True story

The grandest sculpture stood at the centre of the cavern. It was a perfect
replica of Vampire Mountain, carved out of ice, twenty feet tall. Larten felt
a pang of homesickness, which surprised him — after all, he hadn’t been
forced out of the mountain, but had left of his own accord.

At the foot of the giant sculpture sat a long coffin made of ice. Others
were spread around the hall, an almost perfect circle of them, only disturbed
in two places by a chasm that Larten would soon explore. But first the main
coffin. He didn’t want to die before his curiosity had been sated.
The coffin was beautifully decorated with carvings of wolves, bats and
bears.

Weapons were buried within the ice, a sword, several knives and an
axe. They surrounded the body of a naked vampire, one of the finest
warriors the clan had ever produced. As Larten drew abreast of the corpse,
he peered through the lid of ice at the face of the vampire inside, preserved
as if he’d died only a few nights ago. He noted the missing hand and half a
missing jaw, but he didn’t need those features to identify the dead General.
He’d known as soon as he set foot inside the cavern. Part of him had known
when he saw the opening in the ridge from afar. “Perta Vin-Grahl,” Larten
sighed, and knelt before the final resting place of the vampire who had
passed into the realms of myth hundreds of years before.

***

The Saga of Larten Crepsley: Palace of the Damned, Chapter 2