Chapter Text

ACT I: LAMENT OF INNOCENCE

Wicked Child † The Prologue

A little over a hundred years ago, Walter Bernhard was the greatest of the Vampire Lords the world over. Yet Walter proved to be arrogant, narcissistic, and worst of all, short-sighted. How the incompetent fool came into possession of the Ebony Stone was a mystery no mortal might solve. Still, his incompetence proved to be just the boon Mathias Cronqvist needed to see his wicked plans bear fruit.

God saw fit to kill his wife Elisabetha in the prime of her life, so it was only fair that he kill God in return. Certainly no small task, and not one that could be completed within a single lifespan. So be it; he wasn't particularly anxious to submit his mortal soul to the judgment of such a callous creature anyway. The first step of his plan would have to be achieving immortality. Not a particularly difficult objective if one possessed the fabled Philosopher's Stone, but no mortal alchemist had managed the feat despite striving toward that goal since the days of Hellenic Egypt. They had, however, come close enough for his needs. One particular attempt came closer than any other, yet the work ultimately failed and two lesser Stones, now regarded as cursed relics, were the result.

The Ebony Stone was the lesser of these Stones, and one who bore this stone would have mastery over the night and the powers of darkness. The Crimson Stone was the real prize, however. Aside from all the other enhancements that the Stone offered to any who would claim it, it granted its bearer immortality of a sort in the form of vampirism. Few could stomach the thought of sacrificing their humanity for eternal life. Mathias, however, would happily sacrifice his connection to the children of God if it got him what he wanted — especially if it came without the usual problem of being bound to the will of a progenitor vampire.

Finding these Stones formed the core of his entire plan. The location of the Ebony Stone wasn't hard to track down, but by all indications the Crimson Stone was either lost or destroyed entirely. Fortunately, he was able to discern the process needed to create a new one thanks to his extensive study of alchemy and only lacked a single necessary ingredient: the soul of a powerful vampire. Even better, if the powerful vampire in question just happened to be the current bearer of the Ebony Stone, then he could kill two birds with a single stone. He only needed to manipulate events to unfold according to his own needs.

The manipulation was so pedestrian that it was almost boring, really. Prone to boredom after centuries of unlife, Walter amused himself by kidnapping the wives and daughters of those he believed would entertain him with their attempts to storm his castle. All that Mathias needed to do was to suggest that Walter kidnap Sara Trantoul, the fiance of his old ally Leon Belmont, and wait for the hardened crusader to do his dirty work. Leon did quite an admirable job, seeing to the completion of the Vampire Killer whip and using it to end Walter Bernhard. Mathias swooped in at the last possible moment and secured both Walter's soul and the Ebony Stone before making his escape.

Possessing both the Crimson and Ebony Stones had made Mathias the single most powerful being on Earth, yes. That much was true. That didn't mean he could get careless, though. Allowing Leon to complete the Vampire Killer was a necessary evil in his plan, and he knew for a fact that the whip would be just as effective against him as it was against Walter. Worse, Leon had pledged that his descendants would hunt the night across the generations, and Mathias did not doubt for a moment the sincerity of the crusader's vow. Leon also happily indulged in the outright heresy of scavenging a treasure trove of alchemical artifacts from Walter's castle, and elevated him from a menace to an outright terror on the battlefield. His descendants would no doubt make use of those, too.

Mathias would have to be extremely careful or he would wind up extremely dead. Fortunately, immortality meant that time was on his side. He could bide his time while hidden away from the world, amassing relics of power, developing his knowledge of both alchemy and the sorcerous arts, and searching for an answer to the problem of the Vampire Killer. He sought that which existed farthest from the light of God, and in that twisted darkness where love dies he found it.

He found the power of Chaos, the antithesis to God's perfect Order.

Harnessing it was no small task. Many practitioners had gone mad, or been outright consumed by Chaos while attempting to bend it to their will. After many nights of scheming about how he might best make use of this power he came to an unusual conclusion: he didn't really need to try and control it. It was already trying to do what he wanted it to; he just needed to give it a conduit into the world and a vessel through which to act. He would offer himself up as the vessel, and as for the conduit…

He knew exactly how to create the perfect conduit, and the conditions for the work were perfect. The darkness in humanity's collective heart was at a crescendo. In their insatiable greed the Catholics had turned their swords against their own brethren in Byzantium. The Venetians and their Crusader allies plundered the Byzantine Empire like a plague of locusts, then went on to sack Constantinople itself in a self-defeating campaign that ultimately broke Christianity's bulwark against Muslim expansion from the east. The people of Europe could only watch in horror as Christianity itself was torn right down the middle, leaving them fractured and exposed to threats from all sides. Each and every one of these atrocities and the terror that followed were so much fodder to Chaos, and now its power was like a fruit sitting ripe on the vine, begging to be plucked.

So the work of creating the conduit began with using dark alchemy to create a third counterpart to the Crimson and Ebony Stones. This Stone, which he named the Heart of Chaos, functioned like a seed. Planted in the ruins of Walter's old castle in Bran, it allowed the power of Chaos to transform so much lifeless stone into something animate — a living creature of Chaos, rebuilding the castle and restoring it to a usable state in the process. It was in the heart of that Demon Castle that Mathias offered himself up as the vessel for the power of Chaos, and was in turn transformed. Mathias Cronqvist became Dracula, the Dark Lord who stands as the opposite of God. Now, flush with the power of Chaos and drunk on dreams of revenge, the Dark Lord began to cast his long shadow across Europe. He raised legions of monsters forged from the very stuff of nightmares, and the entire continent trembled in fear at the scale of the destruction he wrought.

So begins the story of Dracula, of Castlevania, and of an extremely unfortunate Belmont…