When people mention Romania, a lot of them immediately think of the famous Count Dracula. The image comes from Dracula, published in 1897 by the Irish author Bram Stoker, and the historical inspiration is Vlad III of the Principality of Wallachia—better known as "Vlad the Impaler."
The Polish writer didn't go missing at Vlad III's castle. The disappearance happened at a medieval military stronghold even more remote than that place. Compared to the well-maintained "Dracula's Castle" tourists flock to, this one was nothing but crumbling walls and ruins. The mountain road was hard to navigate, and you needed local villagers to point the way.
Andrei felt something was off about the village at the foot of the mountain. The villagers all seemed a little slow, a little dull, like people who'd never really been exposed to the outside world. The guide and translator sent by the Romanian government told the Human Union Department's elites that the abandoned castle had seen almost no visitors before the twentieth century, and the locals refused to let outsiders go near it.
But these days, the world was full of people chasing spooky mysteries, and even a sealed-off mountain village now had tourists. The missing Pole had reportedly gone to the castle alone. Official search-and-rescue teams hadn't found a single trace in the mountains, and the villagers insisted the man had probably been taken by vampires.
Andrei was both angry and scared to be stuck with a rotten assignment like this. It was Christmas, he couldn't go home, and instead he had to run around in the mountains looking for a missing tourist. He felt this should've been a simple disappearance case—except some backwoods gossip about vampires had somehow escalated it into a mission that required sending in a "witcher" like him.
Besides the Human Union Department's special operations squad, there were also a few tourists in the village who planned to winter here.
Andrei recognized one of them: a talkative Englishman who introduced himself as Eldred Worple, a short man with glasses. Shadowing him like a ghost was his inseparable friend, Sanguini—a man with unnaturally pale skin and heavy dark circles under his eyes.
When Eldred heard they were going into the mountains to look for the missing Polish writer, he volunteered to lead the Human Union Department's people.
"I'm friends with Andrzej Sapkowski, too—the missing guy. We're both writers."
Andrei's head was already a mess. One missing writer was bad enough. If this loud, carefree Mr. Worple got himself killed as well, it would be an even bigger nightmare. And more importantly—Andrei didn't even want to go into the castle himself, so why would he want to drag civilians along?
Eldred just smiled, completely unsurprised by Andrei's refusal. "Hey, Andrei. You're a witcher, right? You must know a lot. Tell me—what kind of opponents do you usually deal with?"
Andrei made things up on the spot: drowners, swamp horrors, noonwraiths—ridiculous nonsense pulled from folk tales across Central and Eastern Europe.
"Heh. The missing Pole talked about those too."
"Did he? Maybe he was a witcher as well," Andrei said, suddenly interested. As a fantasy fanatic, he still had genuine respect for writers like that.
After that, they talked nonstop. Mr. Worple had a silver tongue, spinning stories from everywhere as if he could pluck them out of the air, and he kept letting slip little details about the magical world that left Andrei utterly enchanted.
By the end, Andrei somehow got talked into it. Despite objections, he took Eldred and Sanguini along. The two of them knew the mountain trails well enough to replace the local guides.
They took advantage of a break in the snowfall and reached the mountain castle before nightfall.
The castle's heavy, towering gate was shut tight. Funny thing—the stone walls of the entire fortress were cracked and crumbling, yet the wooden doors still looked strangely intact, as if they'd been cared for.
The door was bolted from the inside. Nobody knew how the missing Pole had gotten in, but his belongings were scattered outside the castle.
The special ops squad were sharp, capable soldiers. With grappling hooks, they scaled the wall easily, then cracked open a gap in a side entrance—wide enough for people to slip through.
That was when Eldred suddenly spoke. "Andrei. Listen to me. Would you all stay here from this point on?"
"Why?"
Sanguini, looking sickly, answered instead. "Muggles can't enter here."
Andrei couldn't help himself. "Why not? And you just said Muggles—so this place is a wizard's home?"
Eldred's expression turned serious. "No. Wizards don't live here. A vampire clan does. Every fifty years, they gather here for a meeting. The villagers down the mountain are either their servants—or vampires pretending to be villagers."
"And if we go in, what will they do?"
"Treat you like a very generous Christmas dinner."
Andrei felt his skin crawl. He was a fake master, and now he cracked immediately. "If that's true, why didn't you say so earlier?! This changes everything—bad intel. We can't proceed with the mission. I'm calling headquarters and waiting for instructions."
The special operations commander clearly had no intention of following Andrei's decision. He ordered his soldiers to tie Eldred and Sanguini up with rope, then forced the "witcher" into the castle along with them.
Like Dracula's fortress, this stronghold was built on a narrow mountaintop, so it was small. You could tour the entire place in under an hour. There weren't many rooms, and dust lay everywhere in thick layers.
They swept it using hostage-rescue tactics. Not only did they fail to find any vampires—they didn't even find a single rat.
Andrei was furious and disappointed, and he resented Eldred for lying.
The Englishman didn't argue back. He just stared at his companion. Sanguini lifted his head to the sky. It was a moonless night; the sun was about to set. Ink-black clouds piled high overhead, their edges stained blood-red by the dying light.
In the castle courtyard stood an ancient well, leading down to a cistern.
When the sun fully vanished, a cold glow shot up from the mouth of the well—then a massive swarm of bats burst out after it.
They circled over the castle, shrieking in a way that set everyone's nerves on edge, like a loud, restless cloud.
Then the vampires appeared—dropping out of the bat swarm into the courtyard.
Andrei regretted everything. The vampires surrounded the Muggles in a tight ring. The soldiers raised their guns and tried to fight back, but long, narrow ice spikes thrust up from beneath the snow and pierced their bodies from below. The pain forced even those battle-hardened war machines into agonized howls, and they wouldn't die quickly.
"Sanguini!" The vampires seemed to recognize Eldred's friend. "Haven't seen you in fifty years. How've you been?"
They greeted one another warmly, polite and refined. If you ignored the screams of the people skewered through the body, the scene would've looked almost normal—like distant relatives reuniting for the holidays.
Because Andrei hadn't shown obvious hostility, he was spared for the moment, but the situation was still dire.
Eldred asked, "Friends, do you remember me?"
"You're Eldred? Slughorn's student—yes, yes, you're fairly well-known around here."
"Look at all this food you've brought in," Eldred said. "Could you let a few go? My friends aren't ready to die here."
"And if I say no?"
Somehow Eldred slipped free of his ropes. A wooden stick—no, a wand—was in his hand. Andrei's eyes went wide. This man was a wizard!
"Listen," Eldred said. "The Statute of Secrecy has already fallen apart. If you don't want Muggles swarming this place, you'll be reasonable. And hey—my friend here is a professional witcher. He knows how to deal with you. Don't make him angry. And right now… he's already very angry."
Andrei was panicking inside, but he still put on a vicious expression—like a wannabe mob boss trying to act tough in a cheesy action movie.
"A witcher?" The vampires' faces darkened. "Those bastards who tried to ruin our noses with garlic!"
"WTF!" Andrei went numb. "I'm actually pretending—do you believe me?!"
Then they got attacked anyway.
"Run, run, run!" Eldred didn't abandon them. He had Sanguini grab Andrei, and the three of them sprinted out of the castle.
They stumbled down the snowy slope in blind panic, chased to a cliff's edge by the bat swarm—when they suddenly saw a cozy tavern sitting in the snow as if it had always been there. From inside came waves of gentle, drifting music.
"Should we go inside and hide?" Andrei gasped, barely able to breathe.
Eldred could tell something was strange about the tavern. "Yeah. We're going in."
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