At the dawn of the fifteenth century, Dacel Costa, a brilliant and incorruptible young magistrate in Wallachia, is entrusted by Princess Mara with investigating the mysterious disappearances of young women from Targos, a village on the fringes of the Forbidden Forest. What begins as a search for answers soon draws him into a labyrinth of ancient secrets, political intrigue, and darkness that defies reason. Haunted by the loss of his own fiancée, Dacel must follow the evidence wherever it leads—even when the truth threatens to consume him.

​

Born around 1240 into a powerful branch of the ancient Gutkeled lineage, the Báthory family, Sofía Báthory is raised between the traditions of Hungarian nobility and the family's growing fortunes and influence in Bohemia. At five years old, her life is altered when a mysterious young nobleman, Darius von Croÿ, rescues her from a deadly attack in the Carpathians and thereafter returns each year on her birthday, bringing extraordinary jewels and leaving behind questions she cannot answer. As Sofía grows from a noble child into a formidable woman, her fascination with Darius becomes entwined with the destiny of House von Croÿ, carrying her through an ill-fated marriage, devastating loss, and the unexpected inheritance of a vast and secretive estate. Across decades of political upheaval, ancient bloodlines, and the terrible shadow of the Black Death, Sofía gradually discovers that the world surrounding her is far stranger than the one she was born into. When Darius finally returns from the darkness after a century of absence, he entrusts her with the future of von Croÿ—and with the preparation of a young man whose destiny will reach far beyond either of them. What follows is the hidden history of a Báthory woman who lived between two worlds, preserved an ancient legacy, and became the mysterious figure waiting in the Forbidden Chamber when the story of V The First finally begins.

​

This follows the first thirteen years of Wolfgang’s life, beginning when the mysterious Order of Saint Maximus delivers an infant of unknown origin to the isolated Convent of Saint Catherine with strict orders that his presence remain secret and that every peculiarity be documented. Warned not to become attached to the child, Abbess Mother Maria soon discovers that behind his silver hair and strange golden eyes is not a monster, but a gentle, remarkable boy who becomes beloved by the convent’s 112 nuns and grows up knowing no world beyond its ancient walls. Yet as Wolfgang matures, the peculiarities the Order feared begin to emerge, and Mother Maria slowly realizes that the child entrusted to her is part of a mystery far older and more dangerous than the Church has revealed. For thirteen years, Saint Catherine shields him from the world—and the world from him—until forces beyond the convent finally come calling, bringing tragedy, blood, and death, and ending Wolfgang’s sheltered childhood just as the first chapter of his true destiny begins.

​

Her husband, the Prince of Wallachia—and her first cousin—had taken other women before, and Mara had never troubled herself over them. She was the Princess; the others were merely women who passed through his life. But then came Janna, and with her came Vlad Dracul, and after him, his son, Dracula. What began as an affair would become a bloodline—and in time, each of them would wear the crown.

​

Amaranta was born into a great house, blessed with rare beauty and a keen mind. She was raised for greatness and taught from childhood that the world would yield to her desires—for whatever she wanted, she was accustomed to receiving. Even immortality was granted to her, for she was chosen by a Revenant Lord and elevated into the eternal night. For a time, all was as it should be. Until she encountered the one thing that could not be given to her: the love of a man whose heart belonged to another. Yet Amaranta had never learned to accept the word no. And if his love could not be hers in life, perhaps there was another way to make him hers—forever.

​

Saint Maximus was a Roman saint and scholar whose hidden parchments, discovered generations after his death, revealed his knowledge of a world beyond the understanding of ordinary men and foretold the coming fall of Rome. From these writings arose the secretive Order of Saint Maximus, an ancient brotherhood entrusted with a mission known to few within the Church: to seek out, study, and contain the unnatural forces moving unseen through the world. Its members investigate witches, monsters, demons, revenants, and other beings that defy the laws of Creation—not merely to destroy them, but to understand their origins and prevent their existence from becoming known to mankind. For centuries, the Order has operated in the shadows, guarding forbidden knowledge and intervening whenever the boundary between the natural world and the Unseen threatens to break.

​

Among the darkest chronicles of the Unseen Realm, few names inspire greater fear than the Cainian Triad of Warlocks, the infamous Artois Brothers. Born from hardship and bound by an eternal pact of blood and sorcery, Marcel, Paul, and Jean Pierre Artois rose to become one of history’s most powerful and feared warlock bloodlines, mastering the three instruments of domination: influence, manipulation, and terror. Led by Marcel Artois, The Snake, a master of ambition and deception; Paul Artois, The Spider, the architect of intricate schemes and political webs; and Jean Pierre Artois, The Scorpion, the silent enforcer who delivered their vengeance, the brothers sought not merely arcane knowledge but control over kingdoms themselves. Through forbidden rituals and manipulation of royal bloodlines, they interfered with the succession of France and England, setting into motion events that contributed to the devastation of the Hundred Years’ War. Their actions were deemed the greatest violation of the Sacred Canon of the Warlock Orders, a corruption of mortal destiny and an unforgivable breach of the balance between worlds. For this transgression, the Revenant Overlords commanded their destruction, beginning the hunt for the three warlocks whose ambition sought to rewrite the course of history. Centuries later, the name Artois remains not as a symbol of greatness, but as a warning that even the greatest minds can be consumed by the darkness of their own designs.

​

Her kind was forbidden to exist in this world. Cambions, born when a witch is impregnated by an incubus, were beings of the other side of the Veil who found their way into human flesh. Powerful, dangerous, and feared as harbingers of chaos, they were taken from their mothers and slaughtered at birth by decree of the Sacred Canon that governed the Underworld. Their existence was believed to precede calamities of biblical proportions. Yet she was the first cambion born in millennia—and, for reasons known only to those who once commanded the extermination of her kind, the first permitted to live. This is the story of Lady Rosetta di Verona, raised within the pagan temple known as the Southern Tower, sanctuary of the Sisterhood of the Eternal Flame, where she would rise to become its Supreme—just before the fall of the Elemental Towers, and the tragedies that followed.

​

Her birth fulfilled a prophecy spoken long before her time. Forbidden by the Sacred Canon and condemned by divine decree, she was an anomaly—but not the only one. Seven girls were born at the same moment, in distant corners of the world, bound by a destiny none of them could yet comprehend. Fate would eventually bring them together, where they would discover that they were not seven separate miracles, but fragments of something far greater—and that their births were never a matter of chance. This is the story of the Scarlet of Babylon.

​

In the year 1400, beneath the shadow of Castle Basarabia, young Bianca Cojocaru, daughter of one of Targos’s wealthiest families, and Codrin, the son of a servant, grow from childhood companions into a love neither dares to name. What begins with games, stolen bread, and innocent friendship deepens quietly as they grow older, only to be forbidden when the rigid customs of their world make their differences in birth impossible to ignore. Separated by family and circumstance, they finally realize that what bound them together was more than friendship—and one stolen kiss becomes their first and only confession of love. But their happiness is fleeting: days later, Bianca vanishes from her bed beneath the full moon, becoming the fourth girl to disappear from Targos in a pattern no one understands. As Codrin is left with only memory and unanswered questions, their tender love becomes one more tragic tale woven into the darker mysteries haunting the ancient town.

​

When Eurydice de Lorris, the last of the ancient Nymphs, fled the enchanted forest of Greece carrying a sacred Star Magnolia sapling, she traveled west until she reached the wild cliffs of Marseille, where she planted the tree and summoned a forest from barren earth. There, beneath the shadow of an ancient power awakened from centuries of sleep, she created Château Rouge, a crimson palace where desire could take form and the boundaries between dream and reality ceased to matter. For centuries, the castle became a whispered legend among the Children of the Night, opening its doors only to the most privileged and dangerous beings of the Unseen, who came seeking pleasures forbidden everywhere else. Yet behind its lavish halls, endless revelries, and supernatural seductions lived a woman who had slowly become a prisoner of her own paradise. When Eurydice finally ventured beyond the walls she had never been meant to leave, she encountered a world transformed by time—and a young Warlock whose presence awakened something within her that even her powers could not command. Their brief and mysterious encounter would leave consequences neither could have imagined, setting in motion a chain of events that would echo through the hidden history of the Unseen for generations. And somewhere beyond the legends of the Red Castle, the fate of the Last Nymph became intertwined with the birth of something entirely new.

​

The Brotherhood of the Bleeding Heart is a tale of forbidden magic, profound loss, and an unlikely family born in the shadows of the medieval world. Duncan Baudelaire, a powerful warlock broken by the loss of his brother and disillusioned with love, magic, and the world itself, retreats into an ancient woodland seeking only solitude. There, fate brings him Silas, a mute and mutilated young warlock fleeing a hunter who sought to claim his power, and the boy’s presence slowly awakens something in Duncan that grief had buried. Then comes Armand, an enigmatic empath and trickster whose strange gifts, mischievous spirit, and instinctive understanding of wounded hearts complete an unlikely triad. What begins as three damaged souls hiding from a world that fears them gradually becomes a sanctuary for the exiled, hunted, and forgotten; drawn by an unseen call, warlocks from across the continent begin finding their way through the forest. Under Duncan’s reluctant leadership, the refuge grows into something unprecedented—a school, a brotherhood, and ultimately the first and only coven of warlocks ever recorded, where forbidden knowledge, elemental forces, brotherhood, desire, betrayal, and the dangerous legacy of Duncan’s blood converge to create a power the old order can neither understand nor control.

​

The Chronicles of Targos unfold in the mysterious border town beneath Castle Basarabia, where Wallachia, Transylvania, and Hungary meet at the edge of the Forbidden Forest—the ancient domain, prison, and grave of the All-Mother. Built upon catacombs left by a forgotten civilization and haunted by memories of the druids and peoples who once inhabited the land, Targos exists as two worlds: the elegant New Targos, shaped by Princess Mara, its grand church, princely monuments, and wealthy Christian settlers seeking refuge from the wars beyond its borders; and the older, humbler Targos, where ancient families remain bound to the land and older beliefs survive beneath the surface of Christian society. Between these worlds unfolds a collection of strange disappearances, forbidden loves, unexplained deaths, ancient secrets, supernatural encounters, and unsettling mysteries—stories that may seem unconnected until the shadows beneath Targos begin to reveal that the town's past is not truly buried, and that some of its oldest secrets may be connected to the dark presence sleeping beyond the forest.

​

There are places in the world that were never meant to be found, and none is more seductive than Château Rouge, the crimson palace hidden beyond the reach of ordinary men, where the most secret desires of the Unseen may be surrendered without consequence. For generations, its doors have opened only to those powerful enough—or damned enough—to receive an invitation, and at its heart presides La Dame du Château Rouge, a mysterious woman who inherited a legacy she never sought and a kingdom built upon pleasures too dangerous for the mortal world. But when a young runaway bearing an ancient and unfamiliar bloodline arrives at her gates, the Lady finds herself drawn into a bond neither of them understands, and the secrets of the Red Castle begin to stir once more. Behind its velvet curtains, forbidden chambers, and endless revelries lies a story of inheritance, sacrifice, and a destiny waiting patiently for its next mistress.

​

This follows Dragomira, a young witch of the Old Blood whose extraordinary gift leads her into the secretive Sisterhood of the Eternal Flame, where she is trained beneath the blade of Liora Drael, one of the most formidable assassins of the Southern Watchtower. There, amid ancient vows, sacred fire, and the hidden wars of the Unseen, she learns that some witches are not merely guardians of the old laws, but their executioners. Yet as Dragomira's own destiny begins to emerge from the shadows, she finds herself caught between the doctrine she was sworn to uphold and a life she scarcely dares to imagine beyond the walls of the Watchtower. Fleeing into the world of men, she seeks obscurity among those who know nothing of her blood or the terrible traditions she has left behind, only to discover that some destinies cannot be escaped by changing one's name, abandoning one's past, or hiding beneath the humble light of an ordinary life. For the blade may be broken, the witch may flee, and the past may be buried—but there are some things that follow their blood.

​