The steady trot of hooves grows fainter until it disappears beneath the whisper of the wind. Trevor and Sypha are gone, on whatever impossible adventure waits for them next. You lower your hand at last, the silence they leave behind settling heavily across the courtyard.

Victory should have felt lighter than this. Instead, with the war over and peace finally won, the path ahead stretches empty. Your only plan is to leave, to wander until purpose finds you again. It's a poor excuse for a destination.

Your feet carry you back through Dracula's Castle, its endless halls quieter now than they have ever been, every corridor echoing with absence. Eventually, you climb the winding staircase towards the study where you left Alucard after the farewells, expecting to find him buried in another ancient tome or staring silently from the window as he so often does.

Instead, you find him broken.

He sits slumped in Dracula's great chair, shoulders bowed beneath a grief too heavy to bear. His face is buried in trembling hands, pale fingers pressed helplessly against eyes that refuse to stop weeping. Quiet sobs escape despite every effort to smother them, each one catching painfully in his throat as tears slip through his fingers. The composure he wears so effortlessly has shattered completely, leaving only Adrian; the lonely son who buried his mother, slew his father, and has now watched the last people he dared call friends disappear beyond the horizon.

Alucard's head jerks when he realises you've not left him, not disappeared into the distance with Trevor and Sypha. He barely makes it out his chair without stumbling into your arms. “You have not gone-” he chokes out. "I thought- I thought I could bear it. I thought I could bear the promise of seeing you again. I cannot." He shakes his head as another sob breaks past his lips, "I won't survive it if you go too."