With the paperwork finished, the air in the library felt heavy—charged with the weight of a $6.4 million secret. I sat back, my fingers tracing the edge of the mahogany desk, feeling the grain of the wood like it was the only real thing left in the room. "Exactly what am I writing, Marcus? And can I verify any of it? If I'm putting my name—or even a ghost name—on a history of the damned, I need more than a parlor trick with a knife and some fast healing."
"You can verify everything," Marcus replied, his voice a calm anchor in the dim room. "As long as you look in the right places. History is often written by the victors, Jason, but the truth is buried in the soil and the stone. We will give you access to our archives as a starting point—archives that have never seen the light of a library shelf. You will find that reality is far more structured than your fiction suggests."
"Fair enough. Let's start with the basics. Birth name and true age. No more 'Marcus Aurelius' for a second. Give me the man behind the mask. If we're doing this, I need the raw data."
Marcus stood, his silhouette tall against the rows of ancient bindings. "I am exactly ten thousand, twenty-four years old," he said. The number fell flat and heavy, like a stone dropped into a deep, dark well. "My birth name was Shardrackanu—named after the moon god by my parents. I was born under a summer solstice full moon among my people: the Sumerians."
"Hold it," I interrupted, the skeptic in me surfacing like a reflex. "Anthropologists say Sumerian civilization started around 4000 BC. If that's true, your math is off by thousands of years. You're claiming to be older than recorded history itself. That's a hell of a leap from 'I heal fast' to 'I predated the wheel.' You're talking about a gap of millennia."
Marcus didn't flinch. Instead, he walked to a specialized display case in the corner, one guarded by reinforced glass that looked thick enough to stop a high-caliber round. He keyed in a code, and the soft hiss of a vacuum seal breaking filled the room. He retrieved a small piece of woven cloth, a simple clay pot, and a stone tablet etched with jagged, unfamiliar script.
"Here is my proof. I do not expect your faith, Jason; I expect your due diligence. Take these anywhere in the world to verify them. These were not found in a tomb; they were mine when they were new. They are the remnants of a life you cannot yet conceive."
I looked at the items. The cloth was incredibly fine, yet felt oddly metallic to the touch, shimmering with a dull luster. The tablet was covered in a script that lacked the neatness of later cuneiform; it looked raw, primal, and ancient beyond reckoning. I held the pot in my hands, feeling the weight of ten thousand years pressing against my palms. It was cold, unnervingly so, as if it had been kept in a place where the sun never reached.
"I need a few days to find someone who can date these," I said, my mind already spinning through my contacts and academic circles. "I won't tell them the backstory. I'll tell them I found them in a private collection. Let's see what the experts say when they don't think they're being pranked."
"Jeremiah will accompany you to protect my interests," Marcus added, his tone leaving no room for argument. "The artifacts are... irreplaceable. They are the only physical link to my beginning."
The logistics of the trip moved with the terrifying efficiency that only extreme wealth—and supernatural speed—could provide. I spent the afternoon in my room, the artifacts laid out on the bed. I felt like I was handling the bones of a god. A few hours of deep-diving into academic journals led me to Dr. Winston James Millwork at Cambridge—a man whose reputation for being a "curmudgeonly genius" made him the perfect candidate. If anyone could spot a fake, it was Millwork. He was the kind of man who would tear a colleague to shreds over a misplaced comma in a translation; he wouldn't hesitate to call me a fraud if these items were anything less than authentic.
The next morning, the reality of the task set in. After a failed attempt to get past Millwork's secretary, I resorted to a high-stakes digital siege. I sent high-resolution photos of the tablet's peculiar script with a subject line that simply read: Predating Uruk?
Five hours later, while I was pacing the length of my room, my phone erupted.
"Hello? This is Winston Millwork. I received your email. I've been staring at these images for three hours. Tell me immediately—where did you get these? Do you actually have the physical items, or is this a digital fabrication? This script... it shouldn't exist."
"I have them," I said, my voice dropping to a whisper as I checked the door. "And I need them verified. Carbon dating, linguistic analysis—the works. When can I bring them to you? I need an answer that stands up to scrutiny."
"If you bring them, I will lock my office door and look at nothing else. I will see you the moment you land. This could rewrite the dawn of man, Mr. Bauer."
I relayed the news to Marcus in the library. The vampire barely looked up from a ledger, his eyes scanning lines of text with inhuman speed. "My plane is ready. It's fueled and waiting at Teterboro. Jeremiah will go with you. He is... protective of my things."
When I returned to my room to pack, I found my suitcase already sitting by the bed, neatly packed with clothes I hadn't even selected yet. The efficiency was starting to feel invasive, a reminder that my privacy was a secondary concern in this house. Everything about this place was designed to make me feel small, like a bug under a microscope. Even the air felt curated.
"I took the liberty of retrieving your things from your apartment," Jeremiah said, appearing in the doorway without a sound. "We have a schedule to keep, and the Master dislikes delays."
The drive to the airport was a blur of New Jersey turnpike lights. Inside the black Cadillac, the silence was stifling. Jeremiah sat perfectly still—no fidgeting, no checking his phone, barely even a visible breath. It was like sitting next to a statue. I tried to make small talk, but he shut me down with a single, cold look. I looked out the window at the passing cars, wondering if any of those people knew that a man who remembered the birth of civilization was sitting just a few miles away.
"I don't see the point of the trip," Jeremiah said suddenly, his voice cutting through the hum of the tires. "The Master does not lie. It is a human trait, born of fear and the need for self-preservation. If you need proof we are what we say, I can provide it now. We don't need a man in a tweed jacket to tell you the sky is blue."
Before I could respond, Jeremiah turned toward me. His face, usually a mask of professional boredom, shifted. His jaw unhinged further than humanly possible, and his teeth didn't just look sharp—they elongated into jagged, ivory needles. His tongue flicked out, split into four distinct, barbed segments that writhed like independent organisms, tasting the air. The scent that filled the car was metallic and ancient, like wet copper and old dust.
I slammed against the car door, my breath hitching in my throat. My heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest. "Jesus! What the hell?"
Jeremiah snapped his mouth shut, his face returning to its handsome, stoic norm in a heartbeat. "I apologize for frightening you. But a tablet is just stone. This is blood and reality. Now, please—no more questions. The flight is long."
The private jet was a palace of leather, mahogany, and silent attendants. As we crossed the Atlantic, I sat by the window, watching the moonlight dance on the clouds 40,000 feet above the ocean. I thought about the Sumerians, about a man named Shardrackanu who had watched the rise and fall of empires while my ancestors were still painting cave walls and fearing the dark. I wondered if he had ever been lonely, or if the centuries had burned that human emotion out of him long ago.
I looked at the briefcase resting on the seat beside me. It contained the artifacts, but it felt like it contained the weight of the world. If the doctor confirmed the date, I wasn't just writing a book. I was writing the only true account of the world's oldest living witness. I was becoming the scribe for a being that predated God in the eyes of most modern religions. Every word I wrote would be a strike against the history books, a rewrite of the human story.
The cabin was silent except for the low hum of the engines. Jeremiah was seated across from me, his eyes closed, though I doubted he was actually sleeping. He looked peaceful, which was more terrifying than his monster-mask. A killer at rest is still a killer. I poured myself a glass of bourbon from the crystal decanter—high-end stuff, probably more expensive than my first car. It burned on the way down, but it didn't do much to steady my nerves.
I pulled out my notebook and began sketching out the first few pages. The world remembers the shadows, I wrote, but it has forgotten the men who cast them. I looked at the line and crossed it out. Too poetic. Marcus wanted the truth, and the truth was that I was sitting on a plane with a monster, heading to England to prove he was the oldest monster in the room. I needed to be clinical. I needed to be Jason Bauer, the ghostwriter who didn't believe in ghosts.
We landed at a private airfield outside London just as the grey morning light began to bleed through the fog. A car was waiting on the tarmac—another black sedan, another silent driver. The transition from air to ground was seamless. London felt cold and damp, a stark contrast to the climate-controlled luxury of the jet.
As we pulled into the hallowed, ancient streets of Cambridge, the contrast hit me. Here was a place dedicated to the preservation of human knowledge, to the slow, methodical uncovering of our past. And here I was, carrying three items that would turn every textbook in those libraries into kindling. I saw students walking with backpacks, their lives ahead of them, blissfully unaware that the history they were studying was a sanitized lie.
We reached the Anthropology department, a somber brick building that smelled of old paper and floor wax. Dr. Millwork was waiting at the entrance, his eyes bright with a manic sort of energy. He looked like he'd been electrocuted. He didn't look like a man who had slept.
"Mr. Bauer," he said, ignoring Jeremiah entirely. "The items. Please. We have the lab prepared. We've cleared the schedule."
I handed him the briefcase. My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. This trip would either crown me as the greatest biographer of the century or mark me as the most expensive fool in New York. I watched Millwork disappear into the lab, the heavy doors swinging shut behind him with a finality that made my stomach drop.
Jeremiah leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. He looked out of place in the sterile, academic hallway, like a wolf in a nursery. "Now we wait," he said, his voice cold and flat. "But remember, Jason—the truth doesn't change just because a man with a microscope finally sees it. Gravity existed before Newton named it. We existed before you wrote of us."
I sat in the plastic chair in the hallway, the sterile lights flickering above us. Ten thousand years. I tried to wrap my head around the number. Empires, wars, religions, the industrial revolution—all of it just a fraction of the time Marcus had been walking the earth. If he was telling the truth about his age, what else was true? Did he really want to help humanity, or was I just a convenient tool for a much longer game? I thought about the $1.6 million in the briefcase back in New York. Was it enough to buy my soul? Or was I just renting it out for a few chapters?
The minutes stretched into hours. I could hear the muffled sounds of equipment and hushed voices from behind the lab doors. Every now and then, a technician would hurry out, look at me with wide eyes, and disappear back inside. The tension was thick enough to choke on. I closed my eyes, the adrenaline finally starting to fade into a bone-deep exhaustion. I drifted in and out of a light sleep, seeing flashes of Sumerian suns and silver briefcases filled with blood.
When the door finally opened, Dr. Millwork stepped out. He looked pale—ghostly, even—his hands trembling as he held a folder of results. He looked like he'd seen a god, or a demon, and wasn't sure which was worse.
"It's impossible," he whispered, looking at me with a mixture of awe and terror. "The carbon dating... the linguistic structure... it doesn't make sense, and yet, the data is undeniable. The isotopes... the mineralization of the clay... it's all wrong for our current timeline, but it's consistent with itself."
I stood up, my legs feeling like led. My mouth was dry. "Tell me, Doctor. How old are they? Give it to me straight."
He swallowed hard, his eyes darting to Jeremiah and then back to me. He looked like he wanted to run, but his curiosity was holding him in place. "They are ten thousand years old. At least. And the script... it's a precursor to everything we know. It's the beginning. It's not just Sumerian; it's the language that Sumerian grew out of. It's the first word ever written."
I looked at Jeremiah. He didn't say a word, but the slight, knowing inclination of his head said everything. The Master did not lie. The deal was real. The man in the study was ten thousand years old, and I was officially the biographer for the first vampire. My life, as I knew it, was over. I wasn't just a writer anymore; I was a witness to the impossible.