The storm had passed, leaving the castle wrapped in damp silence. Rain dripped from the eaves like a slow metronome, keeping time with the hollow ache in Dracula’s chest. He lingered in the chapel ruins, a place he rarely dared enter.The chapel had been built when he was still Vlad, a prince who prayed before battle, who begged for victory not for glory but for his people’s survival. Now the altar lay in ruin, its cross broken, its stones blackened by centuries of neglect. To him, it was not sacred ground but a grave for his faith.
Yet tonight, he felt compelled to stand within it.
Andrei entered quietly, holding a candle that cast gold circles along the ruined walls. He hesitated at the threshold, as though unsure whether the Count would welcome his presence. Dracula gestured faintly, and the young scholar stepped forward.
“You vanished from the library,” Andrei said softly. “I feared I had offended you.”
Dracula shook his head. “No. It is not offence that haunts me. It is memory.”
He sank onto the broken steps of the altar, his cloak pooling around him like a shadow taking root. For a long moment, he stared at the cracked stone, his lips pressed thin. Then he spoke, the words pulled from a place he seldom allowed himself to touch.
“I was not always as you see me. Once, I was a man. A soldier, a prince, a husband. My name was Vlad. The world remembers me as tyrant, impaler, monster. They do not remember why I fought, nor who I loved.”
Andrei lowered himself onto the step beside him, the candle trembling slightly in his hand. “Tell me,” he urged.
Dracula’s voice grew distant, as if he spoke to ghosts. “Her name was Elisabeta. She was the breath in my lungs, the light of my days. When lies told her I had fallen in war, she cast herself into the river. They would not bless her soul, for the church claimed such death was sin. I begged them for mercy. They gave me only condemnation.”
His hand curled into a fist, his nails biting his palm. “So I cursed their God, and He abandoned me. Or perhaps I abandoned Him. That night, I sought a power that promised no mercy, only eternity. I thought it vengeance. But eternity without her is torment beyond words.”
Andrei’s eyes shone with a quiet sorrow. “You sought love, and were left with hunger.”
Dracula turned his gaze upon him, red glints stirring in his pupils. “Do you pity me, scholar?”
Andrei met his gaze steadily. “I do not pity you, my lord. I grieve with you.”
The candle sputtered in the silence that followed. For a moment, Dracula felt something stir in him—not thirst, not rage, but a sensation so fragile he almost did not recognise it.
Hope.
He lowered his head, his voice scarcely more than a whisper. “Then perhaps… I am not wholly beast.”
Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model
No comments:
Post a Comment