Once upon a time, there was a peasant woman named Emiliana. She wasn't anything of note, just a fair lady living near the forest.
Her parents have passed away of old age, so she had to fare for her own.
And it doesn't help she wasn't magically inclined, in fact, none of the people in her village were.
So when she went out into the woods late at night to search for a herb that bloomed only in the dark, she couldn't have done anything.
The village was peaceful, it was built upon one of the blessed spots where no daemon would step a foot on, protected perhaps by one of the forgotten kings themselves. She wouldn't have even suspected something terrible would even appear nearby.
And worst of all... She wasn't even the intended target.
Mistaken perhaps for a wild animal, or a foul adversary, she was shot by a hunter with a crossbow in the back. However, instead of killing her instantly, the bolt began to sprout out throughout her body as she laid here, agonizing.
And during it, a certain thirst appeared. Something she didn't even think she could need. Yet the roots kept sucking and draining her. She must quell it.
Yet she couldn't move. She should've been dead. And so she laid here, hoping that the pain would end.
She was picked up by her neighbours in the morning and nursed her back to health, but they did notice several things that unsettled them.
Her once rosy complexity turned deathly pale, and her eyes not only turned from dark hazel to blood red, but they lacked any life within them. And on her back sprouted a flower, which upon touching, she would scream bloody hell in pain.
Still, she was their compatriot. They couldn't just leave her be just because she was different.
That was, until she left them.
Her thirst deeply unsettled her. She looked at the cattle of her neighbours and felt that disturbing urge to maim it. And when a child approached with a request to bandage his wound, she kept glaring at the blood seeping through - luckily she was able to control her urges, but that left her completely terrified of herself.
Unable to deal with this psychological torment, she abandoned her house, wishing that the wild would let her quench her thirst.
And it did for a while. She didn't enjoy the fact that now she became an equivalent of a wild animal, but it's better than being perceived as an irredeemable monster just because of the forced nature on her.
However, because she was ultimately a blood thirsting human-like being in the woods, certain rumours started to spread.
And those who knew of her condition less wanted to cure her, more wanted to exploit it.
The parasitic flower inside her body had also modified it, making it a potent magical conductor of its own - which makes it desirable for... Certain individuals.
Her blood can be used as potent healing extract, perhaps on par on mock rubedo.
And the flower itself is a miraculous medicinal component due to being born of magic alone.
The issue is that if that flower to be extracted forcefully...
It would mean the death of her.
So she had to fight back against them as well.
That cycle of survival over time took toll on her. Because of greedy Magicians, she had to even abandon the last trace of her humanity, even if she wanted to go back to her village - she couldn't: it would only unnecessarily threaten the people she once knew as her family. And she couldn't use her own name anymore, as it would be traced back.
She went with multiple names, and by that point she was known not as Emiliana, the woman who had survived a fatal attack; now she was merely a nameless vampire lurking in the woods.
As the years went by, she didn't even care about what people thought of her. If she's a monster, so be it. Now the hesitation over killing fellows that would harm her was long gone. She would simply continue feast on wild life, drinking their blood and consuming their meat.
And that nameless hunter, the one who is responsible or all of his, was nowhere to be seen, she would only see the fellow blood-suckers with varying degree of humanity.
And one day, among many, someone would be after her head over overexaggerated rumors spread about her. But that meeting will, in a sense, bring back her humanity, her lucidity.