[Location: Dungeon—Vampire King's Castle]
"I don't."
"What are you on about?" Alucard asked.
The laughter that had been echoing through the dungeon faded, not because he willed it to stop—but because something in the air refused to carry it any further. The crimson haze of the Crimson Dominion shuddered, like blood hesitating to flow.
I exhaled slowly.
Not in relief.
In control.
"I don't belong," I continued calmly, "to your order. To your hierarchy. To your assumptions."
The silence that followed was heavy—thick enough that even the dungeon's endless drip of blood seemed to stall mid-fall.
Alucard stared at me.
Not with rage.
Not with mockery.
But with something far rarer.
Confusion.
The Crimson Dominion pulsed once, reflexively, as if responding to its master's unease. The fleshy walls quivered. Veins throbbed. The castle—his body—tightened around us.
"What… are you?" Alucard asked slowly.
Not who.
What.
That alone told me everything.
