Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, death, and physical abuse.

Isolde de Lara, the daughter of King Henri of the kingdom of Lara, knows that the vampires of the Blood King Adrian are camped on the edge of High City’s borders. As she gazes at the tops of the enemy’s black tents from where she stands at the edge of the forest, she reflects on the unnatural redness that covers the vampire kingdom of Revekka: a supposed curse by the goddess Dis after the Blood King rose to power. Isolde believes it to be all but inevitable that the leader of the vampires, Adrian Aleksandr Vasiliev, the Blood King of the kingdom of Revekka, will take over her kingdom. King Henri has decided to meet peacefully with the Blood King to attempt to reason with him. The citizens of the kingdoms have mixed feelings about this decision, as they fear the Blood King and his vampires.

Isolde is interrupted by the arrival of Commander Alec Killian, her former lover and the head of her father’s guard. Killian is still in love with Isolde, but for her, their relationship was solely a form of sexual gratification, and she found Killian to be a mediocre lover.