Lord Dracula of Lviv, Chapter #8: The Eternal City

Years passed. Seasons turned like pages in a book that no one remembered writing. The war-scarred banners of empires came and went, but Lviv endured—as she always had—watching from her spires with eyes of glass and stone.

The people forgot names but not feelings. They forgot Lucian Draguly, the noble of the vanished line; they forgot Professor Hrytsko, whose writings were scattered like snowflakes in the wind. Even Kateryna’s story faded into legend, retold only by the very old to the very young, in whispers before sleep. Yet something of them lingered.

For at dusk, when the mists began to gather between the rooftops, the city would change. The air grew heavy with remembrance. Bells tolled in no particular order. The fog would rise from the unseen Poltva and curl through the streets like a veil being drawn across a sleeping face. And those who walked alone through Rynok Square or past the Dominican Church swore they felt a presence beside them—gentle, watchful, infinitely sad.

The city had become what Dracula had always wished her to be: alive in memory.

In the crypt of the Latin Cathedral, where the scholars once held council, the candles now burned without being lit. Their light fell upon a wall where, beneath layers of soot and plaster, a fresco had been uncovered: a man in a dark cloak and a woman in pale robes, their hands almost touching, their eyes turned not toward heaven but toward the city below. No artist claimed it, and no date was found, yet those who saw it said that the figures seemed to breathe when the light flickered.

Above ground, life carried on. Merchants opened their shops, students hurried to lectures, lovers met beneath the streetlamps. But when the night was still and the fog drifted low, one might hear a faint music—notes so soft they seemed to rise from the stones themselves. Some said it was the wind; others, the echo of forgotten bells.

And sometimes, just before dawn, a figure could be seen at the crest of Vysokyi Zamok—a woman cloaked in grey, standing where the fortress once was, her gaze turned toward the sleeping city. She never moved, never spoke, and when the sun rose she vanished with the mist.

The old would nod and say it was Kateryna keeping vigil. The young would laugh and call it superstition. But the city knew. She remembered.

For Lviv had always been a city of ghosts—not restless, but faithful. The living built upon the bones of the dead, and the dead, in turn, blessed the living with beauty. Every tower, every arch, every bell was a fragment of that unending conversation between past and present.

As the centuries wore on, the story of Lord Dracula of Lviv became not one of terror, but of devotion. He was the keeper of memory, the guardian of the city’s soul, whose love for her was so complete that even death could not divide them.

And so, when the fog rolls in from the river and the lights blur in the windows, one may still feel it—the thrum beneath the stones, the heartbeat of an ancient vow:

That Lviv will never forget.