Lord Dracula of Lviv, Chapters #2 and #3

Chapter #2: The Scholars of the Latin Cathedral

In the days that followed Kateryna’s transformation, whispers spread through Lviv like ivy upon stone. Those who had glimpsed her spoke of a strange serenity in her countenance, as though she had slipped beyond mortal concerns. She still tended her father’s bookshop, dusting the shelves and setting out volumes beneath the lanterns, yet her eyes no longer lingered upon the printed words. They gazed instead towards the spires, to the heights where mist gathered and shadows lengthened, as if awaiting a summons from above.

The priests noticed. Father Bohdan of the Latin Cathedral was a man seasoned by years of confession, and he carried suspicion as easily as his rosary. He had seen others like Kateryna before—women altered by encounters never confessed in words but etched in their hollow eyes. He called upon his fellow clerics, and together they formed a council in the Cathedral’s crypt, a chamber where the bones of saints rested in silence.

“There is no doubt,” said Bohdan, his voice echoing against the cold stone. “The ancient enemy walks our streets. He does not sleep in a castle. He has made the city itself his fortress.”

But one among them, a scholar rather than a priest, disagreed. This was Professor Stefan Hrytsko, a man of the university whose passion was the city’s chronicles. His fingers bore ink stains like wounds, and his voice carried the brittle certainty of one who trusted parchment over prayer.

“You speak of phantoms,” Stefan said, lifting an old folio bound in cracked leather. “But these legends are older than memory. Every city tells such tales: Prague has her Golem, Kraków its dragon, and we—yes, we—fashion a Dracula to explain our shadows. But he is not real.”

“Then why do our daughters vanish into mist?” demanded Bohdan, his eyes narrowing. “Why do they return pale and haunted, or never return at all?”

Stefan hesitated, for he had no answer. Yet doubt gnawed at him, even as he repeated his rational creed.

Chapter #3: The Summons in the Mist

Meanwhile, Kateryna dreamed. In her sleep, she saw the city not as streets and squares, but as a living body. The spires were ribs, the bells were heartbeats, and through the veins of the city flowed mist instead of blood. At the centre stood Lord Dracula, his cloak spread wide as wings, his gaze piercing centuries.

One evening, as the bells tolled vespers, she was drawn from her father’s shop by a music that seemed woven of shadow. She followed it to the Armenian Cathedral, whose courtyard lay empty but for statues half-dissolved by time. There, in the drifting fog, he stood waiting.

“You feel it, do you not?” he asked her softly, as though continuing a conversation begun long before. “The city calls to you.”

She nodded. Words failed her.

“Then come higher.” He gestured to the spire, its cross vanishing into cloud. “Come to where mortals dare not climb, and you shall see the truth of Lviv’s eternity.”

Her heart pounded, yet her feet obeyed. She ascended narrow stairwells, spiralling ever upward, until she stood upon the tower’s crown. Below her, the city stretched like a sea of rooftops drowned in fog, pierced only by the silhouettes of domes and steeples.

Dracula appeared beside her without sound. His presence was not of flesh but of inevitability, as though he had always stood there, waiting.

“This city is mine,” he whispered. “Not by conquest, but by love. I am bound to her as tightly as you are bound to breath. And now you, Kateryna, are bound to me.”

He took her hand. His touch was cold, but in it she felt not fear, but belonging. For in that moment she understood: to walk with him was to walk with the soul of Lviv itself, eternal and unyielding, caught forever between sanctity and shadow.