A/N: Some graphic descriptions of violence in this chapter as well.

July 3.

I have discovered this codex again among my items, and decided that perhaps I should pick up where I left off about two hundred years before. This parchment is wonderfully treated as I can still read everything clearly. It even kept the bloodstains.

I have a way of telling the days again, and this made me glad.

I write from a small, abandoned castle in a remote part of Wallachia, near the Carpathian Mountains. I had decided to take it for myself, as it was in ruins, unused, and I wanted to settle for awhile. No one knows I am here or who I am. Only three men had come into the castle and had ill will against me for some reason. I suppose they were tasked with taking it for their lord.

I slaughtered all three. It was perhaps harsh, but I did not feel like giving up my temporary home.

It is high summer, and hot, though I find it does not bother me as my senses had dulled even more in the past centuries. Yes, centuries. It feels so strange to write that, as if I were not some sort of strange abomination I would have been dead when they ended me in the battle, but I was resurrected to live on. I still do not know what caused it, or what gave me my monstrous strength, or what caused me to be unable to die in seemingly any way. I should have died several times over the past years, but I immediately come back-often with renewed vigor. I feel...revitalized after a battle.

I have not aged in two hundred years. I believe I was two or three years shy of thirty when I was killed, though I do not remember too well. My memory grows hazy of the earliest times, and all I know I was mostly reminded of from finding this book, so I am somewhat grateful that I had come across it.

I probably do not need to eat, but do so out of habit. I do feel hunger from time to time. If I feel thirst, I drink. I can provide for myself. I try to go into settlements as little as possible, as humans seem to have an almost aversion to me. Not that I can blame them, as I suppose I bend the very aura around myself, if there is such a thing.

I will return after I feed the ravens upstairs to explain some things of the last two centuries.

July 5.

Thinking back, the plague had to be one of the worst things to experience. I believe I was infected, though I am not sure. Thousands upon thousands of people died from the horrible sickness. I could not stop it. I do not know what caused it to spread, though I believe the people are wrong in some of their guessing. I think I carried some strange instinct back with me from whatever afterlife I had experienced, though I otherwise know nothing.

I earned my keep as a sort of examiner of the dead. Wearing a strange, bird-like mask and all black, I examined many people. Unlike some of the others, I knew I could do nothing for them, though I tried to ease their suffering somewhat the best I could. The outfit was strange, and was supposed to keep the fellow doctors as they called themselves from getting sick by protecting against the miasma, but as most of them died anyway this also led to my doubts on their theories, but their views were quite stuck.

I think seeing so many people die while I still lived on affected me even more. I did not see any of them come back. What was it I did to deserve what seems to be immortality? Why did they choose a simple soldier over one of many others? I suppose if I think about it too hard I will go madder than I feel I am.

I continued on through the Holy Roman Empire again, though it, and many other borders, have changed through various wars and battles, new leaders, lords, and kings taking over, usurping the old. I traveled through Bavaria and Habsburg. Eventually the plague had killed all it would, which, if I had to estimate, was a massive portion of the population. I wonder how much it has recovered. Surely, things were left in turmoil.

I had idly thought about fighting again, but I had no allegiance, nor wanted any. I still fought, though on my own terms, and delivered my own brand of justice. For reasons unknown, certain acts drive me mad. Also, there is my strange draw to pain...as my dulling senses do not really lend me much else.

As I have mentioned in other writings, food grows bland. I eat when I must, though I feel I have lost weight due to not caring too much about it. I still have muscle and am stronger than anything human or beast, so it does not matter, as nothing strains me to physically lift or break. Wind feels like wind, but I do not really get to enjoy a warm breeze on my skin like I did, as it all feels the same. Extreme heat and extreme cold affect me, though sticking my hand in a fire does nothing but scorch the skin quickly before it heals, but it does give me some excitement to do so.

I sometimes make it a point to visit towns to see what is happening, or if I lose sight of some humanity, which does happen from time to time. I feel the people sense there is something wrong with me though, so I do not stay too long. I do not wish to make common people uncomfortable. I come from fairly humble, though luckily educated, beginnings, and I somewhat still feel ties to it. I think this is what pushes me somewhat to help defend them when need be, besides my own seeming growing attachment to carnage, though I think I do not want to discuss that in this entry.

I think today I will study a few tomes I have discovered in my travels. I find it clears my mind. I also have found I enjoy heights and high places. I have taken my room in the very top of the castle. While I do not get the same pleasure of the wind and smells of nature, being near the sky is somehow comforting.

July 6.

Today was quite horrid.

I came across a slew of people, impaled on spikes. They were suffering greatly, as one could guess, and unlike myself, they did not enjoy their situation. The stench would have been unbearable, I imagine, but I could barely smell anything given my dulled senses. There were several already dead, birds and flies surrounding them. The ravens flew off when they saw me. I seem to have a strange rapport with the large black birds.

I went to each one and ended their lives out of mercy. I wore the blades I had fixed to my fingers, and simply drove them into the base of their skulls quickly. I like these new weapons, as I feel they suit me.

The nearby knights did not appreciate what I did. It was clear they had impaled these people. It also became clear they had a similar plan for me.

I did not resist.

I will spare you the worst details, but the looks on their faces as I snapped the bloody stake in two and pulled myself off of it-my heart racing from the blinding pain-was something I may not forget for a century or so. Bleeding still, and with a murderous haze in my eyes, I planted the stake into the ground and ran at them, dismembering them as easily as a wolf would kill a rat. I was so...excited. They caused me pain I had not felt in ages, and this somehow pleased me.

It pleased me, and then it made me want to kill.

They scattered, but it didn't matter; they swung at me wildly, as if they did not know what to do about a man who pulled himself off of a stake which should have killed him. Or did kill him for a few moments. My mind is hazy.

I do not know what has become of me, but if this is who I am, so be it. There are seemingly a lot of these men around, doing these despicable deeds for their leader.

He may have brought law and order, but I cannot abide by some of these actions.

I will continue to bring mercy to those I find. If they try to stop me, they will not leave the spot.

July 10.

The past several days have been very quiet. I do not mind this. I was hoping to attempt to get some peace of mind with my somewhat disturbing existence.

July 14.

I have just taken to hunting the more evil ones down when they get somewhere in the vicinity of the castle. They often don't know what hit them, though I have started to let them attack me at will to keep my killing haze at its peak.

Today was a particularly black one, somewhat worse than any I have had so far. Stiflingly hot to the point where even I had felt it, I had come across a small thicket of tormented souls on their telltale pikes and went to end them. There were many men this time that came out to find me. I believe they have been told about my presence.

Several filled me with crossbow bolts. They had no idea what to do as I pulled them out one by one, each one with barbed heads which tore my flesh in a fountain of blood. One stuck out of my head as if it were a horn. I threw one through the skull of a man approaching me, causing his partner to flee, though I was much faster. I remember the feel of arrows and bolts piercings me well.

I don't know if it was the pain of the bolts, or the swords that descended upon me, or the overall feeling I had toward people who could spike undeserving people in the stifling heat to die slowly, but I was particularly gruesome with this unit. It could have perhaps been the memories I had of my original death, fuzzy as they were. The bolts and blades woke something up inside of me that was truly horrifying.

Hazy, red memories remain, though with a touch more clarity than usual. Every bolt and blade that hit made me tear another to shreds with even more glee than the one before. It got to the point where I was so enthralled with destruction and so focused on vengeance that I staked one to the ground through the shoulder, using one of the very stakes on hand, and wholly crushed his body to a pulp where he lay; the few left collapsed in surrender at the horror as he screamed the moments he still lived, unable to escape. I recall possibly laughing as I did this, though perhaps I am trying to push that thought out.

I tore the remaining men to pieces while I was drenched in blood even as they tried to surrender.

I fear I am actually enjoying it now.

They deserved it, did they not?

July 20.

I do not know if I like what I am becoming. Or already have become.

August 3.

I may consider leaving this place soon. Going somewhere. I don't know where yet.

The leader of this land continues his brutal reign, and I cannot abide in it. But I also do not like how I have started to enjoy murdering the retinue of troops who carry out the darker deeds. It is one thing to enjoy bringing justice, or even vengeance I feel, though the latter is its own path toward darkness.

I fear I have started to revel in murder. At first, it is never that bad. If I kill two or three before they can hurt me, I feel little. If they are allowed to hurt me, I wish them to do it more and more. Something twisted inside of me I fear in my short path to the other side. I do not know what. I do not know where I crossed over to, and what, if anything, infected my brain.

I need to separate myself from what is causing it. I have thinking I must do.

August 20.

I have started on my way. Where I will go now, I am not sure. Perhaps back close to Bavaria. I like the scenery.

I had a small dream for some moments. I do not remember much, but the name Falke came to my mind. I do not know why. I don't remember my own name. Was this it? I have no one I can ask, as any family I may have had are long dead.

Perhaps I will revisit this tome again one day. If not, I hope it is found intact so one may study it.

–

A/N: Simply Raven continuing his big journal. I thought Wallachia during the reign of Vlad III Dracula/Vlad the Impaler would be fairly appropriate for one chapter. It's a bit strange to write this as some of the things were real life doings, though sort of also based on fiction(much like how Dracula took snippets of actual history and of course mixed it with the fiction. Which, yes, this story was pretty heavily inspired by Bram Stoker's work.)

Raven can get exceptionally violent in the lore, particularly how his power increases a ton, as well as his moves become more violent, as he takes pain. I imagine in a darker situation it wouldn't be pretty.