Chapter I - The Rats and the Halo
The rats had been warm when he skinned them.
That was what lingered with Petyr — not the blood, not the small delicate bones that yielded so easily beneath his careful hands, but the warmth. It seeped into his palms and refused to leave, as if reminding him that life had been present only moments before.
He worked beneath the cathedral, in the low crypt where stone sweated and candles burned without draft. The air smelled of limestone, incense ash, and fur. Hooks lined the walls in solemn rows. The vampire priests insisted on order in all things — even vermin must be prepared beautifully for the Blood Moon.
Precision was devotion.
Petyr’s fingers were deft despite the tremor that sometimes took them. He removed each pelt in a single patient motion, careful not to tear. The skins would be burned as part of the Vigil. The flesh would be offered in shallow silver basins at the altar.
It was an honour to serve.
That was what they had told him.
He whispered it to himself now, though he was unsure whether he believed it.
“It is an honour.”
His voice echoed faintly in the crypt. It sounded smaller than he remembered.
Above him, the cathedral groaned — not with wind, but with anticipation. The Blood Moon would rise tomorrow. Its pull was already felt in the marrow. A slow tightening. A low hum behind the teeth. Hunger, sharpened. Petyr pressed the back of his wrist to his mouth, he had once crossed himself before meals; now he drained vermin in preparation for something far grander.
When the last rat lay prepared, he gathered the silver tray and ascended the spiral stairs. Each step wound upward like a rib in some colossal stone beast. The candlelight flickered along the walls, illuminating faded frescoes — saints whose faces had been carefully altered. Halos blackened. Eyes rendered hollow. At the top of the stair, a narrow corridor led to his chamber.
He paused before entering, the door bore no lock. None were needed.
Inside, his cell was spare: a narrow bed draped in dark linen, a washbasin, a cracked mirror mounted above a small writing desk long unused. A single candle burned near the window, its flame steady. Petyr set the tray aside and approached the mirror. For a moment, he did not recognise himself.
His hair — still gold.
It shone in the candlelight like beaten metal, bright and almost holy. It framed his face in soft waves that caught the glow, creating the illusion of a halo. The elders despised it. They did not say so outright, but he saw the way their gazes lingered on it — not with admiration, but with impatience, they said it mocked them; said it resembled the halos in old frescoes before the cathedral was claimed. Petyr touched it in the cracked mirror of his cell.
“I am not worthy,” he whispered.
The gold was the last visible fragment of humanity clinging to him, but his eyes, they were the worst. Crystal grey, clear as winter sky. Untouched. Not yet clouded to the pale, milky white that marked full surrender to the Blood. The priests had called it sacrilege. “Such purity,” one had murmured, tracing a gloved finger beneath Petyr’s eye. “It mocks what you are becoming.”
Petyr leaned closer to the mirror.
“I am not worthy,” he whispered.
The words rose from somewhere old — somewhere kneeling and candlelit and small. He did not know whether he addressed God or the elders. Perhaps both.
A knock came at the door, three measured taps.
He turned at once and bowed his head as Father Iosef entered — one of the vampire priests. His vestments were deep crimson embroidered with black thread that formed thorned sigils across the chest. The fabric seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.
“It is time to vest,” Iosef said.
Petyr inclined his head.
“Yes, Father.”
The priest regarded him for a long moment. His gaze lingered on the gold hair.
“You understand what tomorrow signifies?”
Petyr swallowed.
“The shedding.”
“The fulfilment,” Iosef corrected gently.
Petyr nodded.
Father Iosef approached with folded garments draped across his arms. He laid them upon the bed with reverence.The robe was ivory satin, luminous even in dim light. Delicate lace climbed its sleeves in patterns resembling cathedral arches and branching veins. Gold thread shimmered along the hem in looping script — prayers rewritten into something darker.
Petyr removed his plain linen shirt. The air kissed his skin, cool and expectant.
Iosef helped him into the robe, adjusting the shoulders, smoothing the fall of fabric down his torso. The satin whispered with every movement. When the priest drew the robe closed, Petyr felt it — the weight of it. The inside lining brushed against his skin.
Crimson. Always crimson within.
“White without,” Iosef murmured, fastening the clasp at Petyr’s throat. “Red within. Remember that.”
Petyr nodded again. He felt like an altar dressed for sacrifice.
“Tonight you will keep vigil,” the priest continued. “You will not feed.”
The word struck sharper than he expected.
Not feed.
“Yes, Father.”
“Hunger clarifies obedience.”
With that, Iosef stepped back.
“You will be summoned when the bells toll.”
The priest left without further word.
Petyr remained standing in the centre of the room, the satin heavy around him.
Through the narrow window, the sky was darkening toward violet. He approached and looked out.
The Cathedral of St. Nathadriel rose in full view.
Its spires cut into the sky like spears. Gargoyles crouched along the parapets, their stone wings folded in perpetual tension. The stained glass windows caught the last light of day, flickering faintly as if lit from within. The coven had begun to gather in the courtyard below.
They moved in slow, deliberate clusters. Silks and velvets in obsidian, garnet, and deep indigo shimmered in torchlight. Pale hands brushed shoulders. Fingers lingered at wrists. Heads inclined close to share murmured words that made lips hover just shy of skin.
It was not frenzy. It was anticipation. The Blood Moon demanded elegance.
Petyr’s breath fogged the glass; he watched as a pair near the fountain drew closer, foreheads touching in what might once have been a prayer. One tilted their head, exposing the elegant line of throat. The other’s hand traced the pulse there — slowly, thoughtfully — before withdrawing.
Not yet. Everything waited.
A low vibration rolled through the stone beneath Petyr’s feet.
The bells did not ring. They thrummed with unholy fervour.
The sound was felt rather than heard, resonating through bone and blood alike. It gathered in his chest, in his teeth, in the hollow behind his eyes.
His hunger stirred in answer. He closed his eyes.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have—“
The thought faltered.
“For I have what? Desired? Obeyed? Survived?”
He no longer knew which were sins. The thrumming deepened, Petyr opened his eyes again and looked toward the horizon.
The edge of the moon had begun to rise, even partially obscured, it glowed an unnatural red — swollen, luminous, as though lit from within by some internal wound.
Tomorrow night, beneath its full gaze, he would kneel at the altar.
He would confess. He would drink. And he would change.
His golden hair would darken strand by strand until no trace of halo remained. His grey eyes would cloud, losing their clarity to something pale and ancient. The last softness would be stripped away.
He pressed his palm flat against the glass.
“It is an honour,” he whispered again, more firmly this time.
Below, the cathedral doors opened, candles flared within, one by one, until the nave glowed like the interior of a heart. The coven began to move toward it in slow procession.
Petyr straightened. Tomorrow, he would not watch from a window, tomorrow, he would walk among them. The bells thrummed once more, deeper now — like a heartbeat not his own, and in the reflection of the glass, framed by crimson sky and candlelight, Petyr’s golden hair gleamed like something already half remembered.
