A place called home

There is a place covered by mountains with extensive plains of unique beauty. Winters are freezing with snow and summers are hot. Some peoples of this region have given rise to powerful Iberians. These lands are formed by several countries located in southeastern Europe. They are places with small rivers and narrow valleys. lowland lands surrounded by mountains with these snow-capped peaks and hills populated in the last ten thousand years.

Seven provinces marked the height of this place. And in Bulgaria, in the city of Debelt, in the year 984 AD, I, Bóris Dragomini, was a silent spectator of a battle between species that almost led an ancient race to extinction.

It is a small village full of traditions and with the largest number of natural mineral water sources in Continental Europe. In the past, immense fortresses were built to defend against attacks by the Ottoman Empire. And the popular belief of his people in earlier times still believed that only righteous and sinless people would have the glory of their souls to have comfort in Heaven.

Those with a lost heart kept their souls attached to their bodies. And for millennia, past cultures such as Mesopotamia and ancient Greece spoke of legends about demons and spirits, revealing spectres of evil beings, perhaps victims of suicide or witches who could be created by an evil spirit.

There are several common elements in most European legends because of old popular betrayals.

Humanity's fear of us caused collective hysteria and so many public exceptions that changes were necessary. There was no other way. Those were days of fear and uncertainty, without knowing what the future held for us. The Father of us all, the oldest among our kind, decided that once again our existence should be forgotten by humanity. After all, the soul goes around its body after death until the passage.

And legends about us, supernatural creatures that feed on the blood or flesh of the living, still exist for many centuries around the world.

In ancient times we were given other names. Devils. Spiritists. Various rituals were designed to prevent the dead from rising among the living.

Seven great provinces and seven feared species of vampires inhabited these lands until it was necessary for our brothers to exile to lands beyond the dark blue sea. In Western Europe, stakes and grave excavations started the darkest period in our history with hunters. Reports were running and everything caused such a furore that my brothers were separated to guarantee our lifestyle. And it was no different after that in Africa, Asia, the Philippines. Not even in the Americas or Malaysia where great warriors have been abused in oblivion until humanity no longer remembers us.

So many years have passed since then. Most of the humans I see today don't even know what a baital or an Ekiminu is. And again we build our empire among the living, waiting for the moment to claim control of the world in which we live, beyond our magical borders.

Some laws are impossible to forget. Never, never reveal to humans who we are or where we come from. Our existence for them must be forgotten until they become legends ... Time is needed to guarantee our safety.

I am a guardian. Ancient legends among us are still feared even by Strigois. We thought we were safe after the Great Holy War that wiped out the Empusas. And we were wrong.

When Pandora's box was opened, it was not just evil spirits who made Hecate's entourage. The daughters of the great Goddess according to the prophecies of our oracles are still trying to take over the world.

There is a natural order for everything. The underworld and darkness must remain where they are so that our world is not destroyed. Hecate, the goddess of the Paths, still walks the land and her daughters are so evil and demonic spirits that Pandora's box has released all the evils on the world, to frighten humanity.

The Great War, the greatest of all, is approaching. Time is scarce. Pandora's Box needs to trap these creatures again so that the mystical barriers that protect the supernatural world that shelters wizards, vampires, and werewolves continue to exist.

The box must remain like this, hermetically sealed. Envy, anger, avarice, arrogance, cruelty, selfishness, intolerance, and all human vices and defects remained loose. But the Empusians must again be imprisoned.

I was born human. I was born a wizard and was born a second time after my creator decided to change my destiny. Some punishments are perpetual.

I am a guardian of time. My job is to ensure that these creatures do not destroy the peace between the species in the world of Vesna. Some of us can do that. They are sentinels who never rest and maintain the natural order between the living and the dead, marking the limits.

And the prophecy spoke of the birth of a child who would change all that, bringing about our end. He would be half-human, half-vampire. And when that child became invincible, he would find a Rakshasa, giving rise to a hybrid race that would bring the end of our world.

This is the story that I am going to tell you after I had to go back to the past to ensure that natural events were not changed.