DRACULA: DARK LEGACY
Chapter 1: The Waking Cold
The silence in the crypt was not the silence of peace; it was the silence of a held breath.
Deep beneath the ruins of a forgotten citadel in the Carpathian Mountains, the air shifted. For three centuries, the dust had remained undisturbed. Then, a heartbeat—slow, heavy, and sounding like a hammer striking stone—echoed through the chamber.
“The darkness is awakening again,” a voice whispered, though there was no one alive to hear it.
Inside the sarcophagus, Keanu Reeves—or the man once known as Vlad Draven—opened his eyes. They were not the eyes of a corpse, nor the eyes of a man. They were two pits of burning amber, reflecting the sudden, violent surge of memory.
He remembered the fire. He remembered the screams of his wife and the sight of his kingdom being torn apart by the Order of the Silver Cross. They hadn’t just killed him; they had tried to erase him.
“They took everything from me,” he rasped, his voice sounding like grinding tectonic plates.
He pushed the stone lid. It weighed three tons, but it shattered under his touch. He stepped out into the moonlight filtering through a crack in the ceiling. He was lean, dressed in the tattered remains of a warrior-king’s regalia, his hair long and dark, his face a mask of sorrow turned to iron.
He looked at his hands. They were pale, veins pulsing with a hunger that gnawed at his very soul. He wasn’t a man anymore. He was a legacy of blood.
Chapter 2: The Neon Shadows
London, 2026.
The world had changed, but the shadows remained the same. Rain slicked the streets of the megalopolis, reflecting the neon blues and crimson reds of the advertisements hovering in the air.
Draven walked through the crowds, a ghost in a tailored black overcoat. People moved around him instinctively, a primal fear triggering in their DNA without them knowing why. He was hunting. The Order of the Silver Cross hadn’t disappeared; they had evolved. They were now Sanguis Global, a pharmaceutical conglomerate that controlled the city from a glass tower.
He cornered his first prey in a rain-drenched alleyway—a high-level security enforcer for the Order.
“Where is the girl?” Draven asked, pinning the man to the brick wall with one hand.
“You… you’re a myth,” the man gasped, reaching for a silver-edged blade.
Draven snapped the weapon like it was glass. “Now I take everything from them,” he whispered into the man’s ear. “You cannot run from what’s in your blood.”
With a flash of movement too fast for the human eye to track, Draven took what he needed—not just blood, but memories. He saw a laboratory. He saw a young woman strapped to a chair. And on her shoulder, a glowing, jagged birthmark.
Chapter 3: The Mark of the Prophecy
In the penthouse of the Sanguis Tower, Director Valerius looked at the monitors.
“She’s reacting,” a scientist said, pointing to a girl no older than twenty. Her name was Elena. On her skin, a mark shaped like a dragon’s tail pulsed with a faint, rhythmic light.
“She carries the mark,” Valerius murmured, his face turning pale. “The prophecy is real. If the Sleeper finds her, the veil between our world and the abyss will tear. Send the strike teams. Use the silver-tipped rounds.”
Back in the streets, Draven felt the pulse. It was a tether, pulling at his very marrow. He knew that mark. It was the same one his wife had carried the night she was murdered. This girl wasn’t just a stranger; she was the key to his resurrection—or his final destruction.
He stood atop a gothic cathedral, looking out over the futuristic skyline. The wind whipped his coat.
“I was once a man,” he said to the storm. “That weakness is gone.”
He didn’t care about the high-tech weapons or the private armies. He had the patience of the grave and the hunger of the void.
Chapter 4: The Midnight Siege
The extraction team arrived at the safehouse where Elena was being moved, but they found the doors already off their hinges.
The hallway was a gallery of carnage. No gunshots had been fired. It was silent. Suddenly, the lights flickered and died. In the strobe-like flashes of the emergency backup, they saw him.
Draven stood at the end of the hall. He didn’t run; he flowed. He was a blur of shadows and steel. Bullets passed through him as if he were made of smoke. He tore through the armored soldiers with a terrifying, rhythmic grace.
He reached the room where Elena cowered in the corner. She looked up, terrified, but then she saw his eyes. They weren’t the eyes of a monster—they were the eyes of a man who had lost his soul and was looking for a reason to find it.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
Draven reached out a hand. “The ghost of your past. And the only thing standing between you and the end of the world.”
Outside, the sirens wailed. Hundreds of tactical vehicles were surrounding the building.
Draven looked at the window. He could feel the sun beginning to move on the other side of the world, but tonight belonged to him.
“Let them come,” he growled, his fangs lengthening as he turned toward the door. “I have waited centuries for this night.”
