(A/N) Chapter 18, here we go~
The forest had changed once again.
What once was a hushed glade beneath Hollowmere's rotting canopy had stretched, twisted, and unfolded into something unrecognizable .
Trees stood still, but their shadows moved like dancers beneath a stage of cracked stars.
Alucard's boots left no sound on the soft moss, though his heartbeat thundered in his ears.
Lucien trailed behind him, careful as always, scribbling notes in his leather-bound journal even as their surroundings warped in ways no ink could explain.
"This place was a village," the scholar murmured, brushing fingers across a stone fence swallowed by roots.
"Now it's a memory given form… or a dream nesting inside reality."
Alucard didn't answer.
The System had grown quiet again since its reawakening days prior—too quiet.
It was merely observed.
He felt it like eyes behind a veil of frost, observing without intervening.
Not even a new [Notification] since the Veil had marked him.
As if it is waiting for something.
The silence unnerved him more than the glitches.
They reached the center of Hollowmere's remnants.
A half-collapsed church, its bell tower frozen mid-collapse, now stood upright again—restored not by time, but by contradiction.
The door creaked open on its own.
Alucard stepped through.
Inside, he saw pews rotting and pristine in equal measure, shifting between states with each blink.
A statue of an old deity loomed at the altar, face worn smooth by both time and some unseen force.
Yet when Alucard approached, the statue changed.
It became him.
No, not quite—him as the Demon King, crown of bone and obsidian horns, eyes aflame with wrath and purpose.
The expression carved into stone was neither mercy nor madness.
It was inevitable, like it was set in stone.
Lucien stopped breathing.
"…Is this real?" the scholar asked stiffly.
"No," Alucard said.
"But it's true."
The stone mouth moved.
Not a sound, not a whisper—just the sensation of thought.
Something deeper than a whisper.
A cold wind inside the soul.
[You are both], said the echo of the Will.
[And neither.]
Alucard stepped back.
The System pulsed again.
System Notification
[You have entered a Dead Zone.]
[Spatial Anchors unstable.]
[Reality Layer conflict: Veil/Origin/Core]
Initiating Stabilization Protocol…
Error. Core Identity Mismatch Detected.
Would you like to reconcile?
[Yes/No]
"What… is that?"
Lucien asked, but Alucard couldn't speak.
His hand hovered over the system prompt only he could see.
Reconcile what?
With who?
Himself?
The Demon King?
The Hero?
The choice pulsed again.
[Would you like to reconcile?]
[Yes /No]
He didn't press anything.
The System didn't need it.
It knew.
Lucien finally spoke, voice shaking but steady.
"Maybe this is why they summoned you. Not because they needed a hero. Because the world needed a container. A contradiction… to hold the fracture together."
Alucard looked at him.
"You knew?"
"No. But I suspect it is much. The Black Sky… the whispers that came after. They weren't about war. They were warnings."
Lucien glanced at the statue again.
"There was never supposed to be a second summoning. Not after the Fall."
A sound rippled through the air, like glass breaking in reverse.
The statue crumbled into ash.
A figure stood behind it.
Not a ghost, not a monster.
A man in a long, tattered cloak of celestial blue and void-black feathers.
His face was obscured, but his presence distorted the air around him, as if he existed slightly out of sync.
He bowed to Alucard.
"You are the one born from divergence," the figure said.
"You do not remember me. But I remember what you were."
Alucard braced himself.
"Who are you?"
The figure's voice echoed without source.
"I am the Graveborn. A remnant of what was—an echo that remembers when the Will was still bound."
Lucien trembled.
"A fragment of the Old Order…"
The Graveborn's head turned.
"The Veil is thinning. The anchor holds, but the seal weakens. And now you walk again, you are no longer bound by script or throne. This is your warning."
Alucard narrowed his eyes.
"Then speak plainly."
The Graveborn's form shimmered.
"You are not the only contradiction. Others walk. Some unaware, some guided. The Will awakens not as one voice… but many. And when it sings, the world will not endure the harmony."
Lucien stepped back.
"The other heroes…"
Alucard's hands clenched.
The four who were summoned. One of them—
"Someone else has begun to fracture," the Graveborn confirmed.
"And they will not endure as you have. Unless you reach them."
The System pinged once more.
Quest Updated:
[Veilwalker Path – Divergence]
Track the Source of the New Fracture
Reward: [Access: Core Layer Map], +??? EXP
Risk: ???
Side Note: Not all broken things wish to be fixed.
The Graveborn stepped backward into the shadow.
"Remember, Alucard. You are a vessel. But you also… have a choice."
And then he was gone.
The air returned to stillness.
Lucien exhaled slowly.
"We need to find them. The heroes. Before the Veil does."
Alucard didn't speak.
His gaze lingered on the ashes of the statue and the words left unspoken.
He had once ruled a kingdom of silence.
Now he marched toward a storm of voices.