Traces in the Dark

Traces in the Dark


We moved in silence, five of us in total. Malek ahead, his heavy boots crunching frost-bitten soil. Rylan to his right, ever watchful, his hand never far from his blade. Garron, the oldest of us, brought up the rear, muttering prayers into his beard as though each word might keep him alive. And me, walking somewhere in between, my steps quiet, my mind heavier than the pack on my back.

The Sentinel Circle always looked stronger when we marched like this, but inside I knew what we were. Not warriors. Not hunters. Just men who refused to stop asking questions, even when the answers burned.

The forest opened wider the deeper we went, the tall pines bowing overhead, their needles dripping with mist. Every now and then a crow cawed, breaking the silence. No one spoke, and I was grateful for it. My thoughts had no room for chatter.

We had been following Rylan’s lead since first light. He claimed he had seen something unusual out here the night before, and I trusted him enough not to doubt. His eyes had always been sharper than the rest of ours, his instincts frighteningly precise.

“Here,” he whispered finally, raising a hand. We stopped, boots sinking into the soft loam.

I stepped forward, squinting at the earth where he pointed. My heart gave a strange lurch.

The soil bore impressions, not deep enough to be from a bear or stag. Long, almost elegant tracks, with a weight to them that spoke of a creature both graceful and dangerous. The prints led north, weaving like something that did not fear being followed.

Malek crouched low, spitting to the side before tracing a finger along the outline. “Not animal,” he muttered. “Too clean. Too… deliberate.”

Rylan nodded. “Not human either. Look at the stride. Too long. Too steady.”

Garron crossed himself, his whisper too low to catch, though I knew the prayer. I had whispered it myself once, years ago, when I found the body of a shepherd drained white as snow, throat bearing two perfect punctures.

I forced my jaw not to clench. “Vampire,” I said, voice even.

The word hung in the cold air like smoke. Malek scoffed, but his eyes betrayed the flicker of unease. “You sound too calm saying that, Tracy. Like you were expecting it.”

I didn’t look at him. If I did, he would see more than I wanted him to.

Rylan ignored the remark and moved a few paces forward. “There’s more.” He crouched again, brushing pine needles away to reveal a smear of something dark against a stone.

I stepped closer. Blood. Old enough to be thick, but not black. My stomach tightened as I leaned in. The smear wasn’t random. The lines curved deliberately, forming a symbol etched into the rock itself, painted with the blood of… something. Or someone.

A circle crossed with jagged lines, like a sun broken into shards.

“Their mark,” Garron rasped, his voice trembling. “The old ones spoke of it. The Broken Sun. It means they’ve claimed this place.”

Malek swore under his breath, backing up slightly. “We shouldn’t be here. Not without more men.”

I kept staring at the symbol, the air around it colder than the rest of the forest, as if it carried its own shadow. My pulse should have quickened, but instead, a strange calm settled over me. This was confirmation, not revelation. Proof of something I had long suspected.

Rylan stood, his face grim. “There’s more. Up ahead.”

We followed in silence, each of us more wary now, the stillness of the woods pressing hard against our ears.

The next clearing we reached stopped us cold.

Arrows jutted from tree trunks, their shafts blackened, their tips jagged like teeth. Some were broken, as if pulled from flesh in haste. Scattered among the leaves were scraps of cloth torn and stiff with dried blood.

The ground was gouged, churned by a struggle. A fight had happened here, one violent enough to strip bark from the trees.

Malek picked up one of the arrows, turning it over in his broad hand. “Not ours,” he said. “No fletcher in Tipet makes arrows like this.”

“They’re carved from ash wood,” I added quietly, fingering one still embedded in a tree. “Old tradition. I’ve read of it. Hunters used them long ago… against things not meant to walk the earth.”

Rylan’s gaze slid to me, sharp and questioning. I kept my expression flat. He had always been too quick to notice what others missed.

“Someone fought them here,” he said instead. “But who?”

No one answered. The silence itself felt heavy with the question.

I knelt, brushing aside a pile of leaves. My fingers grazed something cold. I pulled it free.

A pendant, its chain snapped. The charm was small, round, etched with another sun. But this sun was whole, unbroken, unmarred. A symbol of warding. A symbol of someone who knew what hunted these woods.

“They were prepared,” I murmured. “Whoever they were.”

Garron swore softly, retreating a step. “This is cursed ground. We should leave it be.”

But Malek’s eyes gleamed with the dangerous light of obsession. “No. This is it. Proof. The Circle was right all along.” He spun toward me, his grin wide and terrible. “You see it, don’t you, Tracy? We’re standing in the middle of it. Vampires. They’re here.”

I met his gaze, steady. “I see it.”

What I did not say was that I had seen it long before now. That none of this surprised me. That a part of me had been waiting for this moment, for the Circle to stumble upon evidence undeniable, so the path ahead would finally take shape.

Still, the dread in my gut grew. Because if vampires were staking claim so close to Tipet, it meant the village was no longer on the edge of danger. It was already inside the mouth of it.

Rylan crouched again, touching the soil where the tracks led away. “They moved north after the fight. Into the deeper woods.” His voice dropped. “Toward the river.”

The river. My chest tightened. That was close to Ree’s path when she came into town. Too close.

Malek barked out a laugh that had no humor in it. “So we follow. What better way to prove our worth than to bring back the head of a bloodsucker?”

Garron glared at him. “And what if we don’t come back at all?”

“Then at least we’ll die knowing the truth.” Malek’s grin widened.

I said nothing. Because truth was not what frightened me anymore. It was what the truth demanded.

I traced the pendant with my thumb, the metal still cold despite being buried in the leaves. Someone had fought here. Someone who knew what they were fighting. And someone who likely died for it.

The wind shifted suddenly, carrying a scent faint but unmistakable. Iron and decay, sharp enough to sting the nose. My stomach twisted.

Rylan’s eyes snapped to mine. He smelled it too.

“Blood,” he whispered.

For a moment, no one breathed. The forest was still, too still. Then a crow shrieked overhead, flapping away as if disturbed by something we could not see.

Malek reached for his sword, but his bravado faltered for the first time. Garron began muttering again, his prayer breaking like fragile glass in the silence.

I closed my fist around the pendant, my mind already racing. If the vampires were here, so close, then every step we took mattered. And Ree—Ree could not be caught in this storm.

Yet I could not steer the Circle away now. Their hunger for answers had already taken root, and nothing I said would turn them back.

So I steadied my breath and spoke. “We mark the place. We follow carefully. And we do not draw attention.”

Rylan nodded. Malek frowned, but he obeyed. Garron only shivered and pulled his cloak tighter.

As we moved again, deeper into the woods, I felt the weight of a hundred unseen eyes pressing down on us. The symbol of the Broken Sun lingered in my mind, as did the dying words of the man in the marshes.

The Watcher sees her.

And now, with every step north, I wondered if it was not Ree the Watcher saw… but all of us.