Part I: The Stranger at Midnight

~Crimson vows~

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The storm had not let up since sundown. Thunder rolled over the hills like drums of war, and lightning carved jagged veins into the sky. Elara stood beneath the weeping willow, her black cloak soaked through, hands trembling as they held a single blood-red rose. The grave before her was fresh—its dirt unsettled, like a wound that refused to close.

It had been one week since her sister's death. One week since the whispers in town had started, since the strange letters had arrived—unsigned, but stained with crimson wax and bearing a symbol she didn’t recognize. A serpent coiled around a rose.

"You shouldn’t be here,” came a voice from the shadows.

Elara, she turned sharply. A man stood a few feet away, barely visible under the black umbrella he held. He was dressed in an old-fashioned, tailored suit. No umbrella could hide the aura around him—dark, magnetic, and cold as the grave he stood beside.

"Who are you?" she asked, her voice steady despite her racing heart.

"I always visit the ones I love," he said, stepping closer. His eyes, a glacial grey, locked onto hers. “And your sister… she was dear to me.”

"You’re lying," she snapped. "You weren’t at the funeral. I would have remembered."

"Would you?" he tilted his head, a slight smirk forming. “Some memories are better left buried, Elara.”

He knew her name.

Her breath caught. "What do you want?"

The man glanced at the rose she held, then back at her. "I came to honor a promise. One she made. One I intend to keep."

Elara's fingers tightened around the stem. "What promise?"

Instead of answering, he knelt before the grave and whispered something in a language she didn’t understand. When he rose, the storm seemed to falter—just for a heartbeat—then raged on stronger than before.

“I’ll see you again soon,” he said, stepping backward into the mist.

“Wait!” Elara called, but he was already gone.

That night, she couldn’t sleep.

The house felt wrong—colder, quieter. As if something had followed her home. She lit a candle and walked down the hallway, heart thudding with every creak of the floorboards.

Her sister’s door was ajar.

No one had touched the room since the burial.

Elara stepped inside slowly, and froze.

On the bed lay another crimson rose, identical to the one she’d brought to the grave. Beside it, a note:

“The vow is bound in blood. Yours was never meant to be spared.”

Her hands shook as she dropped the note. Who was that man? What vow had her sister made? And why did it feel like she was being dragged into a story older—and darker—than anything she’d ever known?

Outside, thunder cracked like a whip, and in the flash of lightning, she thought she saw a shadow standing at the edge of the woods. Watching.

Waiting.

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