Behind the fifth shelf on the left wall — the one lined with grimoires bound in dragonhide and whispering when touched — there was a mechanism. Dracula pressed two fingers against a particular spine. It didn't have a title. No book did. The shelf rumbled, then slid back with a reluctant groan.
Cold air leaked from the hidden passage. Not the kind that bit skin. The kind that weighed down the soul.
He stepped inside.
The room wasn't just secret.It was severed.Cut from the world like a tumor even the house wanted to forget.
Dim. Silent. Still.And in the center of that stillness — Lazarus.
Barely a day old.Wrapped in black silk that hadn't been spun in this age.
He didn't cry.Didn't blink.Didn't even flinch when the door resealed behind Dracula, swallowing all traces of the outside world.
His eyes were open. Crimson. Sword-slit pupils.Staring.Seeing.
Dracula said nothing for a moment. Just watched.And felt watched in return.
When he finally broke the silence, his voice was quiet. Too quiet."…You are the greatest talent i have seen in my immortal life."
He knelt beside the crib, resting one hand on the silk."I've walked with kings. I've fed on gods.But only five monsters terrified me."
His voice grew softer. Reverent."The Five Founders.The ones who tamed this continent when it was still wild and ruled by Them.The ones who mapped the stars beyond our oceans — and discovered not one, but two more continents lost to time.They weren't kings.They were inevitabilities."
He studied the child."You might be greater than all of them."
Lazarus didn't react.But his stare deepened. Like the name of those five stirred something in him he didn't yet understand.
"…Come," Dracula said, lifting the child into his arms with unnatural care. "I want to show you something."
He turned and exited, closing the bookshelf behind him without a sound.
They passed through the main library — if it could be called that.It stretched endlessly. Scrolls hung in the air like they were suspended in amber.Some tomes floated open, turning pages without wind.Knowledge older than memory.Magic that couldn't be named.
Dracula walked in silence, the child pressed to his chest.
Finally, they stopped.Before the mirror.
It looked… plain.Carved wood. A glass pane blurred with dust.But Lazarus felt it.The pressure in the air.The way the world bent just slightly around it, as if afraid to touch its frame.
Dracula set the child down.
"Most things lie," he said. "This doesn't. It shows… possibilities. Ghosts of what may be, what was, or what can never be."He paused. "I don't know what it will show you. That's what interests me."
The runes etched in the wooden frame ignited, one by one.Softly at first. Then all at once.The mirror began to hum.A light, pale and searing, erupted from the surface.
Lazarus flinched — instinctive. He shielded his eyes with small hands.
When the light faded and he looked again —
He wasn't there.
No reflection.
Only the man.
At first glance, he was human. But that was a lie the mirror couldn't maintain.
He stood in a field of corpses.A battlefield that had long since forgotten war.Black fire flickered across the bones — not burning, but decaying.
The man had long white hair trailing down his back, wet with blood.Scars latticed his chest and arms like a roadmap of pain.Eyes redder than hell. And emptier.
In one hand, he held a woman by the scalp.Her mouth moved — begging, probably.
In the other, a broken spear.
He did not flinch.
But there was no sound. Only the heavy breathing of the man.He drove a spear through her skull.Let her drop.And stared ahead, through the glass, into Lazarus.
Not at him.Into him.
As if he were the mirror.
Dracula whispered, barely able to form the words:"Is that… a million? A billion? Just how many—"
He stopped. His throat closed. Cold sweat lined his spine.
Lazarus reached toward the mirror with his small hands.But the vision snapped shut.Just a reflection now.A baby in a room.
The silence that followed was unbearable.Even the books held their breath.
Dracula bent down, hand shaking.Picked up the child again.
"…Abomination," he whispered.
Lazarus's stomach growled.A soft, mundane sound. But it felt like thunder in the silence.
Dracula blinked."I… yes. You haven't eaten."
He lifted one hand.
From his shadow, something twitched.Moved.
A man emerged from it, kneeling instantly.Slick black hair, formal suit, pale skin. No heartbeat.
"You summoned me, Lord?"
He didn't ask about the child.The man wasn't that foolish.
Dracula's voice returned to its neutral calm."Bring food. The finest for a child.He must grow. Fast. And strong."
The servant bowed."Yes, my lord."
Dracula stared at the mirror one last time.It was normal now.But he couldn't forget what he saw.
He held Lazarus a little tighter.
"…Let's get you to bed.While I figure out what I just brought into this world.