Back at Vlad's Manor, Romania
The shadows seemed alive as Vlad Anthony walked through the dark halls of his manor. The walls, cold and silent, stretched endlessly before him, leading him to the heart of his ancestral home – the place no outsider had ever seen, the place where the Hellhawkers held their secrets close, far from the reach of the world. It was a room that held generations of blood and power, the unimaginable was spoken, and the unthinkable carried out.
Vlad had called for a family meeting. Not just any meeting – a summons that pulled every blood-tied member from whatever corner of the earth, or slumber, they occupied.
Some of them had been in hiding for millennia, driven to the edge of madness by immortality. Time had rendered them tired of life, apathetic to its joys and agonies. They buried themselves deep in sleep to escape the tedium, their bodies untouched by age but their minds gnawed by endless existence.