Chapter 1
In 1492, Adrian Corvin's fleet landed in the Dusklands, bringing back more than just gold and spices.
They also returned with logbooks written by sailors whose hands trembled in fear.
Those logbooks described a creature that would silently latch onto a person's neck while they slept, and by dawn, the entire crew would be found as pale corpses.
The local natives called it "Nightbloods."
And this was only the first page of the Bestiary of the Dusklands.
*****
The sea breeze at the Old Harbor of Serevale always carried the scent of salt and rotting wood.
The first time I laid eyes on that parchment book, it was buried beneath the third layer of crates in the Revenue Office Vault.
On the outside of the crate was a faded line of writing.
1493, return cargo from the Ember Isles, unaccounted for.
There was no gold in the crate.
No spices.
No pearls.
Just a few bundles of blackened rope, a section of mast chewed through, and a logbook triple-wrapped in oilcloth.
The archivist said it was meant to be burned.
Because it wasn't part of the royal records, or the church files.
It belonged to those who made it back from the sea alive, but never dared to close their eyes again.
I opened the first page. The paper was damp and soft, with dark brown stains clinging to the edges.
It wasn't ink.
Nor did it look like rust.
There was only one sentence on the first page.
"The night in the Dusklands is not darkness, but a breathing mouth."
The man who wrote it was Rodrigo Santierra, a low-ranking clerk on Adrian's second voyage.
He wasn't the captain, nor the priest.
His job was to record water consumption, death tolls, cargo losses, and the number of times sailors were whipped.
Guys like him didn't write legends.
They only wrote numbers.
But from the seventh day on, his writing grew shaky.
The once neat Latin script started to tremble, the ink stuttering across the page, like his hand had been suddenly grabbed.
He wrote that after the fleet left the north shore of Vespera Isle, three sailors were found collapsed on the lower deck during the night.
They didn't even fight back.
Nobody cried out.
There were no obvious wounds.
Only two tiny pinpricks on each neck.
The surgeon said it was just insect bites at first.
But by morning, their faces were so pale they looked like ghosts.
Their lips were drawn tight, gums gray, eyes half-open.
Strangest of all, there was barely any blood beneath them.
It was as if something had slowly drained the blood from their bodies and then wiped the deck clean.
The priest had them light incense and sprinkle holy water along the hold.
But the local guide knelt on the deck, refusing to even approach the bodies.
He uttered a word in the island's tongue.
Rodrigo scribbled the pronunciation next to it.
Nocticar.
Then he added a note in Castilian.
Nightbloods.
The captain didn't buy it.
The sailors weren't having it either.
They put their faith in storms, foul water, fever, the lash, and hunger.
But believing in something invisible that could sneak up while you slept, clamp onto your neck, and suck the life right out of you? Not a chance.
So that night, the captain ordered everyone to take turns keeping watch.
Torches were jammed into every corner of the lower deck.
Crosses hung from every beam.
Twenty-seven sailors sat back-to-back, knives resting on their knees.
Rodrigo stopped writing there, leaving the rest of the page blank.
The next page had only one line.
"By morning, one of the watchmen was gone."
Underneath that line, there were deep scratches, as if someone had tried to gouge the words right out of the page.
It was as if, after writing it, he'd wanted to tear the sentence from the paper.
I kept flipping through the pages.
But the next three pages had been torn out.
The edges were clean, not the messy work of panic.
It looked like someone had read them, then deliberately cut them out with a knife.
The archivist stood behind me, looking grim.
He said the book couldn't leave the vault.
I asked why.
He said that thirty years ago, a friar tried reading it.
He only made it to the ninth page before hanging himself from the bell tower that very night.
Before he died, he wrote a single sentence on the wall.
"They didn't come from the woods. They came back with the ship."
Just then, the oil lamp in the vault flickered.
I glanced down and spotted a small, dry, black sliver wedged between the pages of the parchment book.
It looked like the wing of a bird.
Or maybe the ear of something not quite human.
I reached out, letting my fingers brush against it.
The sliver suddenly disintegrated in my hand.
The fragments scattered across the table, uncovering a line of text that had been hidden beneath.
"Do not open the second volume after the moon rises."