Log Title: Remi, the vampire that thinks differently

From the Journal of Faris Khan

On the Night I Met the Swordsman

I did not meet Remi in a hall or a court, but in a place where men go to be erased quietly. The alley had no name, only function—stone that drank sound, lamps turned away from the ground, and a seam in the city where enforcement arrived late by design. He was already bleeding when I saw him, standing upright out of discipline rather than strength, one hand on his sword as if posture itself might keep him alive. Pureblood. Old. Proud. And surrounded by the kind of trouble that doesn’t bother with speeches.

He fought beautifully. That was the problem. Beauty draws witnesses.

The ambush was not meant to kill him quickly. It was meant to exhaust him, to see what he would become when stripped of elegance. I watched for three breaths before intervening. Not because he asked—he did not—but because the knives in my hands began to move on their own, answering a pressure I have learned not to question. I whispered, “And do not think Allah unaware of what the wrongdoers do” (Qur’an 14:42), not as a threat, but as a reminder to myself. Then I acted.

The men fell without ceremony. One screamed. One didn’t. Remi turned just in time to see the last blade stop in midair, shiver, and finish its work. He did not thank me. He studied me instead, eyes sharp even through pain, measuring not my weapons but my restraint. When he spoke, it was only to ask why I had interfered.

“Because this was not justice,” I told him. “It was theatre.”

He smiled at that—just barely.

Dracula arrived moments later, as he always does when a scene threatens to become interesting without him. The Night folded inward. The alley felt suddenly curated. He looked at the bodies, then at Remi, then at me. His gaze lingered longer than I liked. He already knew who Remi was. Of course he did. Old friends rarely stay buried.

“So,” Dracula said, amused, “I find you alive again.”

Remi inclined his head, respectful but unbowed. Their history sat between them like a blade laid flat on a table—acknowledged, unused, dangerous.

Dracula’s attention returned to me. “And you,” he said, smiling in a way that suggested classification. “Of all those who still insist on believing in a god, it is the Muslims who remain the most dangerous. They remember submission without surrender.”

I answered him honestly. “Submission is not obedience,” I said. “It is alignment.”

That interested him more than the knives.

Remi later told me he had planned to die there if necessary. Not as a gesture, but as proof—to himself—that stagnation had not claimed him yet. He despises the Forever Night not because it is cruel, but because it is final. He believes the sword is honest because it ends arguments cleanly. I believe knives exist to prevent endings that are too easy.

We parted without promises. Dracula watched us both leave in opposite directions, entertained by the asymmetry. Remi did not ask my name. I did not ask his. Some recognitions are more dangerous once spoken aloud.

But I know this: had Dracula arrived first, the night would have belonged to him.

Because I arrived first, it still belongs—briefly, precariously—to men who refuse to finish the story where they are told to.

“Truth has come, and falsehood has vanished. Indeed, falsehood is bound to vanish.”

(Qur’an 17:81)