I, like most, couldn't help but watch the second season of Castlevania and want to write a new fic. So, here we are! Enjoy. :)

It would be easy to say that he was a haunted man.

If indeed, he was still a man.

There were many who would claim that he had given up all rights to such a designation many, many centuries ago. Countless now, even by his own standards.

Ghosts walked the halls of his castle, and even more so in the corridors of his mind. Twisting and endless as they may be, filled with the spectres of his lost loves, his lost lives…

He no longer paid any heed as they passed him in the great hall. Whether or not they were truly there, or merely projections of his ancient and hollowed soul, he could not say. He did not care. While they obeyed many of his generals and creatures, he held no sway over the spirits of the dead. So if they were truly the souls of his departed loves, his departed friends - he would be useless to speak to them or divine any meaning.

And so, he had come to ignore them. It was that, or go mad.

There were many who would claim he had already earned that designation many, many centuries now.

Vlad Dracula Tepes was a haunted man.

Now, though… it seemed that it had become far more literal than in his previous observations.

It was astonishing how moments of great import happen at the most unexpected times. The tales are told of astonishing bloodshed upon a field of battle or tense political negotiations in a throne room. Never does anyone speak of the turning of the tide occurring in a hallway.

But there, just outside his study, is where it began. That is where he first saw her.

A woman, clad in a dress in shades of colour like a peacock in blues and greens, standing and gazing up at a statue of a winged figure of death in an alcove. Her hair was chestnut brown and fell about her face in waves. The warmth in her cheeks gave her away as being a human. And stare as he might, she did not vanish.

Vlad was struck. He truly must have gone mad - to be hallucinating a mortal girl standing in his halls. None of his creatures had brought a living girl into the castle. Vlad would have sensed them in an instant.

And yet… there she was.

The girl turned to look at him. Her eyes caught the light and they were violet in tone. A rare tone in humans, he knew. They widened in shock, and she took a step back away from him in surprise. When she backed away from him, her arm caught a candelabra, swaying it on the stand. She let out a small, startled 'eep!' and caught it quickly to keep it from tipping over. She carefully set it back onto its legs and made sure it was stable before turning her attention back to him, as her priorities corrected themselves as quickly as they had shifted.

How thoughtful.

She was certainly not a ghost.

The girl smiled apologetically - nay, sheepishly - at him, before turning to flee. No. She would not escape. The girl turned the bend of an intersection in the corridor - but it made no matter. Vlad was far faster than a mortal girl could run. He disappeared from where he stood and reappeared, standing in the hall she had exited down.

There was no one there.

Vlad let out a startled grunt and whirled about to see where she could have gone. Not possible! There were no doors for a hundred feet. He could sense those who could paint themselves invisible. He smelled no magic in the air - only the sweet scent of a mortal woman. But the girl was not to be found.

Turning, he shook his head and began to walk from the hallway, his mind reeling for answers, but none were forthcoming, and he had no concept of how to even start. The girl seemed to appear from - and disappear into - nothingness.

Perhaps he truly now was losing his mind.

Unable to come up with any explanation for the impossibility of what he had just witnessed, he… merely continued about his evening. Another week had passed before it happened again. Before he saw her again.

This time, standing in his gardens. Leaning in to smell a red rose, a whimsical smile upon her face. If she knew of the dangers that surrounded her - of the hungry creatures that would devour her without a thought, she did not seem to care. Once more she was dressed in tones like a peacock, blues and greens and purples. Not in the expensive wares of a high lady, nor a pauper, either. A corset cinched her waist, keeping her 'appropriately attired' for a lady of the day - as far as he was told by his generals, anyway. Vlad had not left his castle in many, many years, after all.

Each time she moved, the colors of her dress shifted - layers of lace changing the mix of blues and greens and purples.

"You!" Vlad snarled, sounding perhaps a bit more intense than he had intended.

She whirled her head and her look of awe turned quickly into one of equal surprise and an edge of panic. She froze as if waiting to see what he would do.

"Who are you?!" Vlad stepped forward, and the demanding tone of his voice and his advance must have done the deed. She took heel and ran - ducking around a corner with no regard for her direction.

Vlad gave chase and as he once more caught up to where she had disappeared, she was… once more gone. But she was not there - and no footfalls betrayed her presence. Perhaps she was cloaking herself. Reaching out with his mind and magic, he scanned the area and felt nothing... she wasn't there. He let out a frustrated huff of air. All that remained was the fading scent of a human girl.

Vlad was a haunted man.

Over the course of weeks, he would see her. Standing in awe of paintings, or playing with the glass beakers in his laboratory. Each time he would catch her, she would vanish out from him like a ghost. She was no demon, no imp, no ghost - she was human. But how?!

The latest time, the seventh time he had seen her, had been on a balcony. She had been feeding pieces of what appeared to be raw chicken to one of the hounds in the courtyard below. She was laughing and smiling as if the creature beneath her was not some demon from beyond the veil. Something that would devour her as happily as it would the chicken she offered.

This time… she was cornered. This time, there was no escape. Vlad loomed in the doorway. He found his hands clenching into fists. She was frustrating. Whatever her mystery was, it was unwelcome! He did not want this creature flitting about his home!

"I will repeat myself but once more: Who are you?!"

The girl turned around with a small squeak and pressed her back up against the stone railing of the balcony. Good. She was trapped. Nowhere to run: no corner to duck behind, no statue or bookcase by which she could obscure herself.

"I don't mean any harm-" she spoke for the first time. Vlad watched her curiously - his own eyes narrowing. She spoke as if she were somehow the threat. How ludicrous. How naive.

"You move about my home as though you are a ghost. Yet your heart beats in your chest. What are you?!" Vlad demanded angrily and stepped towards her. He had long since become accustomed to using his height to intimidate those around him. It was efficacious, he had to admit. His appearance alone would strike terror into those who saw him. Especially this mortal child who stood before him - his little mystery. His little ghost.

"I'm nobody," she explained, her violet eyes wide but… curious. Eager. Afraid, but… it was not the all-consuming terror he had long since become accustomed to. "I'm sorry, I'll go."

"You will be going nowhere," Vlad snarled and stormed towards her, meaning to close the distance and snatch her arm in his hand, to wrench her away from the railing of his balcony and find his answers to her existence in his home, once and for all.

It was then, that the girl did the most unexpected thing. He had expected her to scream, to cry, perhaps even to fight. What he had not expected, was for the girl to leap over the edge of the balcony.

All at once, she tipped herself over the rail backward and plummeted over the edge and out of sight. Vlad rushed to the rail to grab her, to save her from falling to her death and the hellhounds below. But his hand grasped empty air. But not because he had been too late.

There was not a body on the stones beneath. Only snapping hellhounds, whining at their now missing meal. The girl had… once more vanished into nothingness. She was utterly gone.

What was this girl…? Who was she? How had she done this? What power did she have, that let her move about as though she were not there, yet left no trace?! Nothing in his library - nothing in the works he had read or studied - had any reference to any power such as this.

She was no longer a nuisance. Now his mind was set reeling over solving the mystery, even if he had no clue of where to begin. He only hoped that the girl was foolish enough to appear again, even knowing the danger she was likely putting herself in.

The good news was, the girl seemed to have no regard for personal safety.

The bad news was, she appeared to own two gifts. One, to disappear and appear from nowhere, the second, to annoy him to no end. Over the following weeks, she continued to haunt him. It was the only way to describe what was happening to him. Never two days in a row, but frequently - once or twice a week, even - he would catch sight of her, only to lose her if he came too close.

Vlad even tried cloaking himself in invisibility, but as soon as she lost sight of him, she would round a corner and vanish. Once, he swore he saw a playful smile on her face as she disappeared around a statue and evaporated into thin air.

Even his generals were beginning to notice.

"You seem… uneasy, my Lord," his eldest creature, Lyon, spoke from his side. Vlad had given up his normal respite in front of his fireplace, to stand to overlook the courtyard to his keep, searching the shadows for a sight of his little phantom. He had come to expect her everywhere, now.

Lyon had been with him, a loyal creature, since Vlad had turned him nearly two thousand years ago. He was the only remaining creature born directly of his own blood who had not lost his mind to madness. Instead, he had lost his heart to sorrow. A worse fate - one he shared, perhaps. Lyon was a priest, of all things. A contradiction, even as vampires were concerned. But a good friend.

"You should be glad I am anything at all," Vlad narrowed his eyes as he gazed down at his familiar home.

"It is good to see you up and about, I must admit," Lyon replied.

Often, his priest had come to his study to try and rouse him from his malaise. Few in these walls could understand what it was like to be so very old, to see time passing as years before him as it may as minutes for another. A life so very long… and so very empty of anything but death and suffering. It was easy to sink into the mire of the void that had consumed him.

Yes. Perhaps if his little phantom served any purpose - it was nice to have a mystery to untangle.

"I am faced with something inexplicable," Vlad muttered, half under his breath. "A puzzle I cannot seem to solve."

"I have faith you will solve it in time," Lyon replied, bowing his head. The man looked ever much like the statues in the courtyard below with his white hair and pale skin. "Perhaps, if I might counsel, that a different approach may now be warranted?"

"I have not spoken to you of the problem at hand," Vlad cast a narrow glance over at his general.

"No. But it does not matter. For if you find yourself at a dead end, then a change of tactics is the only solution," Lyon observed. "And with you… might I suggest… a gentler touch?" Lyon smirked, knowing very well how he teased his elder and sire.

Vlad could not help but grin in response at the goad, dry and lifeless as it may be. For not only did Lyon resemble the statues in the courtyard below - he emoted in quite a similar fashion. Vlad waved the man away, dismissing him from his presence. Lyon bowed his head low and turned to leave Vlad to his thoughts. Ones that verged on the border of obsession with his little ghost.

He stood there for many hours, thinking until it was nearly dawn. Just as the sun threatened to rise over the horizon, he turned to walk the corridors of his castle. It was in these early dawn hours that his home was at its most quiet. All creatures slumbered, even those who carried a schedule that followed the sun and not the moon. It was during this hour, that Vlad was never disturbed.

Well, nearly never.

Moments of great import should never happen in hallways.

There she was once more. The hallway was long and had no jutting intersections, lined in stone. She stood, marveling at a section of the wall that was framed as if it were to contain artwork - but instead revealed the ticking of gears within the wall. The castle itself was a great machinima, and it ticked and whirred like the beating of a great heart.

Caught up in watching its movements, she did not see him approach. He quickly worked his magic and vanished, turning himself invisible as he snuck up upon her, like so much prey. Still, she stood, marveling at the ticking machinations of the gears and sprockets and cogs within the walls of his home.

So small - so benign - so delicate she seemed. Vlad crept up beside her silently - his steps making no sound upon the stone floor. He was the vampire, after all. It would be so simple now to reach out and snap her neck upon her shoulders - to tear her head from the stump and be done with her all at once.

But there was a mystery to be solved.

And it struck him as… a waste. A tragedy to end her life, without knowing the answers. But she would not escape him this time. There would be no running from him now.

Vlad gripped her by the upper arms, swung her against the wall to the right of the cutaway and perhaps a little too hard. She let out a startled cry followed by an 'unf' as he pressed her against the wall, his hands gripping her upper arms as he allowed himself to become visible again. She was dazed for a moment from the impact against the wall - she was indeed fragile! That and the scent of her blood confirmed it.

She was human!

Vlad's moment to observe her unwatched in return vanished as quickly as it had come. She had regained her composure. "Shit," she stated quietly, amethyst gaze meeting his crimson one.

Vlad snarled down at her, his brow creasing as he glared at the creature in his grasp. She was warm beneath his hands. "I will have my answers now," he said in his baritone growl.

He had meant it to be a threat. He had meant to intimidate her. He was very good at intimidation. But instead, she looked… bored. She sighed, rolled her eyes, and looked up at him incredulously. "Let go of me, or you'll regret it."

Vlad laughed cruelly. He was so pleased he had caught his prize. "You threaten me? I do not think you are in the position to make demands."

"It's not a threat," she responded. Her voice was smooth. "It's a statement of fact," she snickered with a cheeky grin. "Let go of me or you'll regret it."

"I fail to understand what gives you any idea that you are in a position of power," Vlad growled low in his throat, his hands clenching tighter around her arms. Enough to remind her - but not enough to hurt her.

"Second warning. There won't be a third. Let go of me." Her voice was firm - but he could feel her shaking. She was slight of frame - he could snap her arms if he squeezed hard enough.

Vlad laughed again - and his laugh turned into a yell as his world… moved.

He fell. He fell from solid ground. He thrust his arms out to attempt to stop his fall and she slipped from his hands as he did. He watched helplessly as the world rushed upwards and in an instant, he felt his stomach lurch, tumble, and suddenly he was… still falling. But now from somewhere else.

Cold water met him before he could put together what was happening. He thrashed at the shock of it. It took him a few moments to finally gather enough wits to decide which end was up. He felt solid stone underneath him, and he pushed up, sputtering for air.

He was in another small courtyard of his home, several wings away from where he had just been standing, and now was unceremoniously in the fountain.

Vlad heard laughter from near him, and he lifted his head - his dark hair dripping icy water as he looked for the source. Of course, it was her. Of course, his ghost was mocking him now.

"My, you certainly flail about, don't you?" she teased him playfully.

Vlad growled - now he had been embarrassed. He hated that more than anything else in this world. He would not be bested by this weak, tiny human. However unusual she may be.

Flexing his magic, he raised himself up from the fountain and raced at her, leaving a trail of water as he moved. She swore loudly again before turning and running away through a doorway and into a room. She had a decent lead on Vlad, whose soaked layers of thick clothing were slowing him down, and it took him a precious second to catch up.

"Stop!" Vlad yelled. Hope lit up in him as he realized there were no corners for her to duck around - no way to hide his line of sight. The room she had run inside of, had no other exits. He would not come so close and be bested again.

She was ten steps ahead of him when... Vlad pulled up to a quick halt, almost staggering over himself as what he saw stopped him in his tracks. A black circle had appeared on the wall next to her. It started off small - but grew from a single dot to almost seven feet in diameter on the stone. It was that inkblot that he had seen when he fell! It was a hole. A perfect circle of nothingness. She barely glanced at him as she ran into the hole.

Vlad was not unaccustomed to portals - but they had an energy to them that this did not have. They took power and magic - a summoning of a source from deep within. She had merely created this thing as if from out of nothing! It was not possible.

He could sense a tear through space as simply as another could detect a light in a room. But this was not that. It just looked like... there was nothing there, a blackness greater than the deep of space. It not only didn't have a normal energy to it like his mirrors, or the curling energy of the smaller pass-throughs between corridors of his castle. It was nothing at all.

It was a hole in space.

That wasn't possible.

And it was closing.

The perfect black hole of missing space was closing as silently and as quickly as it had appeared. So Vlad did the only thing he could do. The only perfectly rational thing he could think of.

He picked up a gold three-armed candelabra from the table next to him and hurled it through the hole. The circle vanished almost immediately after the candelabra had passed through it.

And like the girl, it vanished into it silently like it was nothing. No crash from the room next door - nothing. Vlad rushed forward and placed his palms against the stone - but... nothing. Not even residue from what had happened. Power like that should leave a trace, but this was as though she was nothing but a phantom in his mind.

Frustration suddenly found him - he was so close to having his answers, and now he only had more questions. He snarled in anger and started slamming his palms and then fists against the stone until his hands ached. Resting his forehead against the stone, he shut his eyes and let out a shuddering breath.

Nothing that could be done about it now. Now, it was best to sleep. So he trudged, defeated, back to his coffin and did his best to stop his mind from reeling over the questions that refused to silence themselves.