The village of Wygol was a simple settlement with a small, but hardy population. They were a hardy people, used to scarcity of food and clean water and goodwill. They were a wary people, having learned the hard way that outsiders and strangers rarely boded well for their continued livelihood. There had been few exceptions to this blanket distrust that the Wygol villagers and the farmers of what little arable land surrounding the land ascribed to newcomers in their midst. The most notable exception was still discussed among them, and remembered fondly, the man they had called God's Chosen.

But now it had been years since that quiet man had passed through their lands on his journey to defeat a greater evil, and Wygol was once again a wary and insular community. Vampire attacks had stopped almost entirely for a short period after Carmilla had been defeated, but with the rebirth and the impossible reconstruction of the old Bernhard Castle ruins, such attacks against the people and the livestock had resumed - however, there was a strange fact colouring all their news and conjecture about the newly risen threat on their horizon.

No one had been killed.

There had been several men and women bitten by a vampire's fangs. Graves had been uncovered, and the corpses of their ancestors stolen by creatures of the night. But the people had received no lasting damage beyond some lingering anemia in some of the more heavily afflicted. And once bitten, no villager was attacked twice. Children and youths under the age of eighteen years were eerily left alone.

It was a transition that took months to notice. Ashamed of the bites, and fearing the condemnation of their peers the people of Wygol at first hid the marks of fangs in their necks and wrists. And months after that before the people of Wygol adjusted. Almost a year and a half after the attacks began, they stopped.

And it was under the light of the first full moon after every adult citizen of Wygol bore the scars of fangs, that the carriage rolled into town.

It was made up of dark wood, varnished so thickly that it gleamed like black oil in the flickering torchlight of the village square. Great long-legged beasts that looked almost like horses pulled the carriage-

(-but their teeth were too sharp, their eyes too bright in the dimness of the light, their feet ending in birdlike talons instead of hooves-)

-their reins held in the hand of the driver sitting high on the seat near the roof and shrouded in a deep hooded cloak. "Fetch the village elder," the coachman commanded of the people that peered out into night through the cracks in their shutters, through the barely open front doors of their houses. "Fetch him, so that the Prince may speak with him."

"I am the village elder," an old man would announce, greying and feeble looking save for the steely glare in his pale eyes, and the ragged scar - red and shiny and new - that peeked over the loose collar of his furred tunic.

"Then I will speak with you," another voice asked, this coming from the carriage itself. The coachman remained seated, hunched in its cloak rather than descending to open the carriage doors as expected. The carriage doors did not open - the vehicle's occupant simply appeared, as if a specter, melting out of the shadows cast by the moon at the coach's back.

And so it was that the people of Wygol encountered Gabriel Belmont for a second time.


As the carriage pulled away, the village Elder fingered the scar across his clavicle, and how it felt warm and alive under his fingers. The village had not been attacked, it had been branded. Whether they liked it or not, now Wygol and its peoples were living beneath the shelter of a Dragon's wings.

"And one day," the Dragon had spoke, a dark and covetous fire smoldering in its gaze. "One day you will perhaps come to understand why."

"Adric, Adric," one of the men of the village called out to the elder who just stood there, watching the Prince and his strange coach ride away. "Adric, what does that creature want with us?"

"...It is our Prince now. That thing. That poor child..."

"What...?"

"Gabriel Belmont once fought for our lives, for our very souls. Now...in marking us, they are his. And we are given our task from God's Chosen."

As the old man spoke, all those marked, the adults and grown men and women of the village found themselves drawn out of doors, and within earshot of the village Elder.

"The evil of men shall not be tolerated under his watchful eyes. We shall shepard towards his jaws the monsters clad in mortal flesh... so that the Prince of Darkness might build his throne upon the bones of the wicked."

"Yes - I heard what he said. ...But Adric... what does that mean?"

"...I have no idea. ...But perhaps we will understand... someday." The village elder sighed. "I know the look of men with nothing to lose, the look of men and monsters with evil in their hearts. Gabriel Belmont came to us once as a warrior and as a Savior. He has come to us a second time as a Prince and as a powerful creature of Darkness... but the look in his eyes is the same. We are his link... between the world of men, and the world of Darkness.

"...I do not think our new Lord of Shadows...is evil. And it has fallen to us, to keep it that way."

The coach clattered along the stone and gravel road, heading back towards the Castle. The vampire would not have bothered with it, but he had not wanted to frighten the villagers - an approach by carriage, even if the coachman and the 'horses' that pulled it were strange, was more manageable than a great Dragon swooping into their midst. But now was not the time for reminiscence - the journey down the mountain had a secondary purpose, after all - picking up a messenger.

"...Euryale... You have a report from your sister?"

The gorgon sat, knelt on the plush floor of the carriage next to her Lord's feet, her head bowed in reverence. The youngest of the three serpentine sisters, she was the most in awe of him, and the most eager to listen to his commands. In turn, the Dragon found that he thought of her as her might have thought of a daughter. It was a strange family he was building for himself - and stranger still for he had not abandoned the blood-ties of his mortal self either.

One day, this Darkness would welcome his son.

"Yessss, my Prince. Stheno continues to guard the boy... And the Knights you sent back to The Brotherhood have not spoken to anyone about what they encountered. ...However... the Chaplain knows something."

"...Father Peter was always gifted with limited foresight. ...Tell her to continue to keep an eye on the situation. Things are beginning to stir. ...Soon we will meet again, my old friend and I...

"Soon."


(( Hello everyone. Sorry for the delay in bringing this chapter to all of you - but I hope the knowledge that this is the last of the preludes makes up for it. Now, the setup is in place, and the main players will begin to converge. For more Castlevania stuff, I can be found lurking on tumblr as bernhard-castle-dracula. As always, thanks for reading! ))