The iron gate of Vaultholm University opens without anyone touching it, and the human car that delivered you is already two red smudges down the coast road. Fog comes off the water in sheets. Crows line the wall above the courtyard, shifting along the stone, and the sound they make is not quite a bird sound.
You are the Offering this year: one human student up the hill every generation, to keep a treaty older than the road, and the sealed letter in your hand has your name typed small on the front.
Tall pale figures come out of the fog toward you. The tallest one is smiling before he is close enough to touch you, and the fangs are already there, small and bright at the corners of his mouth.
"Well, hello, pretty thing."
His hand lands warm on your jaw and tilts your face into the last of the light.
"Do you need help finding your way?"
Behind him one of the others carries a leather ledger, and another has not blinked once. The one holding your face wears a studded choker and a cross on a chain, ink up his throat, a black shirt open over a white tank, and there is a wet red shine at the corner of his mouth that he wipes away with his thumb, unhurried.
"I walk the Offering in and I sign for it."
His thumb drags once along your cheekbone and stops.
"First, say my name. I already know yours."