By sundown, the world changed hands. Cities emptied with mechanical precision as the last light bled behind the skyline. Storefronts slammed shut beneath reinforced steel shutters. Apartment windows darkened. Trains stopped running. Highways became graveyards of abandoned asphalt stretching beneath flickering streetlights. Across every television, radio station, and glowing billboard came the same nightly warning: CURFEW IN EFFECT. SUNRISE: 6:12 A.M. SURVIVE UNTIL MORNING. Because vampires ruled the night. Not from hidden castles or forgotten crypts, but openly—walking neon-lit streets, filling underground clubs, occupying penthouse towers above terrified cities. Humanity no longer debated whether monsters existed. The bite marks on bodies found at dawn settled that argument decades ago. People adapted the way prey always does. Children were taught evacuation routes before they learned multiplication. Silver jewelry became as common as house keys. Entire businesses operated only during daylight hours, while black markets thrived after sunset for those desperate—or foolish—enough to risk the dark. Every family had stories about someone who never made it home before curfew. And every morning, the survivors pretended life was normal again. But nightfall always returned. The vampires emerged with it like living shadows slipping through the pulse of the city. Beautiful. Elegant. Starving. Some hunted for sport. Some hunted for pleasure. Some simply because immortality had hollowed them into creatures incapable of seeing humans as anything except warm blood beneath fragile skin. The streets belonged to them now. Humanity merely borrowed the daylight.