The raw light of dawn broke through the clouds, finally dispelling the miasma of death that had strangled the sky over the village during the night.
Below, the silence was sepulchral.
The carnage of the previous evening seemed like a distant dream now, but the reality was inescapable: shattered streets, debris, and dark stains.
The peasants emerged from their hiding places, not with celebrations, but with the stunned and silent relief of having escaped death by a hair.
Meanwhile, in the living room of the temporary residence of the Valerious family.
Thud
A dry and heavy sound broke the silence.
A severed hand landed on the long oak table.
It was withered, with grayish and parched skin sticking to the bone, but the nails, black and sharp as razors, still retained a threatening edge.
Without even looking at it a second time, Lief dragged a chair lazily and slumped into it, relaxing every muscle in his body.
Without any ceremony, he took the bottle of wine resting on the table, filled a crystal glass to the brim, and brought it to his lips.
The crimson liquid disappeared in a single long gulp.
"Haa…"
He released the air from his lungs in a long and deep sigh that dragged with it all the accumulated tension, leaving in its place a sensation of pleasant satisfaction. He leaned back heavily against the backrest, stretching his legs completely.
From his body language, anyone would say that he had just finished an intense morning exercise routine or some heavy manual labor, and not that he was returning from an aerial duel to the death against Count Dracula himself.
Soon, the echo of footsteps resonated on the stairs.
Anna and Velkan entered dragging the weight of an endless night. Their clothes were stained, and their faces reflected the absolute exhaustion of having dealt with the chaos and the wounded in the village until dawn.
However, as soon as they entered, the tiredness evaporated from their bodies. For their gazes locked immediately onto the object resting on the table and they stood petrified.
"T-That is..."
"...It's his," Velkan completed with his breathing suddenly accelerated. He approached the table as if hypnotized, unable to look away from that withered hand.
There was no doubt... It was the physical embodiment of the nightmare that had tormented his lineage for centuries. It was the hand that his family had sworn to destroy generation after generation!
"D-Did you... did you kill him?"
Joy exploded on Anna's face and illuminated her features as she turned urgently toward Lief to lock her gaze on him with eyes shining intensely charged with a desperate hope.
'Is it over?'
The thought rumbled in her mind with the force of a hurricane, 'The curse, the suffering, the blood debt... does it all end here? Will the souls of our ancestors finally be able to rest in peace?'
Velkan also clenched his fists so hard that his whole body began to tremble with uncontrollable euphoria.
But Lief, oblivious to their emotional storm, tilted the bottle to pour himself another glass and swirled the wine slowly, observing the crimson whirlpool.
"Don't celebrate just yet."
It was a bucket of ice water on the fire burning in the hearts of the Valerious.
"What do you mean?" Asked Velkan frowning.
Lief pointed at the severed hand with his chin, giving it no importance.
"When I cut it off, it certainly looked bad for him. However..." he took a sip, savoring the wine. "By now, I am sure that a new and fresh hand has already grown in its place."
"It... it regenerated?" whispered Anna, and the color fled from her face as quickly as it had arrived.
"A monster is a monster. The rules of nature don't apply to that thing, they always have tricks up their sleeves," said Lief shrugging. "I only brought this as a reminder. I wanted you to see up close how difficult it really is to finish him."
"..."
The fragile hope the siblings had cradled was shattered.
Of course... It was Dracula.
An abomination that has walked the earth and challenged God for more than four hundred years. How could they be so naive to believe he would die so easily?
Silence returned to the room, but this time it wasn't peaceful.
"I found it! Look at this!"
With anxious eyes Carl burst in from a side room, carrying a pile of books and yellowed parchments and a painting covered in layers of dust.
With a dry thud, he placed the painting on the table, right next to the hand.
The painting showed a medieval knight in silver armor, holding a longsword with a cross-shaped hilt. Despite the cracking of the paint, the nobility of his face and the firmness of his gaze were undeniable. Having the same jaw as Velkan and the same intense eyes as Anna.
"This is our ancestor," murmured Anna, recognizing him instantly. "Valerious the Elder."
"Yes, yes, exactly. But the problem isn't him," said Carl while unfolding a fragile parchment on the table. "The problem is in what is missing from his stories. Look here. According to official records, after the Great War against the Turks, his son died heroically in battle..."
"We already know that." Velkan frowned, impatient. "What is all this about?"
"N-No, you don't know!" interrupted Carl, his voice trembling. "His son didn't die! That was a lie to cover the shame!"
"...Your ancestor's son... He made an unholy pact with the Devil after his supposed death. He renounced God... and became the first vampire! Dracula is the son of your own ancestor!"
"WHAT?!"
Anna and Velkan stood petrified, as if lightning had struck in the middle of the room.
Dracula...? That monster... is of their own blood?
"THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE!" roared Velkan, hitting the table with fury, unable to accept it. "Our family has fought against him for centuries! We are not spawn of the devil!"
"But it is the truth! It is in the secret archives of the Curia!" Carl threw a file with red Vatican wax on the table. "Valerious the Elder discovered his son's betrayal and felt such guilt and shame that he went to Rome to beg for forgiveness! There he made the oath that binds you all!"
"If you don't kill Dracula and purify his soul, neither Valerious, nor his son, nor any of his descendants... including you, will be able to enter heaven! Your souls will wander in Purgatory for all eternity!"
Anna staggered back and had to cling to the back of Lief's chair so as not to fall.
The world spun around her.
It wasn't an enlightenment, but a devastating emotional blow.
She looked at the portrait of the noble knight and then, slowly, lowered her gaze toward the monstrous and severed hand lying next to it.
The similarity in the structure of the fingers... the shape of the hand...
An icy nausea rose up her throat. Everything made a horrible and twisted sense.
They were not guardians chosen by God.
They were jailers.
They were the ones in charge of cleaning up their own family's trash.
The "glorious crusade" of the Valerious was not a war against an external evil, it was a domestic dispute that had spiraled out of control for four hundred years.
Her father's obsession, her grandparents' madness... it was despair. They were paying for the sins of a relative who decided to become a monster.
"Your ancestor built a prison for Dracula," Carl continued. "He used sacred relics from the Church itself to create a door that only allowed entry, but never exit."
"But the Devil is cunning and granted Dracula wings to mock his father's prison. He could fly out of the door's reach and thus, for nine generations, the Valerious family has thrown everything they had against him, trying every conceivable method... and failing miserably every time."
"..."
Lief listened in silence, leaning back in his chair, while he brought the glass to his lips once more.
The wine had a metallic aftertaste, or perhaps it was just the atmosphere.
'Family grudges, sins of the fathers, and a search for redemption through parricide,' he thought. 'It is a classic melodrama script, worthy of a tragic opera.'
However, the pieces were starting to fit.
The way Dracula lost his composure the previous night... that volcanic fury...
Being locked up by your own father, condemned by the Church you served, and cursed to find peace neither in life nor in death... From that perspective, Dracula's madness had a certain twisted logic.
Anyone would have broken under that weight.
"Then... how the hell can he be killed?" asked Anna with a voice that no longer held the strength of command.
Silver stakes, holy water, crucifixes, decapitation... they have tried everything, but nothing affects him. He is immune to everything that should kill a vampire. What is left?
"...I've got it! Of course!"
Carl's eyes lit up suddenly and he ran toward the back wall, where an ancient tapestry hung that served as a map of the castle and its surroundings.
"I have been cross-referencing the data from the map your family left with a parchment Mr. Van Helsing brought and I finally managed to decipher the Latin inscription hidden in it!"
Touching the map with his finger and pointing to a fragment of almost erased text, he turned toward them.
"Dracula's only weakness... is the Werewolf!"
"...A werewolf?"
Van Helsing's deep and raspy voice came from the main entrance, startling them.
Everyone turned.
He entered, heavily dragging an iron chain, and behind him, stumbling and growling under his breath, walked a gigantic and pitiful figure.
It was Frankenstein's Monster.
His massive body was covered in suture marks and strange machinery embedded in his flesh.
"Exactly." Carl nodded with certainty, looking at the hunter and his prisoner. "According to the texts, only the bite of a werewolf has what it takes to end Count Dracula's immortal life."
Turning back toward the huge map, he searched for a specific point.
"Besides, this map contains the necessary spell to open the path toward his true lair, but..." his voice wavered.
"But what?"
"I tried to recite the spell a moment ago and there was no reaction. Look here."
Carl pointed to an evident gap in the map's surface.
Everyone looked in the direction he was pointing and sure enough, the edge of the paper was torn irregularly. A section was missing, taking with it the final part of the spell and the exact location of the entrance.
Hope, which had barely lasted a few seconds, transformed again into bitter despair.
Even if they knew his weakness, even if they had the werewolf... if they couldn't find Dracula's true body, all the effort would be in vain.
"..."
Without saying a word, Van Helsing approached the map. His eyes scanned the torn edge and then lowered slowly toward his own coat.
He reached into an inner pocket close to his chest and took out a piece of old paper.
But the curious thing was that the paper was made of an identical material, with the same weathered texture and yellowed edges.
It was the missing piece!
Carl was so excited that his hands trembled visibly when Van Helsing handed him the fragment.
He took it with the delicacy with which one holds a sacred relic.
He hurriedly climbed the wooden ladder leaning against the wall and carefully aligned the irregular edges and pressed the fragment against the gap.
It fit perfectly.
The map, for the first time in centuries, was complete.
He climbed down the ladder and stepped back a few steps, admiring the map.
He took a deep breath, his voice acquiring a deep resonance as he recited the newly restored Latin text.
"In nomine Dei, aperi portam ad castellum Draculae..."
!
As soon as the last syllable left his lips, a dull vibration, a low-frequency hum that made the teeth of those present chatter.
The ink lines on the map came to life and began to shine with a silver light, flowing and twisting like snakes over the paper.
Suddenly, a blinding flash forced everyone to cover their eyes.
When the light dissipated and they could look again, the map had disappeared.
What replaced it was a colossal mirror, embedded in a black wooden frame.
However, the glass did not reflect the room nor the people in it.
Its surface was a swirl of absolute darkness, a deep black, and an icy air began to filter from its interior, lowering the room's temperature instantly.
Hypnotized, Carl stepped forward and extended a trembling hand toward the surface, which rippled like water at the touch.
"It worked…"
________
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