Chapter Text
Prologue
1789, Belmont’s Village – Alucard
The stench of rotten blood and burnt flesh was intertwined with heavy malodour of sulfur, lingering in between trees and bushes, like it wove itself into the very fabric of reality. The trail of smell marked the path of something, appearing out of nowhere in the middle of the forest surrounding the village, just a few miles from the main gate. And it was leading to the north, drawing an arched line around the village. A creature passed through the threshold between the world and realm of hell – the odour it left behind was a clear suggestion towards this conclusion. Alucard soundlessly followed the trail, his steps light across the layer of the snow. The cold breeze of wind caressed his cheek and played with strands of his hair, carrying an even more intense smell of hellish monster, hunting in the forest. He had no doubts it was hunting. Throughout centuries of his life, he didn’t meet a single creature summoned from hell who wouldn’t spend its first moments on earth picking a victim to tear apart. The aroma was overwhelmingly potent and evidently emitted evil, the essence of it ingrained in every particle.
Alucard returned to the village several days ago. His primary motive was not to reconnect with the families that still resided in the proximity of his castle. He had a different ambition, one intricately tied to thwarting a newly formed vampire cult that sought to unleash its insidious corruption upon the world. Where else could he find his answers than in the Belmont's Hold's still well-kept and extensive library?
He became painfully aware of the increasing desolation of the place he had once proudly called home from the very first steps. Years have slipped by since his last visit, a painful reminder of how his once vibrant home has succumbed to a chilling emptiness. It was not the winter's grasp that has drained the warmth, but the exodus of families seeking refuge in the sprawling embrace of distant cities. It was not merely a fleeting moment, but rather a saga that began in the shadows of the past. The village continued to shrink, hollowed out since the last of the Belmonts roamed across Europe—some returning to France, others embarking on daring journeys to the New World. As ever- pursuing evil, corruption, seeking the roots where it flourished, to battle it until it withered and perished. Or until the last Belmont collapsed into own grave, dragging a multitude of vampires down with them.
When he appeared on the village's main road, he was met only by the castle's keeper, an old friend of Belmont's family who was bent in half by the weight of his age. The remaining villagers, scarce in number, likely failed to recognize the dhampir entirely. Once more, he found himself a stranger within the walls of his very home. The keeper, however, remembered him and made an effort to join him in the cold, hobbling beside him with two wooden canes carved from oak nearly as old as Alucard himself. The old man had reported sightings and anomalies that frightened the villagers. The creature did not attack any of them, but it did leave behind dead bodies, indicating that it was targeting vampires rather than humans. Though he remained attentive, gathering fragments of crucial knowledge, an inescapable weight lingered heavily upon his heart. Another testament to the unyielding passage of time—the village of Belmonts, a sanctuary long feared by every vampire and creature, for it was the domain of that formidable clan… Tormented once more by the undead and the relentless multitudes of darkness.
Then, as the guardian departed, leaving him at the threshold of his childhood home, once more shrouded in the stillness and absence of warmth… He allowed his mind to plunge further into the abyss of his own silence and shadows. Sadness acompanied his every step, as he brooded. He did endure long enough to witness seasons of life passing by him – through the rupture of his own youth, the following it bright summer of his life, times filled up with joy. Until the autumn scattered with graves of his friends, their children and the children of their children. The winter around him was just a reminder of the winter that had come to take his home; the state of the castle confirmed this as well. The stone, weathered and weary, stood testament to countless efforts of repair and renewal, its surface and depths now marred with the irreversible marks of time. He walked through the hall and up the stairs to prepare for the hunt. In the funeral silence, he found the echo of his own footsteps too loud. Disrupting the grave his home had become once again. Only a heart deep in the waters of memories could not freeze in these times. So he let it submerge into the ice-cold well inside.
Alucard paused beside the tree, sensing the presence of something in the darkness. What especially caught his attention was the behaviour of the darkness around– these were no ordinary dark spots moving naturally with the leaves and branches casting their shadows. They were behaving, some kind of shapeless hellborne ghosts crawling out of darkness into pale moonlight, leaving no trace on the snow. Cold instinct brushed against dhampir’s spine, his mind moved before his body did– using levitation to ascend into the crown of the linden he stopped by. He decided to silently move through the branches and observe darkness twitching and writhing below. It kept to the ground. As he stepped through the tree crowns, following the still-increasing stench of furnace, rot, and sulfur, he heard something and froze. His ears caught the sound of a boot sliding down the pine tree, a few trees from where he crouched at the branch. A faint scent of human blood rotting in someone’s dead heart– a vampire hiding in the tree. Alucard let his sword silently unsheathe and float beside him, scanning the surroundings with senses sharpened by an adrenaline rush. The thickening atmosphere and copper-like taste of hell's magic on his tongue warned him that something was on its way– the forest fell completely silent as all this unnatural darkness roamed across the pathways below in sudden anticipation. The stream of bodyless creatures ran toward the sound of a vampire bastard whose leg slipped on the branch, like a predator spotting the scent of prey. Dhampir stilled his breath, watching intently. Initially, nothing else happened. Creatures seemed to dissolve in the darkness of the night. And then, like a blade, a panicked scream pierced through the thick silence. Branches snapped and bones shattered, as the vampire was pulled from his perch among the shadows. Alucard remained still, unyielding, his jaws set tight. Although the fate of the vampire didn’t interest him much… The screams that followed the first one revealed just enough about the kind of monster that had pursued the other. He stood resolute, refusing to waver or withdraw, determined to take the time to observe, to understand the challenges that lay ahead in the coming days. Taking advantage of the vampire screaming like they were skinned alive - which could be the case - Alucard crossed the distance between the trees and found himself on the pine tree, from which he could peer down into the moonlit glade. The scene he witnessed made his heart skip a beat. His instinct recoiled instantly, chased not by the hellborne stench but by the sight of the monstrous thing devouring the vampire, a man, alive. It was shapeless, burning with darkness and hatred, malice so deep it had its own scent. Its claws ripped through the torso, removing layers of skin and flesh while tearing at the bones. It appeared to mercilessly pierce the vampire's flesh with talons shimmering in the pale glow of the moon, akin to obsidian steel. A horrifying sound of bones being torn from the body, followed by a broken groan and wet rasp of breath. Alucard didn't even have time to reflect on how close he had come to this monstrous creature. He was cataloguing all of its characteristics, but he couldn't recall anything that matched the description he had made up in his head. The vampire had stopped breathing; the only sounds filling the silence were the creature's heavy breaths interspersed with wet tearing sounds of its fangs ripping through the remains. It was consuming the heart. Dhampir remained motionless, his gaze never leaving the creature's silhouette. He had to retreat. Attacking this thing when he didn’t know what he was standing up against would be insanity. He was alone. He pondered the consequences of transforming into a swarm of bats and ascending into the darkened skies. Yet running from a hunting predator in this proximity could be a lethal mistake.
He was weighing his options and deciding to remain motionless, recalling some Tibetan stories about cryptid devas of the mountains and, for some reason, believing that this was the best way to handle the situation. To not run, attack, or move at all. To appear dead to this thing, nothing more than a statue frozen against a tree. He stilled his heart through sheer force of will, rendering his body as silent and lifeless as he could manage.
The creature beneath finished its meal, and as it raised its horned head, Alucard noticed its gleaming red eyes. It was piercing him with an unwavering stare as it noticed him crouched on a pine branch. Dhampir remained unyielding, commanding his body to appear lifeless. It stared at him for a long time, and he knew deep down that it saw him and more… He felt as if it recognized him, tilting its head to the side and shifting weight between the clawed feet. Perhaps it was even tasting the air to determine how the next meal would taste.
Closer to the devil Alucard didn’t want to get. Not before finding the answer to his burning questions in the Belmont's Hold: what was that and how to kill it. He was now playing with fire; he should turn into bats and flee for his life, avoiding drawing this thing close to the village and directing it to his home. Instead, he lingered, a subtle intrigue dancing beneath the shadow of dread that enveloped the moment. Alucard noticed a change after two seemingly endless seconds. The creature was not looking at him in a predatory manner, but rather with an interest that appeared to be very similar to his own from the previous moment. It didn't move; it froze in place, just like dhampir, and the darkness around it curled into natural shapes, remaining motionless for the time being. After a few seconds, it lowered its head, as if to think. Despite having the opportunity to retreat, Alucard chose to trust his instincts and stay. In the fleeting moment that followed, the creature averted its gaze, casting a lingering look over its formless, obscured shoulder before it glided away from the glade, vanishing into the depths of night.
Alucard lingered on that cursed branch of the pine tree for an hour, his breath quiet and measured. He wondered when it would be safe to move again, not knowing if this was the creature's deceitful hunting strategy. The intelligence he saw in it was undeniable. But nothing happened; the forest resumed its normal rhythm of sounds and cycles of small night predators. And so dhampir finally burst into a flock of bats, unleashing the full force of his body's accumulated tension all at once.
Time unknown, Hell’s Sanctuary – Lucifer
Millennia of his father's judgment pouring down from heaven into the deepest, hottest pit of hell rendered him oblivious to the passage of time and profoundly unconscious of his body. It was an eternity of burning from inside out of existence itself, his mind being scorched constantly with noise so horrid it twisted every thought into a curse of pure malice. Since the lid of the coffin closed over his head, all Lucifer knew was clamor of intertwined voices– father’s voice stronger than Gabriel’s apocalyptic trumpet, angelic choirs sending damnation in waves of impossible to endure frequency, and countless prayers of human tongues twirling in every thought like maggots. All of them naming him The Devil, the source of all evil. Repeating these burning lies over and over again, with one objective unknown to everyone except the Judge above: to erase Lucifer's truth. The persecution for his so-called rebellion was immeasurable in its fallout. Lucifer's soul was crushed under the weight of it, and his dragon, like himself, was forced into exile; his body wrapped in chains, shackled, and bound. Shadows were whispering just as much as humans, their voices mingling in a maddening dance of pure wrathful chaos. The notion of surrendering and transforming into all that they accused him of being… It was more and more tempting. Merely to escape the weight of existence, the torment of feeling. To become this mindless beast– a terror to be slayed in the Apocalyptic Triumph over The Devil, that Father forged himself in Hell’s embrace.
Lucifer found himself thinking about this prophesied death with hope, longing for the moment he will fall into eternal embrace of his Mother, Darkness itself. Embrace that will leave his soul completely erased out of existence. Nothing left to suffer, long, hope and wish.
He was sure he was getting close, but they kept pulling him back, refusing to let him simply stop existing on his own terms. They wanted to break him first, twist his truth, and turn him into the image of a monster they had painted. Then humiliate him so that all the realms can see how disobeying God ends, fortifying his dominion built on tyranny and lies.
And Lucifer couldn’t betray himself like that. No matter how long they will be torturing him, keeping him shackled in Hell – he will not serve this lie out of his own free choice. As long as he can bring the light of truth against the darkness of the lie– he will not bend. He was the Bringer of Light. Even if no one believed in it, even if no one worshipped him, or prayed on knees in temples, his truth was enduring as long as his will to keep it. So he kept it, untouched.
In this maddeningly loud darkness, where he lay with no space left for awareness of body or heart, a shadow different from the others slithered through the thin membrane of his willpower, which was already trembling with exhaustion, a mental shield held constantly against the siege. Lucifer’s soul shuddered, terrified of what it meant. Weakness– his strong will corroding at last.
Yet instead, in this darkness, an image enveloped.
Just an ethereally beautiful, pale face with eyes that gleam like the warmest dawn.
Lips forming words Lucifer couldn’t hear but only felt their caress against his soul. A meaning close to: Find me.
The face started to coil into a single gleam of light, like a trail of dawnlight pointing the way through delirium towards the crack in the entire confinement. The loophole in the entire mountain of offensive magic. Lucifer’s breath hitched with a held-back sob.
My angel came for me.
And he didn’t know who he was, but he followed the light. He gave in to the weight of all curses and damnation while navigating a risky path through shadows and gaps. An endless series of maneuvers that could lead to the breaking of his soul.
And then– he slipped away from the clutches of his father without anyone knowing.