“What promise.”
I still couldn’t know the truth of Ceryl Aylos. I had no idea when this body might be swallowed by his soul again.
It had always felt hopeless, but the closer I got to the truth, the more it felt like I was walking straight into the eye of a storm.
But the promise I made with Ordin became a new signpost for me.
“Dravergh is the king and guardian of monsters.”
“.......”
“I promised I’d protect you until you become a true Dravergh.”
So Varen could become the hero of this cruel world. So he could become the protagonist who would end this brutal war.
I chose my future: staying at his side and protecting him.
And once I did, only a clear goal remained, and the confusion that had tormented me came to an end.
I gave our clasped hands a light shake and looked up at him. Only then did Varen turn his head and meet my eyes.
“...You’ll protect me?”
“Yeah. I’ll protect you, Varen.”
I smiled as I lifted the hand I was holding. Varen smiled back at me.
For the first time in days, we faced each other and exchanged warm looks.
Though it didn’t take long before Varen shook his head.
“You... me?”
“Hah, seriously. You don’t believe it? I’m human and you’re a dragon, but I have my own ways, too.”
I spoke more playfully on purpose to lift Varen’s gloom. Tilting my head, I followed his gaze.
But Varen gave a bitter smile and looked back at Ordin’s flame again.
“Ceryl, I... I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
Varen, staring into the distance, looked lonely—like someone left alone in the world.
He had found his father again after twenty years, only to lose him in less than a month. The emptiness he felt was something I couldn’t fill.
All I could do was keep showing him—again and again—that I existed beside him.
I tightened our interlaced fingers and didn’t take my eyes off him.
“Varen, no matter what you decide, I’ll be with you.”
I meant it, but Varen didn’t answer. He only kept looking at Ordin burning far away.
After a long silence like that, Varen carefully untangled our hands.
My palm went empty in an instant, and I found myself ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ opening and closing it for no reason.
“If that’s true, then all the more... I can’t do what I want.”
Varen murmured the words and looked down at me.
In the blue eyes so much like his father’s, sorrow passed first—then anger.
“I... Ceryl, I....”
“.......”
“I want to kill every human in this world.”
A voice soaked with tears boiled with heat at the same time.
The confusion Varen was going through washed over me, intact.
“So I... can’t be with you.”
A week had passed since Ordin’s funeral.
During that time, I gave Varen space to organize his thoughts alone. I worried about him unbearably, but I didn’t approach—only hovered nearby.
And after a week of long deliberation, Varen reached a conclusion.
He looked like someone who had decided on a farewell, but strangely, I felt like laughing.
“Why can’t you be with me?”
“...Because you’re human.”
“Do I count among the humans you want to kill?”
“What are you—!”
At my light question, Varen bristled.
As if he had never been sad at all, he furrowed his brow, turned fully toward me, and grabbed my shoulders with both hands.
For someone insisting I was human, he used a strength that made it feel like he’d forgotten that fact entirely.
“I want to kill every human in this world, but I didn’t mean you.”
“Then what about Kallen Rossein? Do you want to kill Kallen Rossein too?”
“...I don’t want to kill that small human either.”
I met Varen’s gaze head-on, my eyes steady. But the sea-colored eyes in front of me began to tremble in tiny waves.
Over the past week, I had wrestled with my own thoughts just as fiercely as Varen had.
There was no one to put our heads together with, no one to listen to what I was carrying—so I interrogated myself with dozens of questions and sketched hundreds of assumptions in my head.
In the end, the conclusion was simple.
Ceryl Aylos. I didn’t know who you were, or what secret you were hiding. I didn’t know what waited at the end of that truth, either.
But rather than walk alone into fog with no destination, I chose to take the hand of the lonely dragon beside me.
I chose to hold on to only one thing: the promise I made to Ordin.
“Varen, listen carefully. The humans kidnapping you before you hatched, attacking Belzena, and using Kaldrok to kill Ordin.”
“.......”
“It was all aimed at Dravergh’s heart.”
I took Varen’s hand and placed it over his left chest.
Varen slowly lowered his gaze to look at his own hand.
“If humans don’t give up on Dravergh’s heart, the war won’t end. Tragedy will repeat.”
I hadn’t read this novel to the end. I didn’t need to—it was obvious.
A novel written by humans and read by humans. I assumed it would end with a hero born in chaos defeating dragons and ‘saving humanity.’
But I kept turning the promise I’d made to Ordin over and over.
If Varen was going to become the hero born in chaos—if he was going to become the true protagonist of this novel—then what we needed from here wasn’t changing the plot’s progression. We had to overturn the readers of this story.
From the perspective of monsters, not humans.
Then Varen could become the hero of monsters and the protagonist of this novel.
I felt Dravergh’s heart beating through the hands layered together. The irregular but distinct rhythm I’d grown used to now sounded, strangely, like background music heralding a hero’s arrival.
“War....”
Varen repeated one word from what I’d said. A word only two syllables long, yet unbearably heavy and frightening.
He slowly lifted his gaze. The blue eyes looking at me had sunk into a cold stillness.
“Ceryl, you promised me. That before killing humans, you’d think one more time.”
At Varen’s words, I felt a jolt. I tried to speak too quickly, but he cut in first.
“Yeah, I thought. I thought and thought. Whether it was okay to let all this boiling rage burst out, whether it was okay for me to kill humans.”
“...Varen.”
“But I didn’t think about this.”
His grip tightened hard around our overlapped hands. Varen spoke in a firm voice I’d never heard from him before.
“Who I should kill.”
A will I couldn’t stop seeped from Varen no matter what I did.
He looked straight at me and put force into every syllable, as if he were casting a spell—breathing intent into words.
“Humans killed the dragon king, so I’ll kill the human king. And I’ll end the war.”
Varen was filled with vengeance. He had been imprisoned by humans his whole life, he had lost his father to humans, and even now his kin were being oppressed by humans—of course he would feel this way.
As a fellow human, I should have been terrified by those words, but instead, I felt oddly exhilarated.
I will kill the human king and end the war.
Varen’s declaration was a sentence that hauled him up into the starring role of this novel. That realization made my chest flutter for no reason.
A laugh slipped out of me. I looked up at Varen with a gentle smile. I tried to stay composed, but excitement bled into my voice.
“Varen, I’ll say it again. No matter what you decide, I’ll be with you.”
It was Varen who looked flustered now. He frowned as if he couldn’t understand, scanning my face from top to bottom as if trying to grasp my intent.
Holding a faint unease and suspicion, Varen tested my feelings again.
“Ceryl, do you mean it? You’ll be with dragons... even if it means killing the human king?”
“Yes. I’ll be with you.”
Before Varen even finished, I nodded hard.
Even if I was only a half-reader and a mage shrouded in mystery, I would pour every ability and every scrap of will I had into helping Varen.
My vague promise to Ordin—that I would make his son the protagonist—sharpened into a clear goal.
This time, I pulled the hand we had layered together toward myself.
“Varen, I swear. I’ll help you kill the human king with your own hands.”
Varen’s hand covered my left chest. A dragon’s heat was enough to crush a frail human heart without effort.
But he only met my eyes with a gaze full of warmth.
***
After the seven-day funeral ended, Varen stepped in to fill Ordin’s absence.
His first official schedule was a dragon trial. Varen sat in the seat of honor in an awkward posture. The people who had lost their king were full of grief and rage.
“We have to capture Kaldrok right now! We have to rip his heart out and kill him the same way!”
“If we can’t catch that bastard, then we should wipe out his entire line! He betrayed dragons!”
Even with each dragon speaking only one sentence, there were so many voices that the hall grew chaotic. Varen kept a blank face, but I could feel how cornered he was.
Kaldrok had tried to flee with Ordin’s corpse, but Neira discovered him immediately. While Neira—soaked in shock—poured all her attention into Ordin, Kaldrok managed to escape.
With her husband dead, and the knowledge that she had let the culprit slip through her hands, Neira collapsed into a severe fever.
