“Come here, Avram. Watch this faithful man as he carves our Patron. A saint’s hand must be steady, just as yours must be. The carving is not just wood—it is protection. Trust in your strength, for this work is as much a prayer as any word ever spoken in the church.”
I step closer to where my father stands, overseeing a peasant with nervous eyes who is carefully carving the wooden image of Saint George, the dragonslayer. I am but seven years old, but my eyes grow wide, and a chill runs down my spine.
"But Papa, if he finds..." I start, but I am quickly cut off.
"Son," my father says, his voice firm but gentle, "we are men, not cattle. Even though we are treated as such, we must be brave. Brave men, like the saints themselves. Like our Lord Himself. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Papa," I reply, though the weight of his words is heavy on my young heart.
The peasant’s hand, trembling with fear, hovers over the carving knife. My father places his large, calloused hand on the man’s shoulder, steadying him.
"Fear not," my father says, his tone softening but still strong, "I am your master, and I am responsible for this, not you."
The peasant sighs faintly, his trembling ceasing as he continues his work, carving the saint’s image with more confidence.
My gaze shifts from the peasant to my father. In him, I see a man who protects, who leads, and who never flinches from the weight of responsibility, no matter how heavy. A stirring rises within me—a longing to be as strong as he is.
Because at night, when the darkness presses in and the nightmares rise from the very evil that pervades these lands, I tremble. I shudder at the thought of what we face, of what lurks in the shadows, always just beyond reach. If it weren’t for my father’s strength, I don’t know how my mother, my sisters, and I could bear the terror that haunts us each day.
The year was 1878, and the lands of Transylvania lay heavy under the shadow of its cruel master. Though the wars of empires raged far beyond its borders, the villages here remained frozen in a grim silence, as if time itself feared to tread upon the cursed soil. The Carpathian Mountains loomed on the horizon, their jagged peaks tearing into the sky like the teeth of some ancient beast. Deep within those mountains, veiled in mist and fear, stood Castle Dracula—a black heart at the center of our world.
It was here, in this land steeped in both beauty and terror, that my family and I eked out a meager existence. We were the Albescus, a poor boyar family clinging to what little remained of our ancestral lands. While the great nobles of Hungary, Austria, and Germany feasted in gilded halls, our days were filled with toil. My father worked the soil beside the serfs, his hands as calloused as theirs, his back bent under the weight of duty. We were isolated, cursed by proximity to the castle that none dared speak of openly. The other nobles kept their distance, fearing the wrath of its master, leaving us to bear the brunt of his dark dominion.
Our village was small, no more than a thousand serfs scattered among the decaying cottages huddled around the ruins of an abandoned church. The church bell, once a call to faith, now lay silent, rusting under the weight of neglect. The priests had long since fled, leaving only my father to act as both guide and shepherd to the people. They looked to him for strength, for leadership, and for hope in a land where hope was a rare and precious thing and courage was lost.
And so, we endured. Day by day, we lived under the unspoken truth that Dracula did not seek to destroy us. He did not need to. We were his cattle, his to feed upon when he wished. He allowed us to till the soil, to plant and harvest, but no more. Surprisingly, the lands remained fertile, yielding abundant crops that the peasants toiled to grow. The grapes from these fields once produced wines that were renowned and highly prized. Yet, the bounty of our harvests and the richness of our vintages served a grim purpose. The majority was seized to sustain those he had enthralled—taken from among us to serve our dark lord—leaving us with barely enough to scrape by and survive. Anything beyond that—a shred of prosperity, a hint of rebellion—would bring swift and terrible retribution.
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It was in this world that I, Avram Albescu, was born. A boy of seven, too young to truly understand the weight of the curse upon our land, yet old enough to feel its chill in the marrow of my bones. I knew only that my father, strong and steadfast, was our shield against the darkness. And in his shadow, I dreamed of strength. I dreamed of courage.
My father, Petru Albescu, hailed from a once-proud and powerful line of boyars, a family steeped in the ancient traditions of honor and loyalty. Unlike many of the boyars who betrayed Vlad Țepeș in his mortal days, our ancestors remained steadfast. That loyalty spared them when Dracula rose as master of these lands. In his own twisted sense of nobility, the dark lord granted our family his favor—not out of kindness, but out of respect for our fidelity to him in life.
Yet, such a cursed honor came at a terrible cost. Dracula's shadow hung heavy over us, isolating our family from the rest of the Romanian nobility. The other houses feared to associate with us, seeing us as tainted by the dark lord's favor. No noble would dare offer their daughters in marriage to my father’s house, nor would they accept my sisters as brides, despite our lineage being one of the oldest and once most esteemed in the land.
It was clear to all that our once-great name would not survive. The Albescu line, which had weathered centuries of war and bloodshed, now stood on the brink of extinction—not by the sword or plague, but by the suffocating weight of Dracula’s curse. I was too young to understand the depth of this tragedy, but even then, I could feel its inevitability pressing down upon us. My father bore that weight in silence, but I knew it pained him deeply to see our legacy slipping through his fingers.
I looked away from my father and the peasant carving the saint. The sun hung low in the sky, casting a golden light over the worn fields surrounding our home, where my mother, Ana, stood in the doorway watching father with a quiet pride. Her dark hair was streaked with silver, but her presence was commanding, her faith unshakable. She was as strong as the mountains that framed our land, a woman born of noble blood yet shaped by hardship. She had faced the deaths of two sons and the daily terror of living under Dracula’s shadow, yet she never wavered. She was the heart of our family, and I often thought that without her, even my father might crumble.
Inside the house, my sisters went about their routines. Maria, the elder, was the mirror of our mother. She carried herself with confidence, her voice firm and reassuring as she helped prepare the evening meal. There was a natural ease to her movements, a strength that belied her youth. She was the one who held us together when my mother faltered, though that happened rarely.
In stark contrast was Liliana, of my two elder sisters, she was the youngest. Pale and delicate, she sat near the hearth, her thin hands twisting a strand of thread nervously. Her wide eyes darted to every shadow, as if expecting something terrible to emerge. Liliana had never been strong, neither in body nor in spirit. She relied on our mother and Maria to keep her steady, and without them, I feared she would slip away into her own fragile mind.
I was the only surviving son. Two brothers had come before me, but both were taken by sickness before their first steps. My mother often said I was their hope made flesh, the one who carried the future of the Albescu name. At seven years old, I did not yet understand the weight of such words, but I knew this: I wanted to be like my father, a man who stood unshaken against the darkness.
A sudden wave of dread overtook me, gripping my heart with an icy hand. My eyes turned instinctively toward the mountains, to the place where he lived. In my short lifetime, I had felt this dark premonition many times before, and each time it had heralded calamity.
Demonic forces would slip into the village under the cover of night, stealing away young girls and boys to be sacrificed in the unholy rites of the castle. Or to be mercilessly trained up as the enthralled servants of the monster himself and his lieutenants. At other times, the dread preceded a pestilence—a cruel plague sent from that cursed place to cull our numbers when they grew too great. The sickly elderly and the weakest of the children were always those to perish. My two brothers, taken as infants by such a plague, were amongst them.
That is why my father sought the carving of the Holy Saints. He knew of no other way to protect the defenseless. The wooden images of the saints became wards of power, scattered and hidden throughout the village and its surrounding buildings, a fragile line of defense against the demons that roamed these lands.
This time, the premonition struck me with a force unlike any I had ever known. My knees nearly buckled beneath its weight. Never before had I felt the shadow of doom loom so heavily over us as I did in that moment.