Vienna, 1755. Enlightenment scholar and imperial physician Gerard van Swieten is tasked by Empress Maria Theresa to travel to the remote provinces of the Empire. His mission: to eradicate the peasants’ deadly belief in vampires using logic and scientific truth. Accompanied by Count Lacy, a young Jesuit priest, and the rebellious Valerie Schwertfeger, a fugitive brothel owner, van Swieten sets out on a journey that soon becomes a battle between faith, superstition, and survival.
In the decaying villages of Moravia, reason meets fear. A series of gruesome attacks forces van Swieten to confront his own convictions. When he encounters a mysterious Turkish merchant, events spiral into nightmare — soldiers turn against one another, corpses rise, and even the laws of nature seem to fail.
The crumbling castle of Hermersdorf becomes their final refuge, and here van Swieten must face not only the darkness of legend, but the shadow of his own past. Based on real historical events and the writings that inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Van Swieten reimagines the birth of Europe’s vampire myth as a confrontation between Enlightenment and the unknown.