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Adrian has no idea how he got out of the castle. In fact, his memory jumps quite a large gap right now: he remembers putting his hand on his sword, and then a dozen fractured, blood-soaked breaths and here he is now, stumbling through the countryside with adrenaline the only thing keeping him on his feet.
The only other thing he can recall is the moment where he saw his father for the first time as the monster the world paints him as. Never before has Adrian ever been able to fully understand; rationally, he knew the acts his father had committed in the past, the beliefs he held and the choices he justified. But there was no son who could look into his own father’s loving eyes and think him a monster.
That innocence was shattered, now.
Adrian blinks and he’s on his hands and knees, shoulder fetched up against a tree, breathing hard and bleeding freely on the earth beneath him. The pain and terror are all-encompassing. The pure animal instinct to find safety is what sent him fleeing, knowing he stood no chance against his father alone when the first blow was enough to cripple him. Castlevania was his childhood home, and always a safe haven, but that was no longer true. Adrian would like to believe that even in the grip of this madness, his father would not strike him down unarmed, but his father -- his father, his mother, and -- and --
He doesn’t realize his eyes have closed and his body has listed sideways until he hits the rough bark of the tree hard. Adrian fights it, making himself open his eyes and then painfully forces his body back up. He knows where he has to go. He has to make it to Gresit, to his own concealed vault, because there is no person left, mortal or otherwise, that he can be safe with, and soon his father’s demons will roam the countryside, and they know no difference between ally or enemy.
There is no part of Adrian that wishes for death. There is no giving up. Therefore he can do nothing except keep moving.
When he pushes his hair out of his face, it tangles and sticks to the blood coating his pale hands. It might be stealthier to travel in bat or wolf form, but he can’t say he’s ever experimented with shapeshifting while bleeding from a possibly-mortal wound from an elder vampire and it’s too much of a risk to take. Adrian can still manage a pace supernaturally faster than any human, but he has to periodically stop and slump against the nearest object, breathing heavily and pitifully trying to stop the bleeding, but half his chest is ripped open and his only hope is his healing clotting the wound itself.
Consciously, he has no idea where he is, but he lets his inner compass direct him and has no choice but to trust it; some time later, he collapses again into the dirt, and across the inside of his eyelids flashes an image of the fire consuming his mother. Choking out a sob hurts in more ways than one, and Adrian puts his forehead to the earth and has to resist the urge to scream. His mother , his mother is dead, and Adrian was too late to save her, too far away, there only in time for the screams that have burned into his brain, and he’s bleeding out in the fucking countryside courtesy of his father, his father’s madness that will raze the land and end his mother’s murderers and the people she loved and healed all the same, all three of them in unmarked graves --
Up. Up. He has to get up. Adrian groans as he puts his weight on his arms, shaking with the difficulty of it. He thinks the bleeding has lessened now, but he’s lost far too much blood. All he has to do is make it to Gresit. That’s all he has to do. Stay awake long enough to make it to safety and he will be alright. He can’t think beyond that -- keep things simple. Keep moving, and stay awake.
He loses time again after he makes it to the outskirts of Gresit. Everything is hazy and then he’s curled up on the stone beyond his vault’s entrance, the world spinning wildly around him though he is still. The call of the void is a gaping maw threatening to swallow him whole, and he barely has the strength to shiver. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the analytical part of him, the medically-trained son of a doctor, knows this is very bad. He’s fought through the shock this long, but that doesn’t mean he’s out of the woods. If he stays still, he dies.
All his conscious thoughts know is that he needs blood.
He needs it to heal. Otherwise he will die this close to salvation and perhaps never be found. Slowly, painfully, every movement making his muscles scream and his head pound, Adrian staggers back to his feet again. His mouth already tastes like blood (his own) and though animal blood is a starkly different taste, Adrian barely notices it. Blood to knit his wound together. Blood to replenish his own supply. Blood to keep him alive.
He shucks off his ruined coat, letting it pool on the floor. His shirt’s in fucking tatters and all Adrian can do is pull the rest of it apart so none of the fabric fibers can get stuck in the wound and cause improper healing. His vision has narrowed down and he keeps thinking he sees movement in what’s left of his peripheral vision, sluggishly turning his head only to find no one and nothing there. Casting his gaze around makes him dizzy and he tries to not fall to the floor again. He is alone; with the death of his mother and the betrayal of his father, Adrian is completely, bitterly alone.
He can’t hear anything. He should hear his unsteady footsteps, or the empty flask of blood when he drops it, but instead there’s nothing. He has to stay conscious. His body wants to shut down, but it’s important that he stays awake. There’s no one who can wake him up later, so he has to stay awake now, on his own. If he sleeps, he could simply die, if his body truly can’t heal this wound.
But he can’t. He’s on the ground again and Adrian is so, so cold. It was such a foolish mistake. Perhaps he hadn’t been able to truly believe that his father would hurt him until it was already too late. His claws may as well still be in Adrian’s chest, ripping his heart free, a dead son to a dead mother to a dead father. He grips the edge of his coffin and barely manages to pull himself up, tipping over the side to let gravity help him in. His head bounces off the bottom and Adrian can’t even feel it. He curls up there like a wounded animal, breathing slow and ragged. His hair splays out around him like a halo of gold and blood.
Just a moment, maybe. Adrian can close his eyes for just a moment, even if he’s frightened of what images his mind will conjure in that darkness. Rest will help him heal. Maybe none of this will be real when he wakes up.
He only has to let it in for one moment though, and in the next he’s swept away, consumed by the blackness.