Dracula stood motionless in the deepest gloom of the reinforced laboratory, far from the windows where the Caribbean sunlight, now a reborn enemy, filtered in with golden, lethal intensity. The acrid scent of burning vampiric flesh still hung in the air, a brutal reminder of the vulnerability he thought he had left behind centuries ago. He watched the young Punisher whose hand had been grazed by the dawn; the limb, though no longer smoking thanks to the hasty application of dark alchemical ointments, was a blackened and shrunken stump, healing with unnatural slowness.
The sun, Dracula thought, and the mere thought brought with it a flood of memories buried beneath layers of pride and time. Memories cold and sharp as fear itself.
He saw, with the clarity of his eidetic memory, the first centuries of his unlife. The time before Merlin, before the rings, before the Punishers. The time when dawn was the death knell. He remembered seeing brothers and sisters of the night, trapped by a miscalculation, by a hunt that had gone on too long, by a betrayal. He saw their pale skin redden, blister, and blacken under the first relentless rays. He heard again their heartbreaking screams as they turned into statues of ash, mercilessly scattered by the morning wind. The final agony, the dissolution into nothingness under the indifferent gaze of the sun. The pure, powerless terror before that golden light.
But almost worse than death itself was the humiliation. He remembered the nights in gloomy councils, in the dark forests where supernatural creatures gathered far from human eyes. He, Dracula, already then ancient and powerful in the night, had to endure the sidelong glances, the condescending smiles.
The werewolves, he recalled with a barely audible internal growl. Drunk on their lunar power, wild and free beneath their patron star, they regarded us with contempt. 'Incomplete beasts,' they called us. 'Prisoners of halftime.' They delighted in hunting our kind who sought refuge at dawn, prolonging the chase until the first ray did its dirty work.
And the fairies... not the ethereal creatures of children's stories, but the ancient, wild ones. Especially the Sidhe an Fhuil, the Blood Fairies. Beings of cruel beauty who danced in the twilight and fed on life essence, but who did not share the sun's curse. He remembered their crystalline laughter, sharp as ice, as they commented on the "fragility" of vampires, their "pathetic dependence" on shadows. They saw us as flawed predators, a mockery of immortality. Even the ghouls who crawled in graves and the lesser demons who trafficked in souls seemed to have more freedom than they did under the cycle of day and night.
We were a laughingstock, the word echoed in his mind with the venom of an old wound. Feared in the night, yes. But despised for our fundamental weakness. A powerful race defined by their inability to bear the light.
That shame, that impotent rage, had been the fuel that drove him for centuries. The quest for power, the creation of the Punishers, the strict code—all had been a way to overcome that original vulnerability, to forge a respect based on discipline and purpose, to elevate his kind above their fear of the sun. The rings had been the key to that freedom, that regained dignity.
And now, that freedom was unraveling. Cosmic instability, the awakening of mad gods and fallen angels, threatened to return them to that dark age of fear and humiliation. He looked again at the wounded Punisher. No, he thought with cold and absolute ferocity. We will not return to that.
The fear was still there, an ancient ghost whispering in the corners of his immortal mind, but now it was tempered by centuries of indomitable will and wounded pride. The need for new sun rings was no longer just a strategic matter; it was an existential necessity, a defense against regression to a past he had sworn never to repeat.
He turned away, looking away from the rising sun that now once again stood as a symbol of his mortality. The conversation with Merlin had been discouraging, but not definitive. If the old wizard could not forge the protection they needed under these conditions, then he, Dracula, would find another way. He would explore the secrets of the Keys that Merlin studied, seek out forgotten artifacts, make pacts if necessary. He would not allow the sun to once again turn his people to ash and objects of ridicule. The night belonged to them, and he would find a way to ensure that the day would never again be their prison. The struggle for survival had just taken on a new and desperate personal dimension.