descendant of the witch hunter

Present day,

Buildings slumped like weary old men, their facades cracked and crumbling under the weight of time. The streets, once thriving with life, were now hushed, lined with flickering street lamps that barely held back the darkness creeping in from the alleys. A damp, metallic scent lingered in the air—a mix of rain, rust, and something else, something foul.

Dorian Voss pulled the hood of his jacket higher over his head, shoving his hands into his pockets as he walked down the dimly lit sidewalk. The neon sign of a liquor store buzzed and flickered, casting brief bursts of sickly red light onto the pavement. He ignored it, his mind elsewhere, tangled in the shadows of his own thoughts.

The dreams had come again last night.

He had stood in a field of blackened earth, the sky above him a swirling mass of crimson and smoke. Around him, bodies writhed in fire—men and women screaming, their faces twisting in agony as flames devoured them. He could smell their flesh burning, hear the crackling of their bones. And then, the worst part—

The woman.

She always appeared at the edge of the inferno, her silver eyes locking onto his. Her lips moved, whispering words he could not hear, but he knew what she was saying. He always knew.

"The sins of your blade will not rest in your grave."

Dorian clenched his jaw, pushing the memory away. He didn't have time for this. He never had time for this.

The nightmares had haunted him for as long as he could remember. They weren't just bad dreams; they felt real, like echoes of something buried deep within him. Memories that didn't belong to him but still clung to his soul like old scars.

And then there was the pull.

Dorian had never been like other people. He had always been drawn to dark places—the abandoned subway tunnels beneath the city, the forgotten alleys where the streetlights never worked, the ruined buildings where people whispered that ghosts lingered. It wasn't curiosity. It was need.

It was as if something in the dark was calling him.

Tonight was no different.

As he walked, his feet carried him away from the city's main roads, past the places where people still dared to live. The further he went, the more the air changed. The cold became sharper, biting through his clothes, and the sounds of the city—sirens, honking cars, distant voices—began to fade.

He was heading toward Old Grayson Street.

The place where people disappeared.Dorian wasn't the only one who felt the pull of Old Grayson.

The city's records listed it as an abandoned district, a place that had fallen into ruin decades ago. Most people avoided it, claiming it was cursed, that those who wandered its streets after dark never returned. Some called it a hunting ground for the city's worst monsters, serial killers, drug cartels, human traffickers.

But Dorian knew better.

It wasn't men who hunted in Old Grayson.

It was something else.

His boots scraped against the cracked pavement as he stepped onto the main road leading into the district. The streetlights here had long since died, leaving only the glow of the moon to illuminate the skeletal remains of buildings. The windows of old apartment complexes yawned open like empty eye sockets, their shattered glass reflecting the dim glow of the city in the distance.

He exhaled, watching his breath curl into the cold air.

He shouldn't be here.

And yet, he couldn't turn back.

The dreams had led him here. The same way they had led him to every place where shadows ran deeper than they should, where the air carried the weight of something unseen.

A rustling sound echoed from a nearby alley.

Dorian's body tensed, every muscle on edge. He turned slowly, peering into the darkness between two decaying buildings. The alley was narrow, the ground littered with broken glass and trash, but there was something else—something deeper in the shadows.

He felt it before he saw it.

A presence.

Something watching.

His heart pounded against his ribs as he took a step closer. He knew he should leave, that nothing good ever came from following the pull, but his body moved on its own.

A whisper curled through the air.

"Voss."

Dorian froze.

His name.

He swallowed hard, his breath coming in short, sharp bursts. He had been called many things in his life—troublemaker, bastard, freak—but this was different. This wasn't someone shouting his name from across the street.

This was something else.

Something that knew him.

The shadows shifted.

A figure moved at the far end of the alley, just out of reach of the moonlight. It was tall, its limbs long and thin, its body draped in something that flickered like tattered cloth. And its eyes—

No.

Not eyes.

Two glowing symbols burned in the darkness where its face should have been.

Dorian's stomach twisted. He had seen those symbols before.

In his dreams.

His breath hitched as the thing took a step closer, its movements slow, deliberate. The air around it grew colder, thick with something unnatural. The whispering grew louder, curling through his skull, threading into his thoughts like a sickness.

He stepped back, his hands trembling. He had seen things before—glimpses of figures at the edges of his vision, shadows that moved when they shouldn't—but this was different.

This was real.

The figure took another step, and the whispers turned into a single voice—low, guttural, ancient.

"You are the last, Dorian Voss."

A chill ran through him. He didn't know what it meant, but every part of him screamed to run.

The thing moved faster than it should have been able to.

Dorian barely had time to react before it was inches away, its presence swallowing him whole.

The symbols on its face flared, and suddenly, he was somewhere else.

The fire. The screams. The woman with silver eyes.

"The sins of your blade will not rest in your grave."

Dorian gasped as he was yanked back into the present. His knees buckled, and he hit the ground hard, his head spinning. The alley was empty.

The thing was gone.

But the symbols, The same cursed runes that had burned in the thing's face, Were now carved into his arms.

They pulsed beneath his skin, dark and twisting, as if they had been waiting to awaken.

He stared at them, his breath ragged, his mind struggling to process what had just happened.

He didn't know what the hell was going on.

But one thing was clear.

The curse hadn't died centuries ago with Gabriel Voss.

It was still here. And it was coming for him.