CHAPTER 147……………………………………………..
Kiiing.
Barok, who had been weaving between the trees, twisted his body sharply.
It had been several days since he’d moved from the glass greenhouse, but perhaps he still hadn’t adjusted—at the slightest sound of wind, he craned his neck, looking around.
Yet no matter how much he looked, there was only one thing to see: a single man, grim beyond measure.
“…Who are you looking for?”
A voice as desolate as his appearance stopped Barok in place.
They couldn’t say it aloud, but both knew they were searching for the same person. And they also knew how futile that search was.
Killian slowly looked Barok over. The way he whimpered was pitiful, but he was unmistakably a red dragon.
Though he had already undergone one awakening, dragons were not creatures that grew according to the passage of time as humans imagined.
They were sacred beasts among sacred beasts, companions since the age of the gods.
From birth to extinction, everything depended solely on their own will. If they didn’t like it, they could remain as eggs for hundreds of years; at other times, in mere days, they would take to the skies in colossal form.
Even so, he himself had seen it only once—years ago—but it was a scene too vivid to ever fade from memory.
“…You’re late.”
Killian brushed his fingertips over Barok’s still-small head, the place Adele’s hand had most often rested.
“Commander, what do you think? Does our Barok really look like a monster?”
Adele’s voice echoed in his ears—how she had firmly told others it wasn’t so, then tugged lightly at his collar and whispered with care.
She had said she must take responsibility, since it was a life she had taken in, and had cradled Barok as though he were a baby.
Those lingering images of Adele were the only strength and hope that kept him going.
Hope.
It was laughable, but true.
Up until then, life had simply been something you lived because you were alive—nothing more, nothing less.
No one had ever told him he must not harbor hope. If someone had, perhaps it would have been better.
But even that chance was denied to him.
In that place, he was not human. He was the cursed crown prince destined to one day bathe the imperial palace in blood.
[He who bears no red sun shall burn the imperial palace.]
They said it was his fate, decreed even before his birth.
Because the blood of a ruined other race mixed with royal blood, they said—the ancient prophecy condensed his life into a single line. And when the mother who bore him died, it became an unshakable fact.
“So that’s him… my goodness, he doesn’t look like it.”
“You can’t tell just by looking. They say it’s in his maternal blood. In any case, best not to get close. What if the curse spreads?”
Among those who whispered about him, not a single one spoke to him directly.
As if the dreadful curse afflicting him might transfer, even the lone maid who brought his meals avoided meeting his eyes, keeping her gaze lowered.
You must not reach out a hand. You must not meet their eyes.
Learning not to desire something in the first place, rather than see someone turn away in embarrassment—that was his first lesson in life.
Had his mother ever looked at his face? As a child, he wondered. Everyone else turned away from him, but perhaps his mother had been different.
But when he thought of the mother who died the moment he was born, he was already a sinner.
A curse said to bring ruin to everything in the imperial palace.
If everyone believed it, perhaps it truly was his fault. So even if his mother had never once looked at him, he couldn’t resent her.
And so, as a child, he lost yet another emotion.
“Killian, you mustn’t come out yet. If you reveal yourself before people for no reason…”
Even His Majesty, who would occasionally visit the abandoned palace where Killian was kept, never truly looked at him.
It didn’t seem to be because of the curse, but whenever he faced Killian, his expression was always heavy.
And as his father’s indifference grew, Killian’s place grew ever narrower.
When the Emperor took a formal Empress, and a legitimate prince was born between them, the air around Killian grew colder still.
The only gaze tinged with expectation directed at him was that of idle onlookers wondering when he would lose his position as crown prince.
If it were that, he could give it up anytime.
Confined to a cold palace, the throne meant nothing to him.
Yet that very position—one he could not escape even if he wished—was itself a curse to Killian.
“What nonsense! After all you’ve done to preserve that position, now you’d abandon it?!”
“…I didn’t preserve it. I endured it.”
“How can you say such a thing! How could you!”
It was unexpected that the Emperor reacted with such fury when Killian first declared he would renounce the crown prince’s title.
Only then did he begin to explain things, but by that point, the emotions Killian should have felt were already gone.
He was neither sad nor happy.
Whatever the Emperor’s reasons, Killian was sick of everything surrounding him.
Within the suffocating palace walls, he was never free from anyone’s gaze.
Curiosity, malice, endless scrutiny.
He sometimes wondered if it would be better if the curse truly manifested and burned everything to the ground.
That was the only expectation he could have for his life.
Even so, the one thing that sustained him there was honing his swordsmanship.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
In his palace, where no voices could be heard, only the sound of swinging steel rang out.
He cut and cut at everything in sight, slicing away his own feeble heart along with it.
And when he could finally feel nothing at all, he received his first gift.
“It’s time I delivered this to you.”
The man was the Archbishop of Mount Fidelio, the vicar of God—and also, he said, his mother’s godfather.
Though they had only rarely crossed paths over the years, always from afar, that dawn he came to see Killian himself, as though he had been waiting for that very day.
A chill glinted along the blade the archbishop held out to him.
“It is a sword that can decide Your Highness’s fate. With it, you will be able to awaken the red dragon and sever the curse.”
For a sword said to lift such a dreadful curse, it was remarkably ordinary.
Yet the moment he took it in his hand, he understood what the archbishop meant.
It felt as though he wasn’t holding anything at all, yet it bent as if it were part of his own body.
So this was what a holy sword was.
Without being told, his body recognized it before his mind did.
It was ironic that someone cursed should wield a holy sword, but once it was in his hand, he had no intention of giving it back.
It was the first time in his life that Killian had ever wanted something.
And instead of being surprised, the archbishop merely smiled.
“I thought it would suit you.”
“This is…”
“It’s not something to be used in a place like this. When the time comes, Your Highness will know.”
At the archbishop’s assurance, Killian voiced no doubt.
Instead, the time he spent with the holy sword—the first thing he could truly call his own—only increased.
As he passed time in emptiness, the crown prince who could not unleash his curse faded from memory.
Expectation, resentment, lingering attachment.
When he had cut away everything that could be cut, leaving nothing behind, news finally reached him.
A great fire—like a red curse—had broken out on Mount Fidelio.
…Kiiing.
Barok twisted again, displeased by Killian’s touch.
Killian, too, stopped trying to act friendly like Adele.
Hadn’t he once cut this being down with his own hands?
They could never truly be together, yet they shared something in common.
Years ago, when he first encountered Barok in the great fire, the dragon had been driven to madness by immortal boredom.
The sight of his massive body coiling around Mount Fidelio stirred a strange sense of empathy in Killian.
—…So it’s you.
The human who will end me.
As though he had been waiting, Barok unleashed scorching flames.
Just as Killian had abandoned his fate to arrive there, Barok, too, had been awaiting his end.
Immortality itself was the only curse ever written for a dragon said to be invincible.
—Finish it. Hurry.
A fate he could not end himself roared through the mountain.
Even the archbishop who tried to stop it suffered severe burns, as the excitement and yearning spread with terrifying force.
—…I think you’ll understand.
The vertically slit red eyes expanded toward him.
As they were curses only they could end for each other, Killian hesitated no longer.
After a fierce duel that burned the entire mountain, Barok set his own body aflame.
—Thank you. Thanks to that, your curse will be lifted as well.
When the flames hot enough to melt eternal snow vanished, a dragon’s egg remained amid the ashes.
No one knew when it would awaken again.
No—if it were him, it wouldn’t.
The world awaiting it upon rebirth would be merciless and unbearably dull.
“Y-Your Highness! How could you give this to me!”
“It has no meaning to me.”
And so he fed the dragon’s heart to the fallen archbishop.
It was a panacea said to lift all curses in the world, and the burns vanished before their eyes.
“…I suppose it’s more accurate to say there are no curses left to lift.”
Though the archbishop stared at him in disbelief, Killian remained calm.
The moment he left the suffocating imperial palace, every curse said to bind him was broken.
To him, a curse was not tyranny from the throne, burning the palace and slaughtering kin.
A life so confined it was uncertain whether he was even alive—that itself was the curse.
He had cast it off himself; he needed no help from anyone.
“If you permit it, I intend to stay here from now on.”
With that single sentence, he decided his future, and the archbishop said no more.
One look into Killian’s blue eyes was enough to know it was a will that could not be bent.
It was simply that no one had ever truly looked before.
Life afterward was remarkably regular and monotonous.
Whether spending three years in the ice caverns of Keloan or returning to Mount Fidelio to lead the knights, Killian accepted everything given to him in silence.
No matter what others said, there was a freedom here incomparable to life in the palace.
The only problem was that he had nothing in particular he wanted to do with that freedom—but even that felt like more than he deserved.
Simply living through each day, and occasionally taking on the archbishop’s troublesome tasks, filled his days so completely there was no room for anything else.
“Let’s get married.”
Until the day crimson eyes fell into his heart and burned everything to ash.
…Kiiing.
Yes.
“I was the same as you.”
Killian looked at Barok.
He didn’t know whether the dragon remembered its past life, but this sacred being, too, had awakened for someone like him.
Even knowing a world it might not wish to be reborn into, it responded solely to her.
Led by someone’s hand, it chose once more a life of immortality that was itself a curse.
Perhaps he, too, had done the same, again and again.
No matter how painful life became, if the hand extended to him was Adele’s, hesitation held no meaning.
And if she shed tears from those beautiful eyes because of him, that was another curse altogether.
“…Draw your sword.”
“….”
Shing.
From behind Killian’s neck, Kaiden drew his blade, his black garments fluttering.
The murderous intent he could never conceal surged forth, and Barok bristled in response.
“You’ve come.”
In contrast, Killian remained calm.
As though he had expected Kaiden’s arrival, not even his eyebrows twitched.
“I warned you. I won’t stand by and watch you make my sister suffer any longer.”
“…You did.”
Killian faced Kaiden, brimming with killing intent.
Seeing him react for the first time to those Adele-like red eyes, Kaiden ground out a curse.
“Draw your sword.”
“…If that’s what you want.”
At Kaiden’s impatient urging, Killian finally raised his blade.
The sword usually moved as though of its own accord, but that day it was as dull as its master’s gaze.
“Because of you, my sister is—!”
Clang!
Kaiden’s blade, filled with rage, crashed into Killian’s holy sword.
Despite the piercing sound that rang loudly enough to deafen, neither man wavered.
Staring at Killian as though to kill him, Kaiden twisted his body for another strike.
Their swords met again, but Killian’s movements were minimal.
He merely blocked, as though reluctantly, matching Kaiden’s attacks. Like the days when he lived simply because he was alive, his swordplay held neither emotion nor will.
Slice.
Kaiden’s blade cut through the air, drawing a thin red line along Killian’s neck. Blood welled too slowly to keep pace with the blade.
As the mark crept up to his jawline, Kaiden erupted in fury.
“What are you doing! Fight properly!”
“…Isn’t this what you wanted.”
At Killian’s indifferent response—as if inviting him to do more—Kaiden completely lost control.
“I’ll finish you myself!”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“Ghk!”
This time Kaiden turned the blade sideways and truly aimed for his neck.
As Killian didn’t even raise his sword and simply lifted his chin to meet his gaze, Barok let out a strange cry.
Kiiing, kiiing!
“What in the world do you think you’re doing!”
The count’s怒 voice split them apart. Seeing his son and son-in-law standing with drawn swords was enough to make his blood boil—especially when the son-in-law didn’t even seem willing to fight.
“Is now the time for this? Kaiden is one thing, but Your Highness, what are you doing!”
“…My apologies, Father.”
“You needn’t apologize to me! What about our Adele, leaving yourself so defenseless!”
“…Adele—”
His lowered eyes snapped open.
Kaiden, who had been guarding Adele, had been aiming for his neck, and his father-in-law, who had stopped Kaiden, was now shouting at him.
Killian frowned in confusion.
“Where is Adele right now?”
“Well, that is…”
“You left her alone?”
In eyes that had seemed ready to die without regret, blue flames flared in an instant. His breath, more alive than ever, surged straight toward Barok.
Kiiing. Kiiing.
“….”
Killian’s brows knit sharply as he looked at Barok, who had been scraping at the ground for some time now. As he stepped forward, drawn by the count’s words, Kaiden’s sword flew in front of him.
“Where do you think you’re going! Finish this with me first!”
“I’m sorry, brother-in-law.”
Clang!
As he knocked Kaiden’s blade aside, true strength finally coursed through his holy sword.
Mounting his horse, he wiped the blood flowing down his neck with the back of his hand. In that moment, he looked unmistakably like someone truly alive, driven by will.
“…You’re not the one who can end me.”
