Episode 40: Dark Era
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. The only human he’d ever cared for had rejected him, and he hated the ache almost as much as the man. In the quiet between feeding he faced older failures too, never the commander his father had imagined, never the heir to that military legacy. Fury and despair hardened into a sharp edge.
He took to the coast. Along the inlets, feeding with purpose and without pause. Two, three, four a night, more dead for no reason but the pleasure of ending them. Villages posted lookouts, burned watchfires, carved wards into doorframes, nothing slowed him. The years stacked into a ledger of extinction as he drifted further and further north. Along bleak beaches, culling people, livestock, anything that lived within reach. This was the start of his dark era, three-centuries long beginning in 1228, an unbroken campaign of unquenchable appetite and death.
The stalking shadow of Anu - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
By 1501 he had stepped into Japan, carrying his winter with him. His aggression changed shape but not the result, coastal hamlets vanished, fear traveled faster than boats, and temple bells rang to no avail. The overindulgence in blood made him intoxicated and that helped him forget.
Working his way through the island nation in 1525, while in the war-torn city of Kyoto, a single act of violence lit a fuse that would slowly burn all the way to Anu's ruin -- and eventually bring down the rest of the world’s vampire population.
While having already fed several times that night, Anu was “blood drunk”, seeking to take out his despair on another human. On a cedar path on the city’s fringe, he attacked a prostitute and her client. Mid-feed, a figure stumbled onto the scene...Keiko, a village outcast, who had once been attacked, raped, and left with a shattered body and a child. Nearly destitute, she supported herself and her young daughter Suzu as the town’s laundry maiden. Day and night, mother and daughter would slave away, scrubbing clothes to be delivered by first light. Limping down the path, Keiko, on her way to deliver a bundle of clean laundry to the local Shogun, met the monster.
Keiko, the laundry maiden, circa 1525 - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
Anu lunged, inebriated by blood and slower than he knew. Keiko fought back with a dagger she kept for protection. In the struggle she drove the blade into his neck, and was drenched, in his blood, accidentally consuming some. Anu reeled and retreated into the trees, too wounded to pursue. Keiko, bloody and shaking, staggered home and collapsed as the change took hold.
The next day, as night fell, Keiko was awoken from her long slumber, by her daughter Suzu -- who was panicked that something was wrong with her mother, as someone knocked at their door.
Suzu tries to wake her mother - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
SUZU: Mother, wake up. Please...
Keiko’s eyes fluttered open.
KEIKO: Get off me, child--
SUZU: You’ve been asleep all day, I’ve been trying to wake you…Mother, the blood?
She looked down, kimono soaked, memory snapping back to the cedar path (knocking continues).
SUZU: They’ve been knocking for several minutes.
MAGISTRATE (O.S.): This is the Magistrate, open up at once.
He came to question Keiko about the murders. A trail, blood and footprints, led from the bodies straight to Keiko’s shack. Wearing more evidence of the crime, the bloody dagger in her possession, Keiko’s pleas about a pale man in the dark changed nothing. They bound her and hauled her away.
They took her to an unkept graveyard for criminals. Lean stones, wind in the grass. They forced her to kneel among faded markers. She was to be put to death, buried alive with the two she was believed to have killed.
Keiko among the tombstones - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
KEIKO: I did nothing wrong. I swear it.
MAGISTRATE: Two bodies in cold blood. Flesh consumed. What kind of monster are you?
KEIKO: I stumbled onto the crime. I struck back at the one who did it. I defended myself.
MAGISTRATE: The woman’s throat was torn out. Part of her belly, eaten. The man, decapitated.
KEIKO: I didn’t do that. I couldn’t!
MAGISTRATE: Bring her forth, I want her to see what she’s done.
Marched towards the bodies, Keiko, trying to formulate her defense, but something else took hold...The sight of dried blood pulled at her. Nostrils flared. Pupils went wide. A tremor ran through her hands. Head bowed, eyes shut, attempting to hide from the pain...
The smell of blood in the air - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
Then, her mouth opened, brandishing sharp fangs...When she looked up, her eyes were hollow black. She ripped free from her restraints.
MAGISTRATE: She’s gone mad! Kill her!
His Dōshin rushed her, unsheathing their swords...Keiko met them with claws they never saw -- one hack, one slash, and both fell in pieces to the dirt. The magistrate ran. Keiko was faster. She seized him under the crescent moon, dragging him back and sinking her teeth into his throat. Her first true feeding.
Back at the shanty, Suzu wept alone. A gust of wind moved the candle, a shadow climbed the wall. She turned, and there in the doorway stood Keiko.
SUZU: Mother!?
After feeding, Keiko’s skin glowed radiant, her limp was gone. She seemed to glide as she crossed the room.
SUZU: The magistrate said you killed people, and you would die for it.
KEIKO: I’m right here, my child.
They’d reunite in a warm embrace, though Suzu could tell her mother was different.
Mother and daugther reunited - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
SUZU: What happened on the path last night?
KEIKO: An Oni hurt those people. It came for me. I cut its throat.
SUZU: You killed a demon?
KEIKO: I don’t know...But no one will ever hurt us again. I promise.
Wielding a power she never fathomed possible. No maker to teach her, no name for what she’d become. Keiko and Suzu fled into the night, mother and daughter, a Vampire and a child -- learning as they ran.
TO BE CONTINUED…