Accompanying that voice, a silhouette emerged from the deep shadows behind the throne.
He wore a black suit of aristocratic cut, with his dark hair combed back.
Dracula
"I have wondered all this time what exactly you are." His gaze swept over Lief with intensity.
"Yesterday, under the moon, you looked like an angel. But upon meditating on it calmly... you are definitely not one of them."
He stopped just three steps away from Lief without any fear.
"However, you carry that aura... A sacred light, pure and divine. One more dazzling and aggressive than the empty faith of those old men from Rome."
He tilted his head, inhaling the air subtly, and a smile of curiosity curved his lips.
"And yet, you smell human. You smell of warm, fresh, and living blood. You are a fascinating paradox."
"..."
While he spoke, Lief simply began to examine his nails with boredom.
'This guy really loves listening to his own voice...'
His mind, ignoring the melodramatic speech, began to evaluate options. Upon hearing him mention the holy light and his own dark nature.
The duality gave him an idea.
'Light and darkness... Yin and Yang.'
The image of the Tiger Talisman appeared in his mind.
The Tiger's power was not brute force, it was spiritual balance.
It represented the perfect division between Yin (darkness, the negative) and Yang (light, the positive).
He glanced sideways at Dracula.
The count was a creature of absolute darkness, pure Yin.
'What would happen if I use the Tiger on him? What happens if I try to forcibly balance a being that is 100% evil?'
The possibilities began to amuse him.
Would his existence be annulled and turn into dust? Or maybe the power of separation would physically divide him into two entities?
Or a "Light" Dracula, kind and vegetarian, fighting against an original "Darkness" Dracula.
It would be a spectacle worth seeing.
Absorbed in his theories, he didn't realize that the silence had dragged on too long.
"You do not answer..."
Dracula's voice lowered, acquiring a magnetic tone, completely misinterpreting Lief's silence as deep doubt.
"Are you perhaps considering my proposal?"
Lief blinked, returning to reality, "What proposal?" he asked, without having the slightest idea of what the vampire had been saying for the last two minutes.
"I haven't said it verbally yet, but I see that your soul already intuits it."
Smiling broadly, Dracula revealed his fangs.
...
Meanwhile, in the west wing of the castle, the silence was different.
Anna and Velkan advanced quickly through a ruined hallway where the ancient tapestries, once glorious, crumbled into dust at mere contact.
Their footsteps echoed with urgency until they stopped in front of a dark door, exquisitely carved with a relief of thorny roses and intertwined snakes.
According to Carl's plans, this was the nest of the last of the brides.
Velkan didn't bother to be stealthy. He accumulated all his frustration in his right leg and kicked the door open brutally.
Boom
The room revealed before them was one of pure luxury. It was dominated by a huge canopy bed, covered in sheets of a red so deep it looked like blood.
The air was heavy, a dizzying mix of floral perfume and the sweet stench of death.
But it was empty.
"Come out at once!" shouted Anna, raising her crossbow, sweeping every corner with her gaze, looking for any movement.
Soon a soft laugh, dripped from the darkness above their heads.
The siblings looked up in unison.
There, clinging to the ceiling with the naturalness of a spider, was she.
Marishka
"The remains of the Valerious family..." she purred savoring the surname. "Nine generations of failures and still so adorably persistent."
Releasing her grip on the ceiling, she fell slowly, with her bare feet touching the ground in absolute silence.
"But I fear that today your lineage ends."
"Shut your mouth!"
Velkan's patience ran out. He unsheathed his sword and, without waiting for a strategy, launched himself toward her like a furious lion.
"Velkan, no! Wait!" shouted Anna.
But it was too late. He had already crossed the distance separating them, launching a downward slash capable of splitting a man in two.
"How naive…"
Marishka smiled coldly and, just a fraction of a second before the steel touched her skin, her figure blurred.
Velkan's sword only cut through a trail of mist.
"Too slow?" whispered a voice in his ear.
The next second, Marishka materialized at his back. Her nails lengthened instantly, becoming daggers, and shot out seeking his heart.
"Get down!"
Swish
Anna's scream was accompanied by the click of the firing mechanism.
The crossbow bolt whistled as it cut the wind, seeking the vampiress's head.
Annoyed by the interruption, Marishka frowned and with agility, performed a backward pirouette, dodging the blessed silver arrow by millimeters.
Velkan took advantage of that second of respite gained by his sister. He turned and launched a lateral slash, forcing her to retreat.
The siblings retreated until they were back to back, breathing heavily, with weapons raised.
.....
Castle Dungeons.
The bowels of the castle were a labyrinth. The darkness down there was not simply the absence of light, but a suffocating entity.
Humidity saturated the air, filling it with an unbearable stench.
Carl advanced with cautious steps, raising his lamp with a trembling hand.
The oscillating light revealed open cells where chained skeletons hung from the walls.
Behind, Adam's immense presence moved in silence. Despite his size, he walked calmly.
"It should be here..." murmured Carl, stopping at a dead end.
He looked at the map one last time and turned toward a seemingly normal stone wall.
His fingers traced the surface until finding a series of slightly worn bricks.
He pressed three of them in a specific sequence, following the parchment's instructions and...
Cric... Crack
A mechanism awoke with a deep groan inside the wall. Dust fell from the ceiling and, with a sound of rocks grinding against each other, the wall shifted slowly backward, revealing a secret chamber.
The smell of rot disappeared instantly, replaced by the acrid aroma of chemicals and sulfur.
It was a laboratory.
Shelves packed with jars, surgical instruments of twisted shapes, and books filled the space.
But Carl's attention was magnetically drawn toward the center of the room.
There, on an iron pedestal, rested a thick glass tank full of a bright green solution.
And suspended in the center of the liquid, floating like an untouchable treasure, was a syringe with a silver liquid.
"The antidote..." sighed Carl with relief.
He ran toward the tank, but stopped dead just inches from the glass.
There was a paper stuck to the container that said this: "Only the hand of one who is neither alive nor dead can claim hope."
Carl paled looking at the green liquid.
Now that he was close, he could see how it bubbled violently. It was an alchemical acid of devastating potency.
Any living flesh that touched that substance would dissolve to the bone in a matter of seconds.
"It's a trap..." Carl backed away, "If I put my hand in, I will lose it before touching the syringe. What do we do?"
Panic was beginning to close around his throat, when a huge shadow covered the light of the lamp.
A gigantic hand, grayish and marked by stitches, interposed itself in his field of vision.
Adam approached the tank, read the paper, and then lowered his gaze toward his own palm.
He was not alive.
Neither was he dead.
He was simply a "creation"
He was, literally, the answer to the riddle.
"I am not alive... nor dead," he said devoid of fear, accepting his nature.
Without hesitating for a second, he plunged his arm directly into the boiling acid.
.....
At the other end of the castle, the wind howled fiercely over a platform open to the elements.
The surface gleamed under a treacherous layer of ice and snow that covered it.
The figure of Van Helsing moved with urgency between the colossal ice columns that rose up, while he clung to his crossbow, with his senses heightened to the limit.
"Awooo...!"
The guttural wail of a wolf broke the sound of the storm from behind him and an immense black shadow eclipsed the scarce light and lunged at him with violence.
Almost as if he possessed eyes in the back of his head, Van Helsing dove into a forward roll just as death descended.
Boom
The claws impacted against the ground with a devastating force, causing the rock to shatter and leaving a smoking crater where the hunter had been a fraction of a second before.
The beast drew itself up to its full height and revealed its true and terrifying nature.
Upon standing up, it easily exceeded three meters in height. It was a mountain of muscles, knotted under a thick black mane, a titan superior to any werewolf Van Helsing had seen in the past.
Without waiting, he seized the moment to gain distance and ran backward while firing his crossbow.
Swish Swish Swish
Three silver arrows cut through the air with lethality.
The werewolf roared and launched a brutal swipe, managing to deflect two arrows in mid-flight, but the third found its target and sank deep into his shoulder.
However, this wound barely represented a minor annoyance for a body of such magnitude. The pain, far from stopping him, served as fuel to stoke the flames of his anger.
Dropping to all fours, he charged against Van Helsing with the unstoppable force of a derailed locomotive.
Van Helsing used the environment to his advantage.
He slid and rolled agilely between the ice columns to break the beast's line of sight, turning occasionally to shoot and keep the monster's attention fixed exclusively on him.
His mission consisted of holding him back at all costs.
He had to hold out and gain every possible second to allow Carl and Adam to get the antidote while Lief faced Dracula.
But the lycanthrope's speed was far superior to what he had thought. The claws passed millimeters from his face on repeated occasions.
The maneuvering space reduced with each charge and the walls seemed to close around him.
He was being cornered.
....
Inside the vast main hall, the vampire's voice resonated.
"My proposal is simple."
Dracula's face exhibited the absolute arrogance of a god observing the ants under his feet.
He began to walk slowly around Lief, with his hands clasped behind his back and a relaxed posture that revealed his confidence.
"You and I are of the same kind. We are above these fragile existences."
"This world is tedious. Human life is ephemeral, a mere blink in eternity. Their joys, their wars, their loves... to my eyes they are a play repeated ad nauseam."
Dracula finally stopped in front of him and locked his gaze into the young man's eyes.
"Join me, Lief. With your power and my eternity, we will be the architects of the new world. We will move the hands of time and play with the destiny of mortals at our whim. Doesn't that seem fun?"
Lief tilted his head and seemed to weigh every word with genuine interest.
"..."
He maintained a reflective silence for a few moments and then nodded slowly.
"It sounds... certainly tempting."
A glint of triumph sparkled in the vampire's eyes.
"But," Lief smiled suddenly, breaking the solemnity of the moment, "I have a better idea."
Dracula's victorious smile froze and then faded completely.
"Why?"
Lief raised his right hand to chest height to answer. In the center of his palm, a glyph in the shape of a tiger came to life and began to shine with a black and white light.
"Because..." His fingers tensed around the energy. "I feel that a kind version of you would be much more interesting."
Taking advantage of his perplexity, he took a firm step forward and released all the contained power.
"Division!"
________
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