#Chapter 215: Into the Vampire Stronghold

The entrance looked like nothing more than a crumbling arch swallowed by roots and moss, but the moment I pressed my hand to the center, the stone responded with a low thrum. A faint current climbed into my arm, steady and quiet, like an old mechanism reluctantly coming back to life. The wall didn’t swing open with any dramatic gesture, it simply vanished, and the air beyond it turned colder and sharper, thick with the kind of stillness that made my skin tighten. The passage sloped downward in a wide spiral, curling into a darkness that felt less like emptiness and more like something long sealed. Each step took us deeper into a silence that pressed close against our skin, not peaceful, but hollow. The air was heavy with the scent of rust and old stone, and chains lay rusted into the floor, evidence of lives confined and abandoned. The walls carried the weight of every scream they had absorbed. We found a boy in the second chamber. He was curled in the far corner with his knees