You can never leave the past behind. Remembering where you come from, and where you’ve walked, it matters. It shapes you. But it isn’t enough. Intention. Aim. Ambition. How you arrive, that’s what they remember.

Long before the dawn of man, members of a marauding ectoparasitic species, were lost in the furthest reaches of the cosmos. Their vessel knifed through a distant galaxy, encountering a storm of stone, an asteroid field, and the warped tide of a black hole.

Life is fragile, its parts, more so. Our world hangs on a delicate balance, an ebb and flow of birth and death, cycles repeating like breath. We crown ourselves apex, convinced our tools and fire secure dominion over nature.

After learning hard lessons in Stone Age Europe, Ezath travelled along migration routes, landing where a large human population had gathered around 7000 BCE, on the lands that would become Ancient Greece.

Under cover of night, Ezath and her Underlings left Rome, it’s fiery glow a wound on the horizon. They set their sights north, chasing rumors of cities richer and safer than what was behind them. But none of it proved true.

One of the great indicators of a true predator, is the ability to stay hidden, even in plain sight. Some wear the world as camouflage. Big cats striped and spotted to break their outline. Sharks shaded dark to light so the sea cannot read them.

Smoke and burnt flesh clung to Elizabeth’s breath. Her world had once again been leveled, this time by her own blood. Anger surged. Rage boiled. Wrath filled her mind.

Sailing along westerly winds, the beauty of night unfurled like a shimmery satin banner across the sea. Rah couldn’t help but look out in awe at the astonishing creations on this Earth, it quieted him.

For all Rah’s desire to vanish from the wider world, contact with humans was a cost he couldn’t escape. The business from his plantation had to be large enough to sustain his growing family, while also providing protection with what was happening behind the fortified walls of the estate.

A human’s brain is wired for routine, we face ingrained psychological behaviors, and have difficulty overcoming emotions. In other words, change is hard. The saying "A tiger can't change its stripes”, goes beyond inherent nature, to one’s character, especially those with a proclivity for bad.

Before we go further, a correction to the record. The twentieth century, through religion and popular culture, has painted Vampires in colors that don’t hold. Here’s what’s true.

Earth’s rotations around the sun, were long, hard days to early humans, but passed quicker than the blink of an eye for Anu. He had no purpose, no mission, no subordinates, only the recognition that this miserable world would be where he’d eventually die.

For more than six millennia, Anu lived comfortably among the Egyptians as a god. But the world turned and by the early first century, Egypt was a Roman province, though remained very much as it had been prior to the conquest.

Conquest is about force and domination. Subjugation and acquisition. Hostile in nature, deliberate by design. You don’t build an army by accident. You don’t consolidate power overnight. 

Devastated and angry, Anu slipped northeast, beyond the Mongol reach, into the cold margins of Russia. What followed was new to him, grief, humiliation, a loneliness that felt like insult.

For years Keiko and Suzu stayed on the run, stalking the night. Keiko, still unsure what she’d become, used her new strengths for survival, money taken from those she fed on, safer rooms, warmer clothes, a better life for her growing child.

By the late 1700’s Keiko and Aya had survived in the hush between centuries, shadows among shadows. They still felt Anu’s presence somewhere in the world, a cold pulse in the dark.

Time slipped by without answers or mercy for Ren. His body and mind were ready to be ferried to the afterlife, but death wouldn’t come for him, no matter how much he begged. Instead, he languished in bed, a shell of his former self...

Newly born as a Vampire, Renmaru the samurai, could feel a different pulse to the world. Strength flooded back to him, his senses flared like lanterns in a storm. Thoughts around him brushed his mind, voices he could mute or overhear at will.

Three bodies existed together, clustered, bound by origin and mission, yet divided in spirit. Three philosophies. Three perspectives. Three reasons to break apart.