Despite my earlier bravado, my next stop after a brief rest was the Heart of the Castle.
There were multiple entrances to it, scattered throughout the keep like veins leading to a heart. Secret stairwells, moving corridors, and alcoves that only appeared under moonlight. But Dracula's preferred method remained the hidden passage in the study, the same one I now took without hesitation, hand grazing the stone wall as it silently peeled open.
The Heart was what kept Castlevania alive. It's brain, its spine, its soul. The engine that powered the impossible shifts, the unnatural defenses, the centuries-spanning survival. The reason why the castle was never truly destroyed, no matter how many Belmonts bled across its halls.
These were little tidbits of memories and information that slipped into my head, not things I had watched, but things that Dracula, as a character, had experienced.
I stepped into the core chamber and walked slowly, deliberately, toward the cube, in deliberation about my future plans. Despite everything, I wasn't sure staying was the right call.
If I were being brutally honest with myself, no lies, no coping, I didn't want to be here. Not really. I wanted to go home. I wanted to wake up in my own body, in my own world, in my own timeline. I wanted normal problems. Rent. Overdue college bills. This? This was fantasy with blood under its nails.
So why should I stay and fight a war that has nothing to do with me?
I knew the stakes. I wasn't some wide-eyed self-insert bumbling through Westeros like a tourist. I knew what it would mean if I left. If I pulled Castlevania out of this world now, canon would likely snap back into place like a stretched rubber band. The White Walkers would sooner or later, if they were not already, begin to march south and wipe the North clean.
The Wights and the Others would crush the Free Folk. Then, if they were lucky and cannon held, they would halt the march by sheer luck. If they weren't, and the unwritten book canon was followed, then maybe Winterfell would fall. Then the Riverlands. Then the world.
And I still found it hard to give a damn.
Eventually, someone would win. The narrative would demand it. Azor Ahai would rise... maybe. Or Daenerys would burn her way to victory with her Dragons behind her. Jon Snow might brood his way to the crown, resurrected plot armor and all. Arya could shank the Night King again, quick and clean. And Bran… would stare. Either way, the wheel would keep turning.
So why the hell should I stay? The answer hit me the second I got to the Heart. The floating cube that powered the castle, as well as the pillar beneath it, was dim.
Not dead. Not inactive. Just... dull. Sluggish. Like something ancient sleeping under layers of frost. The cube at the center, normally radiant and humming with raw, eldritch power, was pulsing like it had a weak heartbeat. Still functional but just barely.
Low power mode.
I blinked, and my eyes flicked red. Instinctively, I reached for the core. Not physically, but through the link that connected us. Dracula's inheritance. My inheritance. The castle responded instantly, pushing data into my thoughts, not words, but understanding. Like a diagnostic readout made of pure instinct.
Everything was green. Structural integrity: optimal. Heating systems: steady. Mechanical functions, primarily powered by steam and occult mechanics, were perfectly calibrated. The castle could run for another two hundred years without needing maintenance. Maybe three, if I let some of the lesser halls rot.
Only one reading showed red.
Magic.
Specifically, atmospheric and ambient levels. Not internal reserves, that was stable, if a little low. But the magic in the world, the kind Castlevania fed on when transitioning or shifting, the kind it needed to reach into other dimensions? Diminished.
I was robbed, I realized with a glare.
Robbed of a choice.
The realization didn't come softly. It didn't arrive like the subtle tug of intuition or a quiet philosophical epiphany. No. It crashed into me like someone had reached into my chest and yanked out the illusion of freedom I'd been clinging to. For all my power, all my knowledge, all my posturing, I was trapped here, for now at least.
It took everything I had not to lash out.
Not at the castle, not at the core, not at the damn mirror still humming in the corner behind me in my study, but the urge was there. Crawling under my skin. I wanted to break something. Destroy something. I wanted to punish the thing that denied me an escape route. But I didn't. I clenched my jaw, curled my fingers into tight fists, and buried the reaction somewhere deep.
I exhaled through my nose and forced my thoughts away from the bitterness. Forced myself to look at the positives, if only because I had no other option.
Magic levels were low. That much was obvious now. Not just weak. Starved. The kind of starvation that only happens over centuries. Like a world that had once known greatness but had grown old, until it only had just enough to keep the lights on and little more.
That gave me a marker. A real one. This wasn't the Age of Heroes. It wasn't the height of Valyria. It wasn't even early Targaryen rule. This was late. Very late. Closer to the time when myth was just rumor and monsters were just lies that parents told their children to keep them from sneaking out of bed.
Closer to canon.
And that wasn't nothing. It was frustrating, yes. But it was also useful.
Because this world, for all its chaos, was quantifiable. Manageable. I understood it, somewhat intellectually and narratively. I knew the players. It's factions. The history. The endgame. More importantly, I knew the limits. Magic was atrophied here. Not dead. Not gone. Just stunted. And that meant my enemies, whoever they were, would be stunted too. I had a ceiling I could see. A battlefield with boundaries.
That made it a perfect testing ground for a fresh-faced Vampire Lord. So I retreated to my study and turned to the mirror. I understood my topography better than most. Far better than anyone who didn't ride dragons and carry royal maps. I had walked the interior of Castlevania already and made mental notes of the surrounding lands. But I hadn't bothered to scry beyond. I hadn't really looked until now, and if I was going to be stuck here, I needed to know more.
The runes surrounding the shards still pulsed with red light, still active, still holding. I didn't need to cast again. Good. I didn't feel like going through that again. I had not had the time to really sit down and focus on the magical aspects of Dracula's capabilities.
I stepped forward, faced the mirror, and spoke clearly:
"Winterfell."
The shards shimmered. There was a ripple of distortion, a sharp static, and then the image formed.
The ancestral seat of House Stark. Broad stone walls dusted with snow. Smokestacks rising from blacksmith forges. Outer courtyards teeming with movement. I could see men, women, and children, all bundled in heavy furs. Guards in gambeson patrolling the ramparts, white wolves stitched into their tabards.
I recognized it well enough, even if it looked way more massive than it did in the show. Which made it surprising that when I willed the mirror to push inward, to show me the interior, the barracks, hallways, the crypts, all I got was noise and harsh static.
The image twisted, flickered, and then snapped back to the outer walls. I tried again. Same result. I zoomed in, saw the steam rising from the hot springs, the glint of steel in a guard's scabbard, but the inside was locked away from me.
I frowned, then waved the mirror with a snap of my fingers, and the view shifted. The Wolfswood came into focus, then the White Knife, still water flowing through snow-crusted banks. Both were rendered clearly. There was no distortion. No pushback.
Then I returned to Winterfell only to be met with static again. Something was wrong.
A hypothesis was forming in the back of my mind, but I didn't want to speak it yet. Not without more data. The scientist in Dracula, the one who had buried himself in alchemical texts and magical calculus for centuries, refused to let a theory out without a wider control group.
So I spoke to the mirror once more, "Sunspear."
The shards rippled. The static this time was barely present, and then the image resolved into color and heat.
Desert winds whipped across golden sands. Olive-toned people in light fabrics moved in loose clusters, shadows stretching long in the afternoon sun. The castle itself stood tall and proud, its Dornish design unmistakable. And when I willed the mirror to take me inside, it obeyed without hesitation.
I saw laundry hanging between stone pillars. I saw washerwomen scrubbing clothes. Dozens of guards in flowing robes and polished spears patrolled shaded walkways. I even caught a glimpse of an older man in a solar guarded by half a dozen men and two others sparring in a courtyard, one young, quick-footed, the other older, more measured, likely a teacher.
I didn't recognize either. I didn't need to; my memories of Dorne were pretty vague at the best of times. What truly held my interest was that it worked. There was no static, no interference. Whatever denied me in Winterfell didn't seem present here.
"The Red Keep."
The view shifted again, and I was greeted by the towering sprawl of King's Landing. The castle rose from the hill like a bloated tumor of red stone and battlements. I didn't linger on the city itself. I didn't care for its slums or the sprawl of mud and plague and piss. I went straight for the heart.
I willed the mirror to show me the inside of the Red Keep.
And there it was. Static. Fainter than Winterfell's. Not as violent. But it was there. The signal fuzzed, cracked. I saw brief flashes of corridors, a torch-lit hallway, and the edge of a sword-shaped throne, but it stuttered, faltered, and collapsed.
I had a vague feeling that if I pushed...
"The Eyrie."
Another clean image. Mountains. Sky. The fortress clinging to the cliff. I pushed inward and was met with no resistance. The inside revealed itself easily: smooth stone walls, pale light spilling through narrow windows, noble blood wandering under armed escort. This was another piece added to the pattern.
"Hightower."
This time, the mirror hesitated. Just a blink. Then the spire came into view. The tallest structure in Westeros. It looked ancient and almost alien in design. It looked less like it had been built and more like it had grown out of the ground, while the rest of Oldtown spread below it like a map.
I ignored all of it, instead focusing on the tower and trying to push past the walls.
Static.
Worse than the Red Keep. Not as feral as Winterfell, but more methodical. I got the sense that whatever was stopping me here was different from the others. The particular word escaped me, but I could feel it at the tip of my tongue. Still, it was not enough. I had a last location to scry.
So I said the final word.
"Valyria."
The moment the name left my mouth, the mirror screamed.
Metaphorically, at least. It was a furious shrieking, the kind that turned the ears and made one scream, like the shards of glass were being dragged along the ground.
Castlevania groaned around me in response as the floor plates shivered. The chains that held the floating chandeliers above let out a strained whine. The runes on the mirror dimmed.
Still, I held the connection. Forced the shards to obey, and then the runes flared red-hot once more. Static tore across the mirror as the edges vibrated violently. My frown deepened, and my will tightened.
And then, there was a sliver of vision. A single, narrow glimpse through the haze.
An island chain wreathed in sulfur and shadow. Blackened towers and castles without roofs jutted from the land like the burnt bones of long-dead gods. Smoke curled up from vents in the earth, fourteen volcanoes blowing strong, and above it all hung a miasma so thick it looked like a second sky, one that pulsed with instinctive malevolence.
The miasma moved. It rolled. Twitched. Recoiled. It was almost like the smog that filled the land was aware. And then the screech came. There was something in the clouds. Something that was absolutely massive and monstrous. Its wings blotted out the sun as it passed overhead, a shape too large to be anything but ancient.
I immediately let go of the scrying spell.
And the floating shards obeyed at once, drifting gently apart, the glow dimming from their surfaces like embers dying in the cold. They returned to their original positions, settling into the well-carved pit Dracula had shaped for them in the stone floor, a cradle of obsidian and chalk meant to keep their power contained.
Valyria had been the final key. The last confirmation.
What I felt from that place was unlike anything I had sensed before. Not sentient-shaped malevolence in the same way the Lands of Always Winter had been. There was no great will at work, no consciousness behind the curtain, no ancient mind obscuring the landscape with deliberate cunning. No... Valyria wasn't hidden.
It was sick.
Magic didn't simply linger there; it festered. Pooled. Gorged itself until the natural laws collapsed under the weight. The entire island chain pulsed with arcane excess, so saturated with raw power that it had folded in on itself. Warped. Twisted into something halfway between miracle and ruin.
That much cataclysm should've ruined the world. I knew it, in a way that spoke more of Dracula's instinctive knowledge than mine. However, The Doom had been contained, the last act of the mages of the empire, keeping the weight and consequences of their sin to themselves. The water that surrounded the island chain also helped, but I also remembered that the Valyrian Freehold only broke off from mainland Valyria during the Doom. It was either chance or, most likely, a magical working to ensure isolation.
Now, the entire island chain reeked of corruption, destruction, and chaos. And, perhaps most unsettling of all, something about it called to me. Like recognizes like.
I shook the thought away before it could root deeper. There were still questions that needed answering.
I returned to the other castles in my mind. Their resistance made more sense now. There was magic in them, not just magic but wards that were carved into them. However, not every ward was equal, but a pattern had begun to form. The older the site, the more resistant it became. Structures built in a time of myth and magic, bound to bloodlines that stretched into the fog of ages, seemed to have better wards.
Winterfell. Hightower. These places were old. Yet they had survived the erosion of time and memory. Their foundations ran deeper than mere rock. They were protected. Which made the Red Keep the anomaly. It didn't fit the pattern. Not fully.
Younger than the rest. Built not by the First Men or the Children of the Forest or some lost civilization, but by Valyrian conquerors, by the Targaryens themselves. And yet, it too had resistance. Not as firm as Winterfell's, not as violent as Valyria's, but still there.
Why? The answer came to me swiftly. Maegor.
Maegor the Cruel, an architect of paranoia. The kind of ruler who wouldn't just build a seat of power but kill the builders with his own hands to bury it in secrets. A man who would line its walls with death and call it foresight. If any Targaryen had the mindset to ward a castle from prying eyes, it was he.
It made sense. Horrible, perfect sense.
And then there was the Wall. Even from this distance, even without looking directly at it, now that I was aware, I could feel it. Like a mountain pressing down on my magic. Scrying beyond it had not been impossible; I had done it, after all. But I had the sense that it had been harder. Much harder than it should have been for a being such as Dracula. The resistance was not arcane in the traditional sense; it was structural. Fundamental.
Like the air was thinner up there. It was almost like the world itself strained to allow magic through.
Then I felt a sharp ache pulse in my chest, dull and familiar, the same sensation as a cloth wrung dry after too much use. Not pain exactly, but fatigue and hunger. I had scried in a way that should've been nigh impossible, and the effort had cost me in some way.
In my past life, the forums had speculated for years about the Wall. Some said it wasn't just meant to hold back the Others. GRRM insinuated on more than one occasion that it held back magic itself.
A side effect of Brandon the Builder's greatest work. Or perhaps an intended feature. Either way, the theory had always been the same: that the Wall didn't just guard the realm; it suppressed it. Like a dam holding back an invisible flood. Magic flowed differently in its shadow. Slower, weaker, and more fragmented.
And now that I had seen both sides, I could say it plainly: The rumors were true.
I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. I had done enough. Pushed far enough. Seen what I needed to see. But the realization came crawling up my spine, slow and cold and undeniable: There are darker places still.
Planetos was vast. Larger than the stories allowed. Larger than the maps suggested. There were hidden lands. Lost ones. Cursed corners of the world that not even dragons dared to fly over. And I hadn't even begun to touch Essos.
Essos.
A land that never quite forgot magic. A continent that still remembered what it meant to sacrifice flesh for fire, to trade blood for power. A land that didn't have maesters suppressing rumors of magic or a church that dedicated itself to casting magic out.
Essos also didn't have a Wall. There was no built-in suppression. It was a land whose skies still remembered dragons. Its soil still remembered death, and some of its people still remembered what it meant to practice.
More than Westeros, Essos drew my attention, and I knew that sooner or later, I would go east. I would walk into the Free Cities, trace the Black Cliffs of Asshai, and explore broken Valyria even. But not yet.
No.
Before I turned my eyes outward, outside my window and past the mountain range and toward the Land of Always Winter, there were problems here in my own backyard that I would probably have to take care of first.
Still, it had been a taxing couple of months without rest, and my scrying only worsened the fatigue I hid all too easily. So I turned away. First things first, I would have to rest.