her mother had caught up, out of breath and saying sorry.

"I'm sorry, she just runs off—"

"It's all right." Velmira stood up and took a moment to gather herself. "She's brave. That's good."

The woman hesitated, then said quietly:

"Kill it. Please. Whatever it takes. We're all afraid, but we're pretending not to be. For the children."

"I understand."

When she got back to her room at the inn, Velmira fell onto the bed, feeling the sunlight drain her energy. The Moonveil Cloak had worked, and it had given her the mobility she desperately needed, but it had come at a high price.

She had perhaps four hours until dusk.

Now is the time to rest, so that she can recover and prepare for tonight's hunt.

But first, she needed to find food.

It had been getting worse and worse, made worse by the sight and smell of blood, even blood that had gone stale on the sheep carcasses. She was losing control, her body's instincts getting stronger the longer it went on.

She couldn't hunt humans. She wouldn't. That was the one thing she would never do, no matter how much her body wanted her to.

But animals...

Velmira remembered the fox from yesterday, how easily she could have fed back then. She'd resisted out of pride, fear, and denial. But that was a silly thing to do. She wasn't human anymore. She needed blood to survive, to stay in control, and to protect these people from whatever animal was attacking their farms.

If she was going to hunt a monster tonight, she needed to accept what she had become.

The thought still made her feel sick. Still felt like surrender.

But Elara's face was still in her mind. You have kind eyes, the child had said.

She wanted to be seen as a good person. She wanted to be something other than what she looked like.

And monsters didn't make themselves crazy because they thought it was the right thing to do.

Velmira got up from the bed and went to the window. The afternoon sun was less strong and warmer. In a few hours, she would go to the farm, wait for the predator, and do what needed to be done.

But first, before dusk, before the hunt, she would go into the forest and feed.

Not on humans. Never on humans.

But enough to maintain control. Enough to be trusted around people like Elara who saw kindness instead of threat.

Velmira closed her eyes and felt ready to do what she was about to do.

Sometimes, to survive, you had to compromise.

Sometimes being the protector meant embracing the predator.

And sometimes the line between monster and guardian was thinner than anyone wanted to admit.

End of Chapter 3