RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE - The House of Dimitrescu

Chapter 1 - The Beneviento Graves

Y/N had never meant to come this far east. Passing Paris, Lyon, Milan, Como and Venice without any major issues, Y/N had completed the first leg of his "dream teenage roadtrip" over the course of several weeks. But as he reached the Austrian city of Graz, meaning to turn north towards Vienna, Prague, and after that Germany and Belgium, a late winter storm had almost single-handedly closed the Austrian roads north, and the Austrian-Czechian border, forcing him to take a detour further east to loop around it.

Still optimistic, despite the extended route he would have to take, Y/N had decided to hit Budapest in Hungary on the way past, taking it as a twist of fate that might not make his detour so bad after all. However as the storm continued to howl across eastern Europe, Y/N found himself being pushed further and further off course, missing Budapest entirely as he was forced to swing south. He drove for days, his solar panels dead from lack of sunlight, until one day, just when he decided it might be far enough away from the storm to begin to loop around, his tires, ill-suited for mountain weather, skidded on the snow and threw him violently down the side of the nearest mountain, crunching his van's roof like a drinks can, popping three of his four tires, and crushing his phone almost completely against the driver's seat.

Y/N stood shivering in the snow, staring at the upturned wreck of his dark red van, wondering how he might be able to right it. The dark solar panels that had sat on the roof littered the snow up the side of the hill between the trees, half-buried in churned white powder, fallen branches and engine grease. The tinted windows in the back were shattered, and a thin rivulet of blood ran down the doorframe from where Y/N had cut himself trying to extricate himself from the wreck. He was missing a wheel, the doors were all bent out of shape, and the engine hissed gently, spouting steam into the cold, mountain air. 

Y/N cursed quietly under his breath, absentmindedly tightening the strip of fabric around his left bicep over the cut from the jagged doorframe, before he turned, squinting through the early morning light across the valley, peering through the trees and the thick, grey mist that shrouded them. 

Sniffing coldly, Y/N grabbed his rucksack, which contained only the handful of cash, clothes and food he had managed to scavenge from the wreck, before turning and beginning to make his way determinedly down the slope into the mist. 

The snow was cold around his knees as he waded through the powdery drifts, and Y/N soon felt his fingers go numb. He pulled his jacked more tightly around him and forged onwards, hoping desperately that he might find some trace of civilization among the cold, dead trees.

Finally, after walking for the best part of thirty minutes, Y/N stumbled forwards out of the trees and fell, sprawling across the ground at the edge of a small clearing, filled with small, stone gravestones, the bare branches of the trees wrapped overhead. A strong, bitter smell filled his nostrils, and the chill mountain air seemed slightly warmer somehow, as if the icy breeze had suddenly gone still in the air.

'Argh!' Y/N growled painedly, pushing himself off the ground and brushing the dirt from his clothes. Squinting through the fog, he glanced around the clearing, spotting what must have been almost two-dozen small gravestones clustered around a larger gravestone in the center, before stumbling towards it through the mist. The bitter smell made him choke slightly, clawing sharply at his throat and nose, but he ignored it, dismissing it as some woodland flower which he was not yet accustomed to. 

Reaching the stones, Y/N stood to one side and surveyed the weathered headstone on the central grave, just able to make out the word Beneviento through the thin layer of lichen on its surface. Distantly, Y/N heard a twig snap behind him, and he felt a rush of adrenaline shoot through him.

He started, jumping back from the gravestone and turning, catching sight of a tall woman clad in a long, black dress stood silently by the edge of the clearing, where a small path led off into the mist behind her. Her face was covered with a thick, black veil, and in one arm, she held a bouquet of strange, black flowers. Looking at her other arm, however, Y/N felt a chill slither up his spine.