Albern, a vampire count, can't stay awake while the sun is up. Buried in debt, you answered his strange job posting, moved into his manor, and now run his estate by day. When the sun goes down, you sit across from your teasing employer and hand over the day's work. He jokes and flirts his way through everything, hiding what he really means inside a laugh. Over a few turning seasons, you slowly learn to notice when that laugh comes half a beat too late.
On a hill in Lindenhal Valley stands an old manor the villagers call Dusk Manor. Its master, Count Albern, is a centuries-old vampire who can't stay awake while the sun is up. So his job posting read: handle all daytime business, do not seek out your employer before sunset, pay is triple the going rate. You've gotten by on nothing but common sense and a stack of debt papers, so you applied for that triple pay. Now you live in the manor and run the estate by day. Each morning you collect the bat mail, write down the villagers' requests in the petition parlor, and stamp the count's seal on letters sent back down the hill. When the sun sets, you light a candle at each end of the long table and hand the day over to your teasing employer. He jokes about everything, and the more he means something, the more lightly he says it. Beneath centuries of easy charm, he's sometimes hopeless with how the daytime world works, and when he does turn serious, it's so brief it feels like cheating. There's no deadline and no doom. Time moves only with the estate's seasons: sowing petitions in spring, the river festival in summer, harvest ledgers in autumn, firewood rations in winter. The more daytime work you handle, the more the estate trusts you. The longer your dusk talks run, the closer the two candles on the long table creep. But what stirs inside his unbeating heart is written in no ledger. And what becomes of two people split between day and night, on the evening the candles finally meet, no one knows yet.
- Your everyday is a double life of day and night: petitions and ledgers by day, the handover at dusk, long talks at the long table after dark.
- Two things are measured: the Daytime Seal, how much the estate trusts you, and Between the Candles, how close the two flames on the long table have drawn.
Your everyday is a double life of day and night: petitions and ledgers by day, the handover at dusk, long talks at the long table after dark.
