New Calendar, Year 1453, October 23rd.
The border mining town, Black Gallows.
Just three days ago, this place still barely wore the disguise of a town of the living.
The withered wooden sign at the street corner swayed precariously in the wind, and smoke rose from the grocery store right on schedule. Carrying wooden buckets, clutching ledger books, or squatting by the stone steps, the townspeople went about yesterday's routine, entirely unaware of their impending doom.
Now, the disguise was no longer necessary.
The streets were paved with semi-coagulated blood.
The coal dust and muddy water between the cracks of the stone slabs had long been squeezed empty, revealing bare, dense blood vessels.
They slithered out from cellars, warehouses, night-watch posts, and the bases of abandoned gallows towers, surrounded by writhing clumps of dark red flesh.
The plaza in the center of town had collapsed downward.
The open space once used for parking ore carts and caravans had been hollowed out into a giant pit, its bottom embedded with a heart as massive as half a clock tower.
Beneath a translucent blood membrane, dark red liquid surged violently with every pulse.
With every beat of the giant heart, the blood vessels spreading across the town contracted in unison. The glass bottles hanging beneath the eaves rattled together, their deep red liquid sloshing and causing the entire street to tremble.
Thump.
A dense, dark crowd of people stood along the roadside.
Miners, accountants, children, night watchmen, carriage drivers who hadn't had time to escape, and the adventurers who had gone missing earlier.
Their eyes were wide open, yet there was not a shred of color left in their sockets.
Slender red threads pierced the sides of their necks and wrists, tangling as they wrapped around shoulders, torsos, and ankles before finally plunging into the vascular network in the ground.
They were like rows of fleshy wind chimes hung by the Blood Nest, utterly silent.
Thump.
Amidst the dead silence, only the dull heartbeat remained.
Boot heels ground against the slick stone slabs.
Vampire Duke Claire paced along the edge of the giant pit.
Dressed in a dark formal suit and a black-and-red short cape, he tapped his silver cane against the ground with measured weight, never letting a single speck of filth touch him.
The steward, Eno, followed half a step behind him.
Even while walking through a pool of blood, the steward of Black Gallows kept his cuffs meticulously neat, his demeanor respectful as if he were accompanying an honored guest to inspect a newly swept manor—even though what lay beneath their feet was a shallow pool of crimson blood.
Claire stopped before the giant heart and looked toward the other end of the plaza.
The crowd lined up from the street entrance all the way into the depths of the mine.
The blood threads pierced through their backs, sorting these materials neatly into column after column based on age, physique, whether they had received training, and whether they could still cry out.
The arrangement was impeccably neat, a clear testament to the steward's painstaking efforts.
“Are all the preparations complete?” Claire asked.
Eno bowed.
“Yes, Your Grace,” Eno replied, his voice warm and steady. “Every usable commoner, miner, defective adventurer, and former night watchman within Black Gallows, along with the distress-call baits we sent out three days ago, has been integrated into the blood threads. During the day, they are collectively guided by the Blood Nest, and at night, they are loaded into the Moon-Shading carriages. I guarantee they will not be vaporized for nothing by Solitude's moonlight on the journey.”
“At your command, these commoners can be deployed at a moment's notice.”
Claire didn't reply.
He simply looked down at the massive heart.
Thump.
The heart boomed.
With every beat, the throat of a commoner by the roadside would twitch, their survival instinct being forcibly awakened within their dilapidated husk.
“Send all of them to Silvervein City,” Claire said, a trace of satisfaction in his voice. “To where the Hero is.”
Eno raised his head.
While looking up wasn't a direct offense, doing so before the Duke was still a breach of etiquette.
“All of them?” A flash of astonishment crossed Eno's eyes. “Your Grace, is it truly necessary to commit resources on such a scale? It is merely the Hero...”
Claire turned his head.
His gaze held no anger, only a faint trace of mockery.
Eno's back instantly stiffened.
“You have never seen a true Hero,” Claire said coldly.
Eno hurriedly lowered his head. “This subordinate misspoke.”
“No, you have simply committed the same foolish mistake most vampires make.”
Claire raised his cane, pointing the tip toward the distance beyond the plaza. At the horizon of his gaze, the gallows towers lit up with crimson one by one, and the malice that had slumbered beneath the border for so long began to awaken, layer by layer.
“Black Gallows is not the only Blood Nest,” the Duke's voice drifted into the night mist. “There are at least dozens of others nearby. Mining towns, warehouses, abandoned outposts, severed trade route hubs... Every single one of them has people hanging just like this.”
“We need them to be able to cry, to scream, and to desperately stretch out their hands for help when the Hero passes by.”
“This is also why we must control these mortals instead of turning them into blood slaves, which would be far easier to manage,” Claire's lips curled slightly. “Only then will the Hero stop.”
“She will go to save the first, the second, and the third person. She will have to judge who can still live, who must die, who is merely forced to reach out, and who is begging her to run. We will distract her, waste her time, and force her into agonizing dilemmas because she cannot save everyone at once.”
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