[color=black][center][h3][color=black]Across the Graveyard[/color][/h3][/center][/color]

Long fingers of ivory ran across blemished, dark stone. With every stroke across the engraving of his family name, more of the past returned to Volkimir. He remembered the final battle, the sword struck in the heart of the ancient evil of this place. He remembered the storm, and he remembered the dawn. How much time had passed since Volkimir had made his final sacrifice. Indeed, he now remembered that he had died on the battlefield. By what power had he been resurrected to a world unfamiliar to him? And for what reason? Questions filled his mind in a torrent, very nearly blinding him to the danger at hand.

As the first ghoul approached, Volkimir was slow on his draw; he only managed to take off one of its arms with his sword. The blade sang in the air, its edge as sharp as winter. Volkimir swung the blade back around, dancing the bastard sword through his fingers as though it were no heavier than a reed. The second strike swept straight through the animated corpse, its bisected halves collapsing in a disgusting heap a moment after. As the rest of its kind approached, Volkimir gripped his sword, breathed slowly through his nose, and began the dance of death. Man and blade became one, an inseparable whirlwind of destruction. Volkimir had lost nothing from his unknown ages of blessed sleep, the very same saint of swordsmen that had been feared so very long ago.

When the killing stopped, the world fell silent once more, save for the final, deathly note hanging on the Bound Blade. Volkimir breathed as calmly as a man asleep, his unnatural body not warm enough to breathe clouds into the frigid air. Powder snow, stained with blood, drifted through the air like rose petals, carried by the steel breeze. Volkimir stepped out of his combat posture, standing straight. With a swift motion, he flicked the blood from his midnight blade, spattering it against the stone "Sturmkirk." It seemed that his homeland, and his very name, were still unclean.

Volkimir followed the lingering scent of death through the quiet, wintry wood. These undead monsters left queer tracks, difficult to follow, but the dread they carried was strong enough. The vampire happened across one or two more, quickly dispatched by his blade, but their trail was consistent with that of those that had attacked him. This forest was full of the horrors, which must have been attracted to Volkimir as he moved through the glen. Soon the forest thinned and Volkimir approached what he knew to be the lakefront. There was a settlement here, larger than a village but smaller than a city. Yet another sign of the world having grown unfamiliar to the vampire. Either millers or fishers, likely both, from what Volkimir could tell. Though he would be surprised if there were any left.

The graveyard, strangely placed outside the western walls rather than the east, had been utterly exhumed. The living dead roamed freely about the keep, with scarcely any sign of life detectable to Volkimir. There were signs of struggle, but not of conflict. Barn doors were torn down, wagons overturned and a few huts and cottages burned down. This had not been a battle, this had been a slaughter. Even so, the blood spilled was still fresh, and there were still embers burning. Whatever had brought this nightmare to pass could not be far. It could even lurk within the keep.

While it was within Volkimir's power to purge the town of ghouls, this would be counterproductive. He did not wish to scare away whatever force had raised them. He was unsure of what he would do upon discovering the source of this darkness, but he supposed he would know when he found it. With arts of stealth both unnatural to men and learned in foreign lands, Volkimir infiltrated the midnight streets. He was invisible to the owl, and silent to the bat; well below the notice of these dumb and brutish creatures. Drifting gently over the snowdrifts, he crept through the town like the shadow of a ghost. Whatever had wrought this massacre had no chance of detecting Volkimir if it still lurked, and it could not hide from the hunter of men for long.