Clank. Clank. Clank.

  The surviving Knight's footsteps faded into the distance.

  The Knight he'd beaten to death lay sprawled across Norton's charred corpse, his body a dead weight. The wooden stake had gone deep—deep enough that blood still seeped from the ruined eye socket, thick and slow.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  The blood pooled inside the helmet, then trickled through the gaps, falling onto Norton's chest.

  Right where the stake was buried in his blackened flesh.

  Drop by drop, the blood seeped into the wound, flowing along the wooden shaft and penetrating the crevices of his charred tissue.

  On his back, where the stake's tip protruded? Nothing. No blood. No movement.

  The mass grave fell silent again. Just two bodies dumped on a pile of refuse. Nothing else.

  But not for long.

  Sssss...

  A sound like flesh writhing, almost too faint to hear. But if you'd had a sound detector, you'd have traced it straight to its source.

  The bodies.

  Look closer. There—a tremor. Barely visible.

  Not both bodies. Just the one underneath. Norton.

  The stake pinning his chest was wedged tight beneath the Knight's weight. But the vibration? That came from the stake itself.

  Something inside Norton's charcoal shell was pushing outward. Straining against the wood. The Knight's armored body held it in place, so the stake just... shuddered. Vibrated.

  For an ordinary vampire, that resistance might have been fatal. Interrupted transformation meant death.

  But Norton wasn't ordinary. Norton was the man who'd been burned alive.

  The trembling intensified. His flesh was too brittle, too roasted—it couldn't hold. Behind him, the charred meat of his back crumbled away in little flakes.

  CRACK.

  A crisp sound. The skin split along his spine. The gap around the stake widened. The wooden shaft tilted. Slid. Finally flopped sideways, embedded uselessly in his flesh.

  The Knight's body settled lower, pressing harder. More blood poured from the helmet into the wound.

  And more blood meant more power.

  Inside his chest, organs that should have been ash began to soften. Regain moisture. The gaping wound in his sternum started to close—not healing, exactly, but becoming... pliable.

  The pressure inside him built. His flesh pushed against the stake until it slid free entirely, expelled from his body.

  Blood kept flowing in. His body responded. The withered arm that had snapped off? Still gone. But his remaining limbs, shriveled and black, began to swell. Fill out.

  Hhhhhkkk.

  A sound like something waking. His lips, fused together by the fire, tore apart.

  His right arm—half its normal size moments ago—twitched. Then moved.

  Crackle. Crackle.

  Slowly, agonizingly, he bent his elbow. Blackened skin flaked away, revealing slick, pale muscle beneath.

  Without waking, without consciousness, his arm reached up. Found the Knight's body. Gripped the armor. Pulled.

  SNAP. Three fingers broke off, too weak to bear the weight. They hit the ground like burnt twigs.

  But he'd moved the Knight's head close enough. Close enough to reach.

  The corpse shifted. More blood welled from the wound, thick now, coagulating. It dripped through the helmet's vent.

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  Drip. Drip.

  Into Norton's open mouth.

  The smell of it—even unconscious, even dead—drew him. His desiccated head tilted up, pressed against the cold steel. His jaws worked against the helmet. Chewing. Gnawing.

  If dogs could live off dirt, vampires could live off blood. A few drops were enough. His mouth softened first. Then his eyes.

  And then—

  Norton opened them.

  They were clouded at first. Unfocused. But they saw. His right hand, nearly restored to normal size, found the Knight's helmet. Gripped it.

  Creeeak...

  The Knight's neck bones popped. Strained.

  SHLORCH.

  The helmet—with the head still inside—came away in his hand.

  He tossed it aside without looking.

  --- (Some things are better left undescribed.) ---

  The charcoal figure pushed the headless body off his chest. Skin flaked away with every movement, falling like ash.

  He wasn't awake yet. Not really. But he stood anyway, in that strange, lurching way of things that shouldn't be upright.

  Where his body had broken, new tissue was already forming—pink and raw against the blackened shell around it. The contrast made him look pieced together. Wrong. His stance was uneven, half-crippled by the remnants of his burnt flesh.

  Norton drifted through something that might have been sleep. Might have been death. Just darkness. No thoughts. No discomfort. No time.

  Then—awareness. Like rising through water.

  He opened his eyes. Really opened them this time. Standing in a mass grave. Bones everywhere.

  Disorientation. Then memory. Flooding back.

  "Fatherrrr..."

  The sound tore from his throat, rough and low and wrong. A croak. A prayer. A curse.

  The last moments played behind his eyes. The sword. Mia's face. The words.

  Oh.

  Oh, right.

  I must have been burned to charcoal.

  "I have sinned, Father..."

  Norton's eyes cleared, the fog lifting from his mind.

  "I'm a vampire now?"

  He stared at his right hand—still transitioning from shriveled charcoal to something resembling flesh. The memories of his death, combined with everything he'd read over the past two days, clicked into place.

  Well. That's one way to survive.

  There was something almost... wondrous about it. He'd known vampires existed—the books made that clear—but actually becoming one? That was different. Like stepping into a fantasy novel and finding the pages coming alive around you.

  "Truly, the Lord works in mysterious ways. Father."

  He watched his hands regenerate. Felt something strange stirring in his body.

  No time for self-reflection.

  He needed to move. Now. Before more Church Knights showed up.

  The Church had spent centuries studying vampires. They'd have methods. Sure, he didn't know how that Knight had died, but he knew one thing: two of those armored bastards showed up together, and he was done for.

  Run first. Questions later.

  Norton stripped the dead Knight's armor and pulled it on. It hung awkwardly—these guys were built bigger—but it covered his half-desiccated body and gave him at least some protection.

  "Father... I'll be back."

  His clouded eyes fixed on the city one last time, pure venom in that gaze. Then he turned and vanished into the treeline behind the mass grave.

  Norton held a grudge.

  Father Mia?

  Oh, he was going to pay.

  ---

  Whoooosh...

  The north wind howled, rattling the wooden shutters of a small livestock shed. The old joints groaned and creaked with every gust.

  Darkness filled the shed. Inside, a cow lowed in pain—something was feeding on it, tearing into its flesh.

  "Please, sir! Please! That's our last cow! You can't take her!"

  An old man's voice, cracked with desperation, came from outside. The answer was a Church Knight's armored boot, slamming into his chest.

  "Get lost!"

  Church Knights didn't waste kindness on peasants.

  The kick sent the old white-haired man sprawling, blood welling from his lips. A young girl's scream followed.

  And inside the shed? Something stirred. Noticed.

  CREEEAK—BANG!

  The shed door flew open. Wind rushed in. The cow's moaning cut off abruptly.

  Darkness still filled the space, but now there was breathing. Heavy. Low. Like a dog's, but wrong.

  "Werewolf!"

  The Knight at the door shouted the warning the moment he heard it.

  Torches flew into the shed, chasing back the shadows, revealing what hid inside.

  A cow lay on its side, flank torn open, organs mostly gone. Crouched beside it, a creature covered in black fur, muzzle long and narrow, eyes reflecting firelight.

  Classic werewolf. One of Central Europe's foundational monsters, right up there with vampires.

  Norton had read about these in that last book. The monster manual.

  Same origin story: God's... experimental phase. But vampires came from dead bodies. Werewolves? Born from she-wolves.

  Sometimes—no one knew why, the Church's best scholars couldn't figure it out—a wolf would give birth to one of these instead of a normal pup. Theologians called it divine mystery. Biologists called it "we have no fucking idea."

  Werewolves were born as hybrids. Wolf and human, merged into one creature. Wolves raised them, so they had no humanity—just pure, undiluted wildness.

  Like wolves, they could theoretically be tamed. Unlike wolves, they couldn't shift forms. They were just... wolf-monsters. With perks: rapid healing. Freakish strength.

  Call them beasts and you'd be exactly right.

  The key difference: werewolves were alive. Breathing, eating, shitting creatures. Vampires? Stuck between life and death. Undead. Everything else—werewolves, harpies, sea serpents—just fauna. Strange fauna, but fauna.

  The firelight hit the werewolf. It screamed—a horrible, keening howl.

  OWWWWOOOO...

  It dropped low, muscles coiling, then launched itself at the feeding window.

  "Cut it off!"

  The Knight who'd spotted it charged into the shed, greatsword raised.

  The werewolf moved like prey—fast, desperate, pure animal instinct. Its body was solid, seven feet nose-to-tail, packed with muscle. It hit the window like an arrow.

  And met a greatsword swinging down.

  SLASH.

  No mid-air dodging. It twisted, took the blade on its hind leg instead of its skull.

  YELP!

  The scream went high and sharp. The sword bit deep—these Knights hit like freight trains—and sheared through bone. The leg hung by strips of fur and sinew.

  But it was out. Free.

  OWWWW!

  It hit the ground outside, three-legged, snarling at the Knight in the window. The severed leg pumped blood, but even as it bled, the wound started knitting. Slow, but visible. Given time, it would regrow.

  These Knights didn't give time.

  Three more of them, outside, already moving. They closed like wolves themselves—no hesitation, no fear. Just cold, professional violence.

  The wind picked up, howling across the clearing. Rain coming soon.

  The werewolf saw them coming. Tried to run. Three legs or not, it could move.

  THWIP.

  Something punched through its chest from behind. Not an arrow—a hooked bolt, trailing rope. The barb caught on bone.

  YOWL!

  Agony. Pure, blinding agony. And the knowledge, somewhere in that animal brain, that there was no escape now.

  It turned. Fought.

  The nearest Knight went down under its charge, two hundred pounds of muscle and rage slamming into plate armor. The werewolf's jaws gaped wide, drool and stench pouring out as it bit down on the helmet.

  SCRRRRAAAPE.

  Teeth scraped steel. Sunk in. Through the metal—this world's iron was impure, soft—into the flesh beneath.

  Crunch. Crunch.

  The Knight screamed inside his helmet. Blood welled through the gaps.

  But the werewolf's chest was open. Exposed. The Knight beneath it had driven his greatsword home.

  More hooks bit into its flesh. The other Knights closed in, greatswords rising, falling.

  CHOP. CHOP.

  The werewolf's howls became whimpers. Became nothing.

  Rain started to fall.

  ---

  The Knight on the ground wasn't moving. His helmet was crushed, face unrecognizable beneath the dented metal. Blood pooled around his head, mixing with mud and fur.

  The other Knights stood over the werewolf's twitching body, breathing hard.

  "Check him."

  One Knight knelt, touched the fallen man's neck. Shook his head.

  Nothing to be done.

  The wind shifted. Somewhere in the darkness, beyond the clearing, beyond the treeline—

  Movement.

  The Knight who'd survived looked up. Stared into the forest.

  Nothing there. Just rain and shadows.

  He turned away.

  Deep in those shadows, a figure in dented armor watched. Watched the Knights drag bodies, gather their dead. Watched until they were gone.

  Then Norton melted back into the trees.

  Father Mia.

  He'd find a way.

  ---

  The werewolf's corpse lay where it fell. The Knights had taken their dead comrade. Left the monster.

  Hours passed. Rain washed the blood away.

  Sometime after midnight, the body twitched.

  Fur rippled. Bones realigned. The massive form shrank, contracted, reshaped itself.

  Where the werewolf had been, a naked man now lay in the mud. Pale. Gaunt. Alive.

  He opened his eyes. Stared at the sky. Said nothing.

  Then he too rose, and walked into the forest.

  The same forest where a newly risen vampire had disappeared just hours ago.