Dead Den

A month had passed, and the Batory family had left the Kingdom of Risorgo for good.

They had left me with an irreversible responsibility.

Before their departure, they had warned me that I had one month before the child would come for me and eventually take my life.

I devoted myself to preparing for the inevitable encounter with my would-be killer.

The child that was never meant to be born was known as a Dhampir, a being created through the union of a human and a vampire.

According to the texts I had studied, Dhampirs were considered the most dangerous of all vampires.

They were unstable, possessing strength far greater than that of ordinary vampires, particularly those who had been turned through a bite. And the only way to kill a Dhampir was to pierce its heart.

For the next few weeks, I trained relentlessly for the moment I knew would eventually come.

Yet no matter how much I prepared during the day, my paranoia continued to grow at night. Eventually, I even began dreaming of Ranavalona.

As the days passed, my nightmares became increasingly disturbing. With each passing night, the child assumed a more grotesque form.

Then, as the month drew to a close, more and more disappearances plagued our kingdom. Countless citizens vanished without a trace.

At last, we discovered where they had gone.

Bloodstains had been found near a mysterious entrance deep beneath the kingdom.

The entrance had been sealed shut. How anyone could have opened it and then secured it so tightly remained a mystery.

Beyond it lay the remnants of the kingdom my ancestors had conquered, the very land upon which Risorgo had been built.

My child was behind that entrance.

I knew the time had come.

I gathered the strongest knights and warriors in my kingdom, assembling an army of more than three hundred men to accompany me.

Together, we forced open the entrance. It had been sealed with extraordinary strength, and I could not help wondering how powerful my child had become. Hundreds of civilians had disappeared, and all of it had been the work of a single Dhampir.

We ventured into the hidden caverns.

The only sounds were the crackling flames of our torches, the clinking of steel against stone, and the rustling of our armour as we walked. Each step echoed through the darkness, accompanied by the uneasy breaths of men who could barely conceal their fear.

Blood trails stretched along the ground, some fresh, others old. They had been there for so long that it seemed the horrors within these caverns had begun long before we ever discovered them.

We continued deeper underground, as though we were descending into Hell itself.

Eventually, we reached the main chamber.

The place was far larger than I could have imagined. It was bigger than my castle—no, bigger than the kingdom above us. It was as though an entire world lay hidden beneath the earth: an abandoned town, an abandoned city, an abandoned kingdom.

This was the kingdom that had existed before Risorgo.

Yet I had never imagined that its ruins could be found so far beneath our feet.

At its centre stood a castle unlike any I had ever seen. Its walls were blackened, resembling the remains of something consumed by fire, and the entire structure stood upside down.

The chamber was dark, but the magma flowing beneath us cast a faint orange glow across the ruins.

That light revealed the fate of the missing citizens.

They hung upside down, their bodies pale and withered, resembling rotten fruit that had been squeezed dry. Every trace of blood seemed to have been drained from them.

Suddenly, one of my knights called out to me.

When we turned around, we realised that most of our men had already disappeared.

We had entered the caverns with more than three hundred knights and warriors.

Now, only twenty of us remained.

Before we had even reached our destination, I had lost almost the entire army.

There could be no doubt.

It was my child.

The Dhampir was here, and it had already begun preying on us.

We drew our swords and raised our shields, forming a circle in preparation for an attack.

Then, without warning, we heard a sudden squeal from somewhere behind us.

Before I could react, something struck me, sending me tumbling over the edge of a cliff.

I fell into the abyss.

My body slammed against the ground below, sending unbearable pain through every part of me. I tried to move, but my limbs refused to obey. My left leg was broken, and I could barely draw breath.

All around me, I heard the echoes of my knights screaming.

Their cries were filled with terror and agony.

I tried to stand, but the pain was too great. With what little strength remained in my arms, I began dragging myself across the ground.

Yet I knew there was little point.

All three hundred of my men were gone, and I was in no condition to escape.

Whatever had pushed me over the cliff had rendered me helpless.

My child had already chosen its target.

And I had the dreadful feeling that, even now, it was watching me from the darkness.

Unfortunately, I was right.

As I lay there, struggling to catch my breath, I heard footsteps approaching.

Small footsteps.

Slowly, I raised my head.

And there it was.

Even standing directly before me, the creature’s appearance was difficult to comprehend. Its skin was pale, almost colourless, and its tiny body unmistakably resembled that of a baby.

Yet I still could not determine its gender.

I stared at the creature in disbelief.

I could hardly accept that something so horrifying was my own child.

Before I could utter a single word, I heard its voice.

It was a strange sound, a mixture of male and female voices, as though two different beings were speaking through the same mouth.

Then, it spoke the first and last word I would ever hear from it.

"FATHER."