Nicolas

The late afternoon sun slanted warm and gold across the small Parisian town, lighting up the dirt streets and the smithy’s yard where fifteen-year-old Nicolas de Vilar had been tossing his ball—a leather thing his father had made him, worn smooth by months of play.

He should have gone straight home after errands. His mother always warned him not to go near the dark forest that crouched behind the abandoned manor. But Nicky was spontaneous by nature, and when a poorly aimed throw sent the ball arcing over a fence and rolling right into the tree-shadow, he didn’t hesitate. His father would scold him for losing it; his brother Robert would laugh. So he ducked beneath the branches and followed.

The forest grew still. Too still. Nicolas’s skin prickled with the familiar discomfort he hated to acknowledge—fear. He spotted the ball at last, resting near a toppled stone wall. Beyond it loomed the old manor, black-roofed, its windows dead-eyed. He bit at his nail without thinking.

“Just grab it and go,” he muttered.

But as he scooped the ball into his hands, a gust of wind pushed the manor’s half-open door inward with a long wooden groan. Nicolas froze. His imagination darted through every scary story he’d tried so hard to forget.

He could leave. He should leave. And yet… something tugged at him. Curiosity. The same trait that always got him into trouble.

Nicolas stepped across the threshold.

Inside, the air was cold and stale. Dust lay thick on the floor, except for one narrow trail leading downward into the manor’s basement. Someone had been here—recently, maybe.

His breath quickened. He followed anyway, each wooden stair complaining beneath his boots.

The cellar was nearly pitch-black, lit only by the faint light he carried from above. But in the center of the room, on a stone dais, rested a long wooden coffin bound with iron.

Nicolas’s heart pounded in his throat.

He knew enough of local legends—coffins inside abandoned manors, locked with iron, were never good things.

He should go.

He started backing toward the stairs… until he heard it.

A sound. Soft. Not quite a voice—more like a faint, restrained movement. As if someone inside the coffin had shifted.

His blood went cold. He nearly bolted. But then another thought cut through his terror:

What if someone was trapped? What if he walked away and left a living person to die? Turned away someone good—his worst fear.

His hands shook as he approached the coffin. The iron clasp was twisted, almost broken, as though someone outside it had tried to lock it hastily. Nicolas hesitated, whispered a small prayer under his breath, and tugged on the mechanism until, with a screech, it snapped open.

He lifted the lid.

Inside lay a person—perhaps a few years younger than him, perhaps far older, he couldn’t tell. Their skin was pale as unused flour, their hair fanned neatly around their shoulders as though untouched by time. Their outfit was old-fashioned, torn in places, but elegant. And though their eyes were closed, their chest rose and fell with the slow, deliberate calm of deep slumber.

Nicolas swallowed. “Excusez-moi…?”

They didn’t speak—didn’t even stir at first. But their eyes opened, very slowly.

They were red. Not bright, not glowing—simply, unnervingly red, like wine against candlelight.

Nicolas stumbled back, clutching the ball to his chest. Every tale of demons and monsters slammed into his mind all at once. He wanted to flee, but their gaze held him—not by force, but by a quiet, unreadable expression. Not hunger. Not threat.

Confusion.

They lifted a hand, thin and delicate, as if to brace themselves on the coffin’s rim. When they tried to sit up, the chains around their ankles rattled softly.

Nicolas’s fear tangled with something else—pity.

Someone had locked them in here. Someone had bound them. And they wasn’t attacking him. They wasn’t doing anything at all except blinking in the dim light, looking at him as though unsure if he was real.

He took a small step forward.

“I… I shouldn’t have opened this,” he whispered. “But I couldn’t just leave you.”

The sun outside was already lowering. Shadows stretched long across the cellar door. Nicolas tightened his grip on his ball.

He didn’t know what they was. He didn’t know whether freeing them was an act of kindness or a terrible mistake.

Nicolas took a shaky breath. “My name is… Nicolas. Nicolas de Vilar. I… I’ll come back with food. Or—something.”

Nicolas backed toward the stairs, then turned and fled the manor, running through the darkening forest with the ball clutched tight, his heart hammering as the last rays of sun faded behind him.

He didn’t know whether he had just saved a life…

…or awakened something far older than he could comprehend.

But he knew one thing for certain:

He would return.

The sun had barely dipped behind the treeline when Nicolas de Vilar hurried down the narrow dirt path toward home, his breath puffing in nervous clouds. His shirt clung to his back from the fear-sweat that refused to settle. The blacksmith’s forge had closed earlier than usual, but instead of playing catch with his ball or helping his sister gather herbs, he had spent the last hour dragging a limp, impossibly cold body through the edge of the dark forest—the place he avoided more than anything.

The figure was a person—pale, too pale, their clothes tattered and stained. Nicolas had found them slumped against a tree trunk, blood on their lips but no wound that made sense. The boy had almost run when he saw the fangs. But then the person's eyelids fluttered weakly, and Nicolas’s too-soft heart clenched. Accidentally turning away a good person… It was his greatest fear. What if the person wasn’t a demon? What if this was a test?

So he dragged them home. And hid them in the cellar.

Now, deep night settled in, and Nicolas scrambled down the creaky wooden steps with a cup of watered-down wine and scraps of bread. The vampire sat exactly where he’d left them—back against a barrel, head lowered, chest rising and falling with a faint rhythm. Those dark eyes flicked up when Nicolas entered, reflecting candlelight like an animal’s.

“Please stay quiet,” Nicolas whispered, setting the cup beside them. “My father’s already suspicious when I go down here too often.”

The vampire only blinked. They never spoke—not once since Nicolas found them. Whether they couldn’t… or wouldn’t… Nicolas wasn’t sure.

A thud sounded above. Heavy boots crossed the kitchen floor.

Nicolas froze.

“Nick?” his father’s voice called out. “Why’re you in the cellar this late?”

The boy’s heart slammed against his ribs. He darted to the shelves, grabbing the first thing he saw: a half-empty sack of potatoes.

“Just—just gettin’ these for Mama!” he shouted back.

Louis de Vilar grunted. “She didn’t ask for any.”

Nicolas cursed silently. His father was a good man, but sharp—sharp enough to see through lies, especially his son’s unprepared ones.

The cellar door creaked. Light from the kitchen spilled down the steps as Louis began to descend.

Nicolas moved fast, planting himself squarely between his father’s line of sight and the shadowed corner where the vampire sat motionless. The boy’s body shook with adrenaline, but he forced a shaky smile.

“Papa! Look, these potatoes are goin’ soft. Thought I’d toss the bad ones.”

Louis narrowed his eyes. “At this hour? And with work in the mornin’?”

Behind Nicolas, something rustled—the faintest scrape of boot leather shifting against stone.

Louis stopped on the last step.

His gaze drifted past Nicolas’s shoulder.

Nicolas’s stomach dropped.

He had seconds—maybe less. “Papa,” he blurted, stepping directly into his father’s path, “I—I wanted to tell you something!”

Louis blinked, caught off guard. “What?”

Nicolas swallowed. “I… I think I like a girl.”

It was the only thing that came to mind fast enough.

Louis stared. Then his stern expression softened with exasperation and something like amusement. “Mon Dieu, Nicky… you scared me half to death for that?”

Behind Nicolas, the silent vampire remained death-still, like a statue carved from moonlight.

Louis sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Come upstairs. You can tell me who she is—but tomorrow. Not while I’m tryin’ to sleep.”

Nicolas forced a nod, clutching the potato sack like a shield. His father cast one more lingering glance around the cellar, but whatever faint sound he’d heard was overshadowed by his son’s awkward, overly dramatic confession.

He turned and climbed the stairs.

When the door finally clicked shut, Nicolas exhaled a breath so deep it made him light-headed. He waited until his father’s footsteps faded.

Only then did he turn back toward the vampire.

The pale figure sat exactly as before—silent, unmoving, gaze steady and unreadable. But something in those dark eyes had changed. Softer. Almost curious.

“You… really need to stop moving,” Nicolas whispered, voice cracking with leftover fear. “Or I’m done for.”

The vampire didn’t respond. But they dipped their head, barely—a gesture so subtle Nicolas might’ve imagined it.

The boy grabbed a blanket from a crate and draped it over the vampire’s shoulders. “Just until you’re stronger,” he murmured. “Then you can go. I’ll help.”

Above them, the house settled into nighttime quiet.

And in the dark cellar, Nicolas—kind to a fault, terrified of demons but even more terrified of abandoning someone who might not be one—kept watch over his silent, dangerous, impossible secret.