Lord Dracula of Lviv, Epilogue: The Visitor

The train from Kraków arrived at dusk, its whistle echoing across the snow-clad rails before fading into the fog. The traveller stepped down onto the platform of Lviv’s old station, brushing the frost from his coat. He had come not as a pilgrim nor as a scholar, but as one curious about beauty—and about stories.

The city rose before him like a dream preserved in amber. The lamps were already lit, each one a trembling orb of gold in the darkening air. Above the rooftops, the silhouettes of domes and spires emerged—layered, intricate, and strange, as though they belonged to several centuries at once.

He walked through the streets with a notebook in his pocket, the one constant habit of a historian who had long since ceased to believe in ghosts. The pavement glistened with thawed snow. Somewhere nearby, a violin played a tune that sounded both joyous and mournful. The scent of coffee drifted from a doorway, mingling with incense from a passing chapel.

When he reached the Market Square, he stopped before the statue of the archangel that crowned the fountain. Beneath the halo of mist, the angel’s face seemed half alive. The traveller remembered a line he had once read in a half-forgotten monograph: Lviv endures because she remembers. He could not recall the author’s name—only that it had been written by a professor who vanished without trace.

From the square he began to climb. The road wound upwards through the park towards the ruins of Vysokyi Zamok. The air grew colder, thinner, alive with whispers. Frost sparkled on every branch like powdered glass. When he reached the summit, the city lay below him—an ocean of mist and lamplight, vast and silent.

He stood there for some time, listening. There was no sound but the slow sigh of the wind, and yet he could have sworn he heard something beneath it—a pulse, faint but steady, like the breathing of the city itself.

Then came another sound, soft as falling snow: the echo of footsteps behind him.

He turned.

At first he thought it was only the fog shifting, but no—the outline of a woman stood near the broken wall, her cloak pale grey against the night. Her face was indistinct, though her eyes seemed to hold a light that did not come from the sky. She raised one hand in greeting—or perhaps in warning.

“Good evening,” he said uncertainly. “Are you—?”

The words trailed off. She was gone. The mist swirled and closed like water over a stone.

He waited a moment longer, then smiled faintly, though he could not say why. On the ground where she had stood lay a single rose petal, frozen into the snow. He stooped to touch it, and found it cold as marble.

When he descended the hill, the city bells began to ring—softly at first, then all together, filling the fog with sound. The traveller paused on the path and looked back. The spires of Lviv pierced the clouds, each one shining dimly through the mist like the points of a great crown.

He took out his notebook and wrote a single line:

There are cities that live, and there are cities that dream. Lviv does both.

Then he closed the book and continued down towards the lights, while behind him, upon the silent hill, the snow began to fall again—covering all traces, as it always had, preserving everything that memory dared not let die.