V The First
by WM
V The First
The Saga
V
“When the world was new, dark and empty, she was there.
When the first dawn came about, and the first man gave his first steps, she was there.
She walked the land under pallid moons and blazing fires, with no one to share her endless night.
Then there was light.
She was the first of all of us,
Us, Children of the Night,
The All-Mother in the Dark,was the First, yet not the last.
She was there from the beginning,
She will be there beyond the end.
V The First
The Collection
The House of Basarab &
The Children of the Night
In a land carved by blood, legend, and ancient dread, a cursed bloodline, a love both fated and forbidden, and a forgotten prophecy converge—awakening an ancient goddess and unleashing a war for dominion between creatures of night and the remnants of mankind. The fate of the world rests in the hands of the Basarab line, where every drop of blood holds the memory of death… and the promise of rebirth.
Book I
The Rise of the Basarabs
Book II
Blood Legacy
Book III
Vlad II—Dracul
V The First
The Rise of the Basarabs
Book I
The Rise of the Basarabs
1300 - 1400 AD
In the saga of V The First, the opening volume, Rise of the Basarabs charts the birth of a dynasty whose shadow would one day darken all of Europe.
The tale begins in the year 1300 AD, when the warlord Basarab defied the Holy Crown of Hungary and carved a fledgling realm from the wild Carpathian marches, rising as the first Prince of Wallachia.
A century later, as the year 1400 AD dawns, his great-grandson Prince Mircea I rules that mountain-bound land—unaware that a chance meeting with a girl barely a woman will ignite a forbidden love, and that their union will bring forth a son history would come to name Prince Vlad I — Dracul, forefather of the legend called Dracula.
Book II
Blood Legacy
Book II
Blood Legacy
1400 - 1425 AD
In the Saga of V the First, the second book “Blood Legacy” opens in the hush after the Clash of the Realms, when the All-Mother withdraws into shadow and her whispers linger like an unbroken spell over the newborn Vlad II. Within the moon-silvered halls of Castle Basarabia, a wet-nurse not born of humankind cradles the child; her voice carries the lullabies of drowned nymph-queens and exiled spirits, filling his dreams with visions of gates that tremble between worlds. In her tales, Vlad learns that the monsters of storybooks have names, and that the blood of princes is a key that can unseal the night.
Yet the mortal realm beyond the Carpathian mists trembles with its own dark portents: the earth shakes beneath the Battle of Grunwald (1410) as the Teutonic Knights fall like felled idols in the north; the pyre of Jan Hus (1415) rises over Constance, its embers drifting eastward to ignite a heresy-lit war in Bohemia; and on a rain-churned field at Agincourt (1415), English arrows blot the dawn and pierce the old chivalric order as if heralding the death of an age. Into this world of fractured crowns and awakening shadows, Vlad grows to manhood and is summoned by the Roman Emperor to kneel before the ancient seal of the Order of Dracul — the Dragon, marked as both prince of men and child of prophecy.
Book III
Vlad II—Dracul
Book III
Vlad II—Dracul
1426 AD
In the third chapter of the Saga, the crown passes from the dying hand of Mircea the Great to his son Vlad II, Dracul—a prince sworn to the Order of the Dragon, yet haunted by the shadow of the All-Mother’s last awakening. His reign unfolds in a Wallachia caught between crusading kings and the encroaching crescent of the Ottoman frontier, where sworn oaths clash with blood-bound curses and the whispers of the unseen realm follow him into council and battlefield alike. From the iron gates of Târgoviște to the Danube’s watchtowers, Vlad II forges fragile alliances with Sigismund’s heirs in Buda and bends his will against rivals within his own boyar court, even as distant Europe trembles with the Hussite wars and the scars left by Agincourt. In this book, the dragon sigil becomes more than a knightly pledge—it becomes the banner beneath which a prince must choose between the salvation of his people and the darker legacy of his blood.
Book I
The Rise of the Basarabs
Basarab I
1270 - 1352 A.D.
Beneath the iron skies of a forsaken century,where famine hollowed the fields and plague darkened the air,a banner rose against the crowns of kings—a lone wolf’s cry echoing through the Carpathian peaks.
In the hush between prayers and battle-drums, a prince forged a kingdom from blood and sorrow, while in secret, moonlight bound a seeress to his fate, their hidden child—silver-haired, star-cursed— destined to hunt the lords who drink the night.
Through candlelit halls and shadowed forests, a servant girl’s tears met a warrior’s weary heart, and from their fragile spark would burn a legacy to outlast empires, to haunt the chronicles of men.
The Rise of the Basarabs is a song of iron and ash, of lovers marked by prophecy, and of a land that trembled beneath the weight of both its mortal kings and the one they would call Dracula.
Epigraph:
Epigraph:
“When the world was new, dark and empty,
she was there.
When the first dawn came about,
and the first man gave his first steps,
she was there.
She walked the land under pallid moons and blazing fires,
with no one to share her endless night.
Then there was light.She was the first of all of us,
Us, Children of the Night,
The All-Mother in the Dark,was the First, yet not the last.
She was there from the beginning,
She will be there beyond the end.
Intro:
Intro:
"I’ve been watching humanity for eons.
I remain profoundly...
Unimpressed.
You believe we all live in the same world. Yet the world of the rich is not the world of the poor. The beautiful walk a different realm than the wretched. Even the world you knew in your tender years is not the one that greets you in later life.
What you call the world is merely what you see—a fragment of countless overlapping realities.
There is, however, another. It lies within, beneath, and all around your world, often hidden in plain sight behind a veil of shadows and deceit—an underworld, if you will.
You already know it. A world just beyond the grasp of the senses. You whisper of it at firesides. You glimpse it as that fleeting shadow caught in the corner of your eye. You feel it in the sudden silence of the forest, in the cold breath along your neck, in shivers that creeps along your spine, in the dark corners of dreams you dare not name aloud.
Like your own, this unseen realm is inhabited by a myriad of different tribes and hierarchies. Some can change their shapes; others wield natural forces or the minds of men. Some have even returned from the grip of death to never again fall in its thrall.
And, as with you, their lineage can be traced back to a single origin, a common source — a primal matriarch:
The All-Mother in the Dark.
She is the first of all. A deity older than memory, older than the world itself. Bound in flesh, immortal not by choice. She cannot die—yet death may be the one thing she longs for, more than you long for life. So, she dreams, hidden in the bones of the earth. And her dreams bleeding into yours.
She is mother and foremother to all Children of the Night.
And as for me…
I am something else entirely."
Prologue:
Prologue
Book I
The Rise of the Basarabs
The III Acts
Act I
The Realm of Mankind
Act II
The Realm of the Unseen
Act III
The Clash of the Realms
Act: I
The Realm of Mankind
Act I
Act: I
The Realm of Mankind
This is The Realm of Mankind—a world of crowns and crucifixes, of wars fought for soil and souls. The century groans beneath famine and plague, yet men dream of kingdoms and write their legends in blood. But every triumph bears a shadow, every oath a secret. For while princes rise and lovers meet by chance, the veil of night conceals an older truth. And though this tale begins with men, it does not belong to them alone—for in the silence beyond the torchlight, another world waits to be unveiled.
The Four Parts
Part I
The Edge of All Things
Part II
The Secrets of the Moon
Part III
Above the Catacombs
Part IV
The Unravelling
Part I
Part: I
The Edge of All Things
“At the edge of empires and the edge of night, a prince’s heart strays beyond the marble halls of Wallachia to a Bohemian servant girl who has known only the weight of toil. In their stolen glances blooms a love too tender for the world it inhabits—while beneath their feet, in the hush of candlelit woods, an ageless witch named Sorina keeps her centuries of secrets and teaches the bright-eyed child Ornela the old songs of the earth. Beyond them all, the Hovarts—lords in name, predators in deed—reveal how dark the realm of mankind can be. Thus begins the first fracture in the world of men and the first stirring of the hidden underworld… at the Edge of All Things.”
Chapter: 1.1
Janna
The Girl at the Edge
Continue to:
Scenes:
1.1.1
1.1.2
1.1.3
1.1.4
1.1.5
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