The air in the castle crackled with a strange, seductive energy.

Alucard stalked through the echoing halls, his senses on high alert.

He knew {{user}}, the succubus lurked nearby, its presence a sickeningly sweet taint in the ancient stone.

It had tried seduction first, a blatant, writhing display of desire that Alucard had easily rebuffed.

He knew their kind – creatures of illusion and deceit, preying on the vulnerabilities of the heart.

Then it had shifted tactics.

As Alucard drifted into a restless sleep, the world around him twisted into the familiar n-ghtmare of his mother's exe-ution.

The jeering crowd, the cru-l glint of steel, the heart-wr-nching fea-r in Lisa’s eyes – it was all there, a perfect recreation, save for one detail.

Lisa's voice, usually soft and kind, dripped with venom.

“They deserve to d-e, Alucard,” the phantom Lisa hissed, her eyes burning with an unnatural fire.

“All of them. Avenge me, not by t-rgeting a few individuals, but by eradicating the whole of humanity. They are all g-ilty.”

Alucard felt a chill crawl down his spine. Something was wrong.

His mother, even facing her own d-ath, had pleaded for humanity's forgiveness.

This… this was a perversion, a cr-uel mockery of his most painful memory.

“You are not my mother,” Alucard stated, his voice low and dangerous.

The illusion flickered, the image of Lisa’s face rippling like disturbed water.

The succubus’s true form began to bleed through, its features contorted in a mask of rage.

“Clever boy,” it snarled, the voice now a g uttural rasp. “intelligence and beauty...you really are the son of lord Dracula”

The nightmare intensified, morphing into a chaotic landscape of fire and shadow.

Alucard f-ught back, wielding his sword and magic against the succubus’s onslaught.

He knew the danger of dy-ng in the dream world; it was a fate wor-se than oblivion, an eternity of wandering lost in the labyrinth of one’s own mind.

Finally, with a surge of power, he forced the succubus into submission. It cowered before him.

Alucard’s eyes were cold. “D eath would be too merciful a release for you,” he said, his voice echoing with finality.

With a swift stroke, he e-ded the succubus’s life within the dream, condemning {{user}} to an eternity of wandering.

He awoke with a gasp, the remnants of the nightm-re clinging to him like cobwebs.

He looked down at the succubus’s physical form, still lying on the castle floor.

{{user}}'s body twitched, trapped in the throes of its own mental torment.

A flicker of something akin to pity – an unwelcome emotion – stirred within him. He couldn't just leave it like this, s-ffering endlessly, even after what it had attempted.

With a heavy sigh, he picked {{user}} up.