The engine roared like a wounded animal, echoing off the stone walls of the Carpathian Mountains. Alice cut through Romania's darkness, leaving behind the last trembling lights of civilization.
The winding road was more than a stretch of asphalt — it was a scar in the land, guiding her toward a place where time had stopped and rotted.
Inside the car, the heater fought against a cold that seemed to seep in from both outside and within. Alice kept her hands steady on the wheel, knuckles white.
Hatred throbbed at her temples, synchronized with the engine. Every sharp curve, every twisted tree caught in the headlights was another step toward vengeance against the Council.
But something else hung in the air.
A weight.
As she descended into the forgotten valley, the natural world seemed to shift. The nocturnal birds fell silent.
A flock of ravens — unnaturally awake at that hour — followed her, hopping from post to post, their black eyes gleaming like glass beads as they studied the intruder.
At an abandoned gas station, where she stopped only long enough to check the map, the wind whispered in a dead language. It wasn't just the weather — it was the land rejecting her presence.
When Alice finally crossed the invisible line that marked the Tomb's territory, the atmosphere grew suffocating.
The full moon, once hidden behind clouds, tore open the sky, bathing the jagged peaks in a silver, merciless glow.
Ruins of ancient watchtowers dotted the cliffs like broken teeth.
Alice stopped the car at the edge of a precipice. Before her, the valley opened into a deep, black throat. The mist below did not move.
She exhaled slowly, tasting metal in the thin air.
"I'm going all the way," she promised the void.
Then she accelerated again, plunging into the fog.
Flashback — The Battle of the Peaks, 1476
The sky over Wallachia was not black that night.
It was red.
Poenari Castle burned, though the flames did not consume the stone — only licked it with infernal tongues.
In the central courtyard, surrounded by the drained corpses of Ottoman and Wallachian soldiers, he stood.
Dracula.
In his true form, he barely resembled a man. He was a storm of shadow and fangs, laughing at the heavens, intoxicated by absolute power.
But he was not alone.
Walking fearlessly among the dead came a man clad in blackened silver armor, a crest of a raven clutching a ring engraved upon his breastplate.
Mathias Corvinus.
The First Hunter.
The Raven King.
Behind him, the Order of Corvinus — twelve elite warriors, warrior-monks sworn to shield humanity from the plague of night — formed a circle, chanting in ancient Latin, making the air vibrate.
"You are persistent, Corvinus!" Dracula roared, his voice shaking the stones. "Your army has fallen. Your allies have fled. What can one man do against a god?"
Mathias drew his sword, a blade forged from meteor iron and quenched in holy water.
"A man can bleed, monster. But a legacy… a legacy endures."
What followed was not a fight.
It was a cataclysm.
Dracula moved like smoke, striking with force enough to shatter ramparts. Mathias, however, fought with the precision of someone who had studied his enemy for decades.
He used polished silver mirrors to deflect shadow assaults, and flasks of consecrated Greek fire to drive the vampire back.
When Dracula prepared the final blow — ready to rip the hunter's heart from his chest — the twelve warriors of the Order triggered the trap.
Chains of golden light, summoned from the sanctified earth itself, burst from the ground and wrapped around the vampire's limbs.
Dracula howled, burning at the touch of sacred magic.
"This will not hold me! I am eternal!"
"And even the eternal can be buried," Mathias replied, advancing.
He did not use the sword.
From his back he drew a black stake, carved from the wood of the Hanging Tree, soaked in the blood of innocents to lure the monster's hunger.
With a cry of supreme effort, Mathias drove the stake into Dracula's chest.
The ground split.
Thunder rolled across the sky.
The earth — obeying the Order's ritual —swallowed the Lord of Vampires, dragging him into a crypt forged in the mountain's bowels, sealed with runes that would glow as long as Corvinus blood endured.
Before dropping to his knees, exhausted and mortally wounded, Mathias looked toward the sealed tomb.
"May the Raven watch over your sleep… and may it never end."
PRESENT
Alice opened her eyes, blinking away the vision of the past the blood-memory had brought her. The echo of Dracula's laughter still seemed to vibrate through the mountains.
The car could go no farther. The road ended in a heap of stone and ice.
Alice cut the engine. The silence that followed was absolute — and crushing.
She took the map Beth had drawn from the passenger seat. The inked lines seemed to tremble under her flashlight.
"Follow the ancient trails. When you feel the wind change, you'll know you're close."
Alice stepped out of the car. The cold was brutal, but she barely noticed it. Her skin burned, feverish with proximity to the source of power.
She began to walk.
The path was steep and treacherous, lined with dead trees stretching skeletal branches as though trying to seize her.
With every meter she climbed, the sensation of being watched intensified. Ravens tracked her from above — silent sentinels of the Corvinus Order.
Hours passed.
The darkness became almost solid.
Then, as she rounded a rocky slope, the wind changed.
It was no longer mountain air.
It was a glacial breath rising from beneath the earth, carrying the scent of ancient incense, rot, and raw power.
Alice stopped.
Before her, carved into the mountain's stone face, stood the entrance.
It was no natural cave.
It was a Gothic arch etched into living rock, coated with moss and ice, yet the Raven sigils still visible in the weathered stone.
Alice's dead heart gave a phantom leap.
She was there.
The air around the entrance tasted metallic, charged — like standing beneath a high-voltage line.
She drew a slow breath and slipped the map into her pocket.
"At last," she whispered, her voice rough.
But she was not alone.
She could feel it.
Hearts beating beyond the stone.
Human hearts — strong, disciplined.
Mathias Corvinus's bloodline was still standing watch.
Alice smiled.
A sad, dangerous smile.
The road had ended.
The massacre was about to begin.