[Alucard has not looked up from the papers. The second he figured out the key to the order, he has done nothing but read line after precious line, horrified by the contents and the fact that he must keep reading them in order to put this all together.

(This is the writing of a man still, a man stressed to bursting. The organization is so off on the pages (the stone is everywhere, even on the castle's engines), the fact there's personal notes at all, it's disturbing. And yet there's still clarity in it, whereas Alucard had none of that in his own imprisonment.)

The reason the narrative is there becomes clear. There's the expectation of not surviving. There's the guess that this is meditation, that it will keep some humanity if he does. (Alucard knows how that story goes.) But the reason for the writing 400 years ago versus what shines through in the present could not be more striking. Or terrifying.

Alucard had always tried to see his father as two people. Dracula, and all that entailed, and simply his father. But with Mathias now, now those two things have combined. And a so-called witch atop of it.

He barely registers Trevor's presence. He's too caught up in the work.]