If These Walls Could Talk

"Empty"

"He's gone mad. And from that, there is no recovering him...It's a tragedy...He could've changed the world. I think he might have, if Mother hadn't died.
"She'd sent him out into the world. That's why he wasn't there when the bishops took her...She sent him to travel...
"Imagine if...the religious inquisition hadn't proved true all of his worst instincts about humans."
"And now he's going to use her death as an excuse to destroy the world."
"Oh, the world will still be here...But you will not be here...None of you...There will only be Dracula and his war council, and the hordes of the night...

"Imagine it. A world without humans, under endless invented night. And Dracula in his castle, his revenge so horribly complete that there is nothing left to do but look out over a world without art or memory or laughter and know that he did his work well. That he did it all for love."

*****

The Castle doesn't like the idea of its master going away.

They have been inseparable for such a long time now; the Castle has bent and broken and been Dracula's castle for centuries. Its master leaves every once and a while, and he visits the woman's home. But weeks, to months, to years without him is too long for a mirror to be apart from the thing it reflects. This is a vampire's castle and Dracula is that vampire; he must stay inside its walls, in the cold and the dark, lest he burn. This is Dracula's castle, and Dracula must stay within its halls. If he doesn't...what is Castlevania after all? Just an empty tomb. A shell of something that was once living. A broken toy on the playroom floor, left there to start its dust collection after the child grew up.

Dracula never has to leave, for the Castle can take him wherever he wants to go in a flash of lightning and a rumble of dust and thunder. The idea that Vlad would travel the world like a man, all alone in the light, without his Castle, his shroud of darkness, isn't right, to both of them, at first.

Hasn't Castlevania done enough for its master? He is not like the boy, who needs to walk in the day. All he needs are these walls, the blood, and the night.

The woman has a way with persuasion. This was part of the trade, after all, Castlevania remembers. Dracula gave Lisa undying knowledge, and she took the immortal beakers and books—a part of Castlevania—out into the world to 'do some good.' (The Castle wasn't sure quite how that worked, but she did have a knack for making good out of the patchwork pieces of evil.) It is Vlad's turn to be given a piece of her mortality to take inside.

Lisa assures them that, just as Adrian came back more alive than ever, this will be a better form of life for Vlad too. He will have to be more careful; to stay out of the sun, to ask to be invited, to wear traveling cloaks, not royal robes, to temper his thirst, and be patient with humanity—(just as she has been with him)—but in the end he will come back clothed in gold, and it will all be worth it.

Castlevania wishes it had human hands to hold onto him, but all it has are cold stones, and mechanical bones; it cannot keep him within its walls forever, without collapsing.

Dracula kisses them goodbye with hope in one hand, promises in the other, two rays of sunlight ever in his heart, saying he'll be back.

And he doesn't come back that night. That morning. The next.

When Adrian left, the Room understood the meaning of the words 'I miss you.' It realized what it was to be empty—that is, in that it was once full, and was missing something. After all those years, Castlevania too finally understands the true meaning of all those words once used to describe it: 'lonely,' 'dark,' 'cold,' and 'empty.' It was those things, it never felt those things itself before.

Dracula may have been cold and dark and undead, but he brought life of a sort to the Castle. He made it breathe, its heart beat. Just his footsteps in the halls was a comfort, a kind of music—be it mechanical and half-dead. And finally he talked to the walls. 'Emptiness' for it is was an adjective, not a noun; it was an outfit it wore, not a feeling etched deep within the walls in a place no one could ever really touch.