A bright flash of light obscured my vision and before I could register that the spell had already been cast, I was blasted away from the crimson serpent's broken remains. I felt a loud booming continuously echoing through my ears, ringing at a frequency that repeatedly assaulted my damaged ears. The ringing ceaselessly undulated with a booming ferocity that felt like hours condensed into a hastened heartbeat. I held the sides of my face, trying to regain some form of stability, but the blast had numbed my senses and all I could perceive was a nauseating sensation that separated my barely conscious mind from the rest of my body.

"I- th—is rea—y wh- ou- -anted, G-b—el?"

A barely coherent voice echoed through a distance too far away to reach, and I floated just now feeling the sensation of my burning skin and the once limitless reserves of power that now seemed lost to me. I helplessly floated through the air and questioned why my wounds had not yet healed. This was not the first time I had cast this spell and yet it felt like I was withering away…as though the centuries I spent defying time's decay had finally seized me. What was I to do now that all the pieces had been cleared? Zobek was no more, I could no longer sense Lucifer's presence, and now it appears as though I too was close to reaching my exit. I could see the light, and now all I needed to do was surrender. After a millennia of suffering, I could finally meet my end. I smiled, finding it endlessly humorous how the memories that tormented me for centuries were now nowhere to be found. My role was complete, and after all my struggle I was free to renounce it. I knew that heaven's gates were shut the moment I took on my mantle, but I suppose an eternity of oblivion was the only thing I could achieve. I felt the light of dawn taking hold of me, beckoning me to release myself from my eternal bonds. I reached for the burning cross that continued to singe my tight grasp and prepared to end everything by my own hands. One final leap. My last trial.

The man once known as Gabriel Belmont died the day that I slew the Forgotten One and escaped his dimensional prison. He died the day he gave up everything and gave into the dark role that God had chosen for him. It has been so many lifetimes since that day, and yet I have never felt the need to breathe as much as I did during this fleeting moment. One push was all I needed. One simple final action…

I thrust my arms outward, still gripping onto the burning alloys of the Vampire Killer but ultimately failed to accomplish my task. Despite everything, one thought, one regret held me back from my desperation. Tre—Alucard was still here somewhere, and I could not leave this world unsure of his safety. I felt a loud thud that crushed most of my now-brittle bones and punctured what remained of my innards as my corrupted blood gushed out. In my indecision, it seemed that my chance had passed.

I waded through the bloody tears that clouded my sight and through my sheer force of will, slowly started the process of regaining control over my own body. The task was tedious, but with enough time I was able to recognize the shadows that surrounded me, and the voice that reached out to me as the dust settled. I was surrounded by the majestic spires of my castle, as though it had never been destroyed. I questioned whether or not this was a dream for there was no way to distinguish fiction from my reality. I saw Trevor's silhouette and crawled towards it, realizing that his image was warping more and more into the vampire Alucard as I neared him. He approached me and extended a hand, dusting off the smoky debris that embedded itself into my fading cloak and armor. My powers still steadily fading, I found it increasingly more difficult to manipulate my blood or the magic the sustained my youthful appearance. He then reached for his Crissaegrim and tossed it towards me while he summoned the abyssal blade that he used in his disguise. The ringing in my ears had not yet stopped, and so I could barely understand the words he said to me. Not without compromising my vision and further bolstering my now sluggish movements. I caught the blade, understanding his goal and what his actions meant. Our collaboration was short lived, but it made me happy to think that aside from my mind's concoctions, I was able to reach some worthwhile end with my wayward son. I leaned on the enchanted longsword and used it as a crutch as I approached him.

"You understand why I must do this, father."

"I believe I do."

I coughed and absorbed the blood that composed my cloak into myself so that I could hasten my healing and regain some of my magic.

Alucard sensed my recovery and dashed forward at a speed I could barely keep up with in my current state and slashed with his dimensional blade. I took two quick steps back and used the Crissaegrim to parry his merciless strikes. Due to my inexperience with using this blade, coupled with my relative weakness, Alucard was able to dominate our fateful duel, knocking me on my back by sprouting his wings and using them as a way to boost his movements on the ground. I rolled just in time to narrowly avoid a stab that shattered the stony path where we stood and then stabbed the Vampire Killer in my left hand into the ground, using it to spring myself back up into a standing position. Alucard cracked his neck, as though he was merely getting started, moved himself into position and then vanished. I felt a loud boom momentarily knocking me out of balance, realizing that my son had snuck behind me when he had already launched his attack. I turned just in time to block another strike from his deadly sword but could not react fast enough to avoid his leg tripping my by the heel. Not wanting to harm him, I used the flat of the Crissaegrim's blade to knock him out of the way. Within a moment's notice, he angrily parried my blow and clawed at me with his free hand. I tasted the river of blood coursing through my cheeks as I was once again knocked into the ground. He pointed the sword to my neck and took a deep breath.

"Why did you do it, father? Why did you let so many suffer?"

"You know what I am son, and what I have become. There is no hope for me. There never was."

"I have seen your past many years ago, father, when the Mirror of Fate revealed all I that ever needed to know. You've always had a choice to shape your destiny, and yet you did nothing but surrender to what you thought was expected of you. Tell me, is this what God would have wanted? Is this what mother would have wished for?"

"God knew of my destiny the moment He created me. It is one thing to merely watch my destiny unfold but another thing altogether to live through it. I have dedicated my life completely devoted to His cause and all that I ever received in turn was this eternity of bloodshed. Even when I tried to defy Him I was following His plan."

"He gave you the chance to repent on your own terms and in your rage you squandered it until the bitter end. I thought that by setting out an entirely new path you would redeem yourself, but like Lucifer you let your selfish desires overcome you."

"God always knew exactly what I would do and yet did nothing to stop me. You have seen this first hand as early as today. Where was He while Lucifer and I took to the skies? Where was He when our combined armies razed the world below us?"

"That does nothing to change who was ultimately responsible for all the carnage. This you cannot deny."

"What—did you want me to simply surrender? To let Lucifer have his way while I stood idly by?"

"No, but you could have ended everything long before it ever escalated to the degree that it did. I honestly do not know what to say, father. Saying that I am disappointed would imply that I expected much more of you. In the end, you were always nothing more than the monster you set out to become."

"That may be the case, but I cannot undo what has already taken place."

"Father…I do not even know why I acknowledge you as such."

"I-I am sorry my son. More than anything else, I cannot undo what I did to you. To this day I consider it one of my foulest sins. You never should have lived past that night. I was scared. I didn't want to lose the one last connection I had to your mother. You were the last thing that kept me sane and I…I never thought that turning you would rob you of your only chance of ever meeting her."

"It is too late for that now. Far too late. We were manipulated by the strings of fate, but you never tried to break out of it. You never even questioned it."

"You were right, Trevor. I'm sorry. I cannot take back my sins, but I am sorry."

"If only an apology was enough to undo everything you have wrought."

"If only."

Alucard's leg twitched as he cleanly thrust the Masamune through my neck.

"This world no longer has room for fiends such as us."

The abyssal energies from within the blade crackled with a purplish glow that swallowed the jagged cut that its master made on my neck. My skin gave way without any resistance and then he withdrew his blade, kicking me to the ground soon afterward. I held my neck, trying to seal the wound that was already on the onset of recovery. In this moment I was sure my body would finally give way. I swallowed the pain for a moment and in doing so, noticed an almost negligible spark of unfamiliar energies emanating from my son's body.

More than the putrid stench of my son's abyssal blade, more rancid than the obsidian metals that comprised his ornate armor was a dark aura ruminating from within him like a chrysalis waiting to sprout. With my arms still gripping tightly onto the Crissaegrim and the Vampire Killer, I leapt at my son and channeled my remaining Void magic into the damaged cross, blasting him with its freezing light. Alucard dodged part of the azure beam and drew his blade out from its immaterial sheath. He smiled and though his face resembled that of my son's, I recognized his surreptitious expression as none other than Lucifer's.

"Did you enjoy my little show, Gabriel?"

I gripped onto my weapons tight enough to draw blood from my weakened fingers.

"How…dare you!"

Of all of Lucifer's deceptions, this recent attempt left me absolutely livid. I charged with the ferocity of a mindless beast, quick as a stallion, more tireless than the wind. He laughed while weaving his way around me, parrying my blows with the same bored nonchalance that I struck him with days before.

"What happens now, Prince of Darkness?"

I shrieked in an unfiltered rage that sparked up whatever Chaos magic I had left in my reserves. The soul devouring flames consumed me, scorching my very soul further as I channeled its energies from my forearms into the Vampire Killer. The enchanted metals twisted and corroded within my grasp but no matter how much I forced it, the mystical whip would not unravel. Being a creature of the night, the weapon was practically useless to me…and so I projected the flames through my bandaged forearms and using the cross' hilt, swiped away my son's abyssal blade by striking at its flat ridges.

After a fashion, it seemed as though the Combat Cross somehow sensed my desire to save my son and unlatched itself from its enchanted bindings. I took upon this chance and projected my Chaos flames into the cross body, which then flowed into the chain links in the same way that Shadow Magic once did centuries in the past. Coated by the unscrupulous fires of Chaos, the Vampire Killer's spiked whip sparked with white-hot jets of my unbridled fury. Lucifer saw the weapon that humiliated him during his first defeat at my hand, and somehow grew paler than Alucard's marble complexion. His dreadful reaction was priceless.

Still somewhat traumatized from our confrontation a millennium ago, Lucifer began making embarrassingly routine missteps in his movements, becoming pitifully predictable in his attempts to retaliate. I weaved around his clumsy sword strikes, striking at the non-vital regions where I knew my son would recover. I waited for my opportunity, reading my opponent's lacklustre movements as though he was losing his grip on his vessel. Using the Crissaegrim's added reach and weight, I knocked Lucifer out of balance by slashing at the Masamune's upper hilt which loosened his grip and threw him airborne. I jumped up, caught him mid-air, and hurled him back to the crater from which I landed. Walking towards him, I readied the Vampire Killer with its chain retracted, and with its damaged stake hilt prepared to strike him down.

"I know you…Gabriel Belmont. Your feelings…will betray you. You won't kill your son to destroy me."

I smiled as I brandished the Crissaegrim and motioned myself to stab him. Lucifer screamed in apprehension of my actions and frenziedly expelled himself from his unwilling victim. I seized him by the neck seconds before he could completely reform and threw him on the ground, whipping him a dozen more times with the Vampire Killer. I felt his bones crack with every lashing and continued cracking my former weapon until his unarmoured body became an intricate checkerboard of deep lesions. He crawled writhing in pain while deliberately curbing his pleas for mercy. I naturally continued until only uneven stubs remained of his feathery plumes. He got up on his knees and stared at me with his purplish eyes and in a final gesture smiled at the finality of his cruel fate.

"I…yield to you, Prince of Darkness."

I cracked my whip and impaled him with its spiked tip, pulled him closer, and then stabbed him with its stake body.

"I…renounce you."

The energies that once animated him drained into the cross, his immortal energies flowing from the holy artifact in an incoherent beam into the tower where he drew his powers from. The fetid mass of bodies that infected the city consecutively exploded into bloody chunks and were ravenously absorbed by the rivers of blood flowing through my restored territory. Any remaining demons that once thrived on the chaos lost their connection to their damned dimension and began their descent back into decay. Their bodies withered under the influence of the sinking tower, which started to collapse under its own weight without the constant stream of empowerment it gained from the lost souls in hell. The imbalance of magical energies led to the collapse of the grounds that had not been converted into my territory. Without its leader, hell was powerless to stay in the Earthly plane, and at present it appeared as though the forces of heaven, though unseen, were starting to push the invaders back from whence they came.

Now it seemed the tempests had come to rest and the strings of fate were beckoning for the curtain call. Nonetheless, there was one other matter to take care of. I drew myself towards Lucifer's smoking corpse and withdrew the Vampire Killer, looking at the fallen angel's satisfied expression. In his final moments, it seemed that even the devil had found his humility. With the weapon in hand, I approached my son's unconscious body and gazed upon his peaceful expression. I wondered if Lucifer's charade truly was just a show, and if my son was able to hear my final sentiments. Perhaps he was right. This world no longer had a place for monsters such as I. I looked around me, absorbing the stony spires of my former home while the crimson flags with my family crest drifted in the vicious breeze of the battle's aftermath. I bit into my wrist and let droplets of blood fall to my son's mouth. His body would absorb it in time, and he would recover. I kneeled down before him and saw the dawn's reflection on his marble face. Reaching out my hand, I playfully rubbed his thick tufts of white hair and smiled not at what could have been, but at what his life would now be. Without me, Lucifer, or Zobek, the world would now truly be able to move forward. The Lords of Shadows' era had reached its end.