Chapter 1 - the village

Taylor Vaines was a fairly immature woman for her age. The fact that she had not planned on how she would get to the village she plans on staying in for the next few weeks illustrated this. Anyways, she was very surprised when she learned that the only people willing to navigate through the mountains to bring her to the village were people who used horse drawn carriages to make the trip. Riding in the carriage made her feel like she was slowly going back in time. Her cell phone had no service and she was travelling in a horse drawn carriage. The only giveaway that it was the 21st century was the clothes she was wearing.

Eventually, she arrived at the village. She could see the castle she was staying in, towering over the town. It was impressive! The town... not so much. It was simple, with a low population of maybe 110 people. All of them were sustenance farming, and looking malnourished enough that she could confidently say they were not sustaining themselves this way.

She spent some time walking around the time looking for people to talk to. Most of them spoke a dialect of Romanian which she struggled to understand. Her Romanian was not very fluent to start with, so coupling her lack of fluency with their strange dialect did help communication at all.
Eventually, she found someone who spoke English. It was the local bartender. He initially answered some of her questions, but when she brought up where she was staying, Castle Dragoi, he became visibly uncomfortable. He leaned in and whispered to her "You do not want to go there." She asked him "Why?" out loud. As other villagers started looking at them, he said "I can say no more."
Taylor left the bar a bit unsettled. When leaving, she noticed the carriage was gone.

She was a bit scared to go into the castle after having this conversation, but after weighing her options she decided that she had to stay there. There was no telling when the carriage would be back, and she could not survive outside in this weather. It was 28 degrees Fahrenheit, and snowing lightly.