The roar of Adrian’s motorbike sliced through the city’s morning haze, its engine growling like a restless predator. Sidan City was already awake cars clogged the streets like blood in a tired vein, and impatient horns echoed against the glass towers above. Adrian weaved between them with practiced ease, wind tugging at his jacket, the scent of asphalt and diesel lingering in the air.

  But his mind was far from the road.

  “No wounds. No trauma. And yet… completely drained.”

  Dr. Blake’s words wouldn’t leave him. They clung like smoke to his thoughts, persistent and unshakable. He had heard plenty of bizarre stories in his time, tales soaked in superstition or rooted in raw tragedy. But this… this was something else. A perfect corpse drained of blood, yet without a scratch.

  “Vampires,” she’d said.

  He scoffed under his breath. Vampires. The word didn’t belong in any rational discussion especially not from someone like Dr. Blake, a woman grounded in medicine, science, and logic. And yet, she had looked dead serious when she said it. No sarcasm. No uncertainty.

  “Probably a cult,” Adrian muttered as he made a sharp turn, tires screeching slightly. “Some deranged group playing god.”

  That explanation made more sense. Cults were real. Psychopaths were real. Vampires? They belonged in pulp novels and midnight screenings.

  Still… the facts were a noose tightening around logic’s neck. Broad daylight. No visible wounds. No blood left in the body. Nothing added up.

  He pulled into the cracked parking lot of Storm Clouds Station, the regional newsroom where he worked and where his obsession with truth constantly collided with cynicism, deadlines, and a budget barely held together with duct tape.

  The sliding glass doors opened with a mechanical hiss, welcoming him into a world of organized chaos.

  Phones rang incessantly. Typing filled the air like static. Reporters rushed past, waving folders and muttering curses. Editors shouted across cluttered desks. A mug somewhere crashed. Nobody flinched.

  Adrian slipped through the storm, brushing past an intern carrying more papers than should be physically possible. He made a beeline for the central office where Carter Quinn his editor and long-time thorn in the side was hunched over a desk, a phone jammed between his shoulder and ear.

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  “Yeah, yeah tell legal they can fight me later,” Carter growled into the receiver, scrawling furiously on a legal pad. When he spotted Adrian, he jabbed a finger toward him, signaling him in with a grunt.

  As Adrian stepped in, Carter slammed the phone down. “Tell me you’ve got something worth my lunch break.”

  Adrian dropped the folder on the desk with a soft thud. “Weird case. Blake called me in early this morning. Three deaths. All the same pattern completely drained of blood, but no visible injuries. No stab wounds, no punctures, nothing.”

  Carter flipped through the papers, his eyes narrowing. “So what, their blood just packed its bags and walked out?”

  “Exactly,” Adrian replied. “And Blake off the record mentioned vampires.”

  Carter stopped flipping.

  “Vampires?” He stared at Adrian like he’d just confessed to worshipping the moon. “Wolfe. Please tell me you haven’t joined a fan club for the undead.”

  Adrian rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t believe it either. But I can’t ignore it, Carter. It doesn’t line up with anything rational. No signs of struggle. No drugs in the toxicology reports. Just… empty husks.”

  Carter leaned back, folding his arms across his chest. “Let me get this straight. You want me to greenlight a story based on fantasy crap because a coroner had a dramatic morning?”

  “No,” Adrian said firmly. “I want time to investigate it properly. Dig deeper. I think it’s a ritual. Cult activity. Maybe something underground that’s using drugs or extreme methods. But if I dismiss it now, I might miss the real story.”

  Carter’s lips thinned. He stared at Adrian for a long moment before finally speaking. “Fine. You’ve got until Friday. But listen if I see a single bat silhouette or Twilight reference in your draft, I’ll personally reassign you to the Pet of the Month column.”

  Adrian smirked. “Fair enough.”

  Carter waved him off. “Get going.”

  Outside the office, Adrian exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. The adrenaline from arguing with Carter was oddly familiar like stepping onto a rickety bridge, not knowing if it would hold.

  The office diner, tucked into a corner near the archive room, offered little sanctuary but just enough caffeine to stay functional. The smell of burnt coffee and old donuts lingered in the air as Adrian poured himself a cup of steaming black sludge, leaning against the chipped counter.

  The momentary quiet let his thoughts drift.

  Drained of blood… no wounds. Blake was serious. She’s seen worse, but she looked shaken this time. And now I’m chasing shadows.

  Returning to his desk, Adrian dropped into the creaky chair and booted up his terminal. The screen blinked awake, and he dove into the archives. Keywords. Locations. Autopsy reports. Over the past ten years, a pattern emerged isolated deaths in various districts. All dismissed as accidents. Animal attacks. Undiagnosed health failures.

  Yet the similarities were haunting: every victim left pale and empty.

  The articles blurred together until something else drew his attention.

  Two interns—Tasha and Brent, if he remembered right—were whispering at the next desk over. He wasn’t eavesdropping, exactly, but their hushed tones piqued his curiosity.

  “You heard about the thing in Southridge Forest?” Tasha asked, wide-eyed.

  Brent scoffed. “You mean the Satanist cosplay club?”

  “No, seriously,” she insisted. “Someone said they found weird symbols—burnt into trees. And people chanting in the middle of the night. Some claim it’s a cult trying to summon… something.”

  “The devil?” Brent chuckled. “Come on. This city runs on caffeine and paranoia.”

  Tasha lowered her voice. “One of the security guards said he heard screaming last week. Not like… animals. Like people. Something’s going on out there.”

  Adrian sipped his coffee, the bitterness grounding him as the pieces clicked into place.

  A remote forest. Cult rumors. Strange deaths. This isn’t coincidence.

  He turned back to his screen, pulled up a map of Southridge. Dense foliage. Hard to access. The perfect place for a group to operate undisturbed.

  The clock read 4:37 p.m.

  If he waited until nightfall, he could head out under cover. Dangerous? Absolutely. Reckless? Probably. But something inside him stirred—a drive he couldn’t ignore.

  He grabbed his bag and rose, eyes scanning the newsroom one last time. The voices, the static, the deadlines they all faded beneath the quiet call of something deeper. Something dark. Something hungry for truth.

  Because truth didn’t wait. It didn’t knock politely.

  It hid in the woods and dared you to find it.