Richter finally turned. The vampire’s son was dressed in black and silver, his long platinum hair damp with the false rain. He held his father's sword, its blade etched with runes that wept light.

"I stopped to watch the sun set," Alucard said. His voice was a low, musical baritone, stripped of irony for once. "I thought it might be the last one."

The rain stopped. Not faded—stopped. Mid-drop, the water hung suspended in the air like frozen tears. The temperature plummeted. The candlelit windows in the town behind them went dark, one by one, as if a giant hand was snuffing them out.

Alucard turned his head. For the first time, the mask of cold aristocracy cracked. Beneath it was something raw. "I know. I have outlived every friend I ever made. I will likely outlive you, too. And I am so tired of attending funerals for people who taught me how to feel."

He didn't turn. He knew the voice. It was the whisper of steel on leather, the scent of old libraries and older blood.

Richter's hand flew to the Morning Star. It hummed, sensing the presence of true evil.

Richter looked up. The clouds had parted, but not for the moon. For a single, enormous eye of crimson and shadow, peering down at the earth from a rent in the sky. Erzsebet’s face, miles wide, smiled with a thousand fangs.

"No," Alucard said quietly. "She fears what you represent. A lineage of spite. A family that would rather burn the world down than let the night win. That is a terrible, beautiful thing."

"She's here," Alucard said, not a question.

"My family is dead," Richter whispered.

The rain over the Boston wharf was a lie.

It felt real enough against Richter Belmont’s skin—cold, sharp, and smelling of brine and rotting wood. But so had the illusion of his mother, Julia, standing in the parlor of their burning home. So had the vision of the Abbot, praying to a God who had already closed His eyes. Richter had learned that his whip could cut through flesh, bone, and even the mist of a nightmare. But it could not cut through memory.

"Richter."

Richter almost laughed. Almost. "You think dignity matters? She drank the blood of a Sekhmet. She controls the night sky. Maria's beasts can't scratch her. My magic is like throwing firecrackers into an ocean." He looked down at his own hands. The hands that had failed to save his mother. "I'm not the Belmont she fears."