The fire had already reached the granary.
Flames clawed at the wooden beams, bleeding smoke into the winter sky. Screams scattered through the night as villagers fled across the frozen fields, clutching children and whatever they could carry.
Rayne Alareth did not run.
She stood at the edge of the chaos, cloak snapping like dark wings in the wind, her eyes fixed on the treeline where shapes moved against firelight. Too fast, too quiet.
Not men.
Something worse.
The air stank of ash and iron as the first figure stepped from the smoke, tall, pale, eyes burning silver. A blood oath mark glowed faintly across its throat.
Crimson-bound.
Vampires of the old order, long thought broken after the war.
Rayne's finger curled, magic whispering under her skin. She had sworn not to use the old spells, not after what happened to her coven...but this was no time for restraint.
"Rayne!" Someone shouted behind her. Tomas, the village reeve. Young, terrified, clutching a rusted sword. "You have to run!!"
She didn't answer because another vampire had joined the first, then a third, a fourth....six in total circling the burning fields like wolves closing in on prey.
Rayne raised her hand, the spell circle answered, searing itself into the frozen earth at her feet. Blood lit veins spread outward in a perfect spiral, the runes older than the empire itself.
The vampires hesitated, one laughed, low and cruel.
"Little witch," it said. "Your kind died with the Ashen court."
Rayne's voice was steady: "So they keep telling me." Then the circle ignited. Light burst upward like a storm unleashed. The nearest vampire screamed as the spell wrapped around its body, flames tearing through flesh and bone. The others leapt back, hissing.
"Leave," Rayne Said.
They didn't. The second one charged and the night exploded into blood and fire. The second vampire hit the ground in pieces before it realized it was dying.
Rayne lowered her hand slowly, smoke curling from her fingertips where the spell had burned through her skin. The old power demanded blood and it didn't care whose.
The remaining four circled warily now, silver eyes glinting in the firelight. These weren't the feral kind she'd seen raiding border villages years ago. No, these were trained, bound by something older than kings.
One of them stepped forward, lip curling over blackened fangs.
"You carry Ashen Blood," it said. "The court will want you alive."
Rayne's smile was sharp. "They'll be disappointed." She slashed her palm open and flung the blood across the circle. The earth answered.
Runes blazed red-hot, thorned vines erupted from the frozen soil, wrapping around the vampire's leg before it could leap clear. It screamed as the vines dragged it down, spikes punching through pale flesh, then snapped its spine in a single wet crack.
The others hesitated now, even the bold one, but their hunger outweighed caution. Two attacked at once, moving like streaks of shadow through the smoke.
Rayne whispered a word she hadn't spoken since the night her cove burned. A word that made the wind itself recoil. The ground split beneath the charging vampires, a wall of flame soared upward, swallowing them whole. Their shrieking screams echoed through the night before fading to ash.
When the fire died, only one remained.
It stared at her for a long moment, something like fear flickering across its features. Then it turned and vanished into the burning woods.
Rayne stood alone in the smoking field, blood dripping from her pal,, magic still crackling in the air like distant thunder. She hated using the old power. It always left the world too quiet afterward.
But tonight, she had no choice.
Behind her, Tomas approached cautiously. His sword still shaking in his hands. "What... what was that?"
Rayne didn't look at him her gaze was on the treeline where the last vampire had fled.
"A warning," she said softly. "They're coming for more than blood."
The wind carried the last embers into the trees.
Rayne bound her bleeding palm with a strip of linen torn from her sleeve, the copper scent of blood mixing with the smoke curling off the ruined granary.
Behind her, the villagers crept from hiding, mothers clutching children, men carried buckets of water too late to matter. Faces pale, eyes hollow, the living counted themselves in silence while the dead cooled on frozen earth.
Tomas approached again, this time holding a scroll sealed in black wax. "This came before the attack," he said, voice trembling. "A messenger left it at the well and vanished into smoke."
Rayne frowned. "Messenger?"
"No horse," Tomas added. "No footsteps in the snow. Just this."
Rayne took the scroll carefully, the seal bore no crest she knew; only a broken crown pierced by thorns. She cracked the wax, the message was written in red ink that shimmered faintly like wet blood.
Daughter of Ash,
The hour turns.
The Hunt awakens.
The Vale remembers.
Come before the next moonrise... or it begins without you.
Rayne read the words twice before folding the parchment with steady hands.
The Vale
She had not heard its name in years, not since the night her coven burned, not since the Ashen bloodlines vanished into legends. The empire had erased that history for a reason.
Tomas shifted nervously. "What does it mean?"
Rayne looked towards the eastern woods where the last vampire had fled. Her voice was low, "it means I can't stay here."
She turned to him, already moving towards the stables. "Hide the children. Fortify what's left. When the moon rises again, this place won't be safe!!"
Tomas grabbed her arm. "Rayne, where are you going?"
She pulled free, eyes on the dark horizon. "East," she said. "To the Vale of Beasts."
And she didn't look back.