Bloodbound Under the Black Banner

I turned twenty‑one on the same night the bells rang from the old chapel. They hadn’t rung in decades. Everyone in the village froze when the sound carried across the fields—slow, iron‑heavy tolls that made the air feel bruised. My pint glass slipped from my fingers and shattered at my feet. No one laughed. No one spoke. My mother stood so fast her chair scraped the floor like a scream. “It’s time,” she said. That was how I learned vampires were real. They took me past the boundary stones at the edge of the village, past the blackened oaks no one cut down, past the road that children were taught did not exist. The castle rose from the mist like a wound in the land—stone towers jagged, ancient banners hanging like flayed skin. Fires burned in cottages below it. A village of monsters. “They’re Viking stock,” my uncle muttered. “Old blood. Older than the pact.” The pact. Generations ago, our ancestors had agreed: selected villagers would feed the vampires so they wouldn’t hunt freely. Names drawn. Veins opened. Lives shortened but spared. “And now,” my mother said, gripping my wrist hard enough to bruise, “you belong to the list.” The gates opened without a sound. Inside the courtyard, something moved—too fast, too wrong. A man stepped into torchlight, tall and broad, his face carved sharp as a blade. His eyes weren’t red. They were black. He smiled, and I understood prey understands the moment before death. “You’re late,” he said. His voice scraped my bones. “I was promised a willing one.” I tried to scream. He was already behind me.