Chapter 12

“Rochshan. My Nest.”

Standing barefoot before the crowd like a specter, Kyle Blackburn was not alone. He dragged two people by his hands. In his left hand, unexpectedly, was Rochshan’s aunt, Margaret Owin; in his right, the stable keeper, Giggs Smith.

“Gah…!”

The moment he hurled the two onto the floor of the mansion’s hall, everyone in the drawing room—save for Philip, Vizak, and Rochshan—collapsed limply like marionettes with their strings cut. Even the doctor who had informed the Count of the endemic disease fell. All of them were, or had been, intoxicated by Kyle Blackburn’s Dragon Speech.

“Kyle… what on earth is this…?”

Rochshan couldn’t bring himself to ask his servant, who had been hovering near death moments ago, if his body was alright now. While the man’s monstrous strength remained evident in his ability to drag two struggling people, his ghastly appearance was clearly far from fine.

A monster. The beast that had lived hidden in Tuska’s royal palace.

Now that he vaguely understood Kyle Blackburn’s true identity, it was not difficult to deduce that most of the extraordinary phenomena occurring here were tied to him. Rochshan felt his heart pound fiercely. Alongside relief, an unparalleled anxiety began to well up.

He would have preferred it if Kyle had truly fallen ill with an endemic disease. If so, the solution of how to save him would have been clear.

“Rochshan.”

“Kyle. What are you doing standing there? Why are those people… No, come here first…”

“You said you would save me,” Kyle uttered. “But I’ve already reached my limit.”

“…”

Salvation? Limit?

Rochshan could not comprehend the words spouting from Kyle, who was shrouded in a bizarre aura he had never seen before. Panic seized the Count. He was just beginning to doubt himself, wondering if there was something he still couldn’t remember, when Philip Bright-Ash let out a long sigh beside him and stepped forward.

“Wait just a little longer, Kyle. Our plan might succeed right now,” Philip coaxed.

“You, shut up. I won’t be fooled anymore by your lies to escape this moment. I’ve already wasted sixteen years.”

He completely discarded the polite speech he had feigned whenever a third party was present. Kyle Blackburn, the black dragon, bared his fangs and snarled at his half-brother. A grotesque darkness began to flare and undulate within his irises.

“I told you. If I don’t get what I want, I’ll slaughter everyone and create a festival of blood. I keep my promises. Just wait a bit. I’ll deal with you all in order.”

They were not empty words. Reacting to that ferocious aura, Knight Commander Vizak instinctively moved to draw the sword at his waist. It was a situation where the outcome of a clash was entirely uncertain. Yet, before the knight could act, the king stopped him, shaking his head. Wait just a little longer, he gestured.

“Kyle, stop spouting incomprehensible nonsense and come here!” Rochshan demanded. “No, stay there. I’ll…”

“Do not approach him, Count,” Philip warned. “One wrong move and you’ll be eaten alive.”

The situation refused to make logical sense in his mind. However, confirming whether Kyle was truly standing there unharmed took priority. Thus, just as Rochshan desperately tried to approach him, the king obstructed him once more.

“Your Majesty, what is the meaning of this?”

“It’s no joke,” the king replied grimly.

It was then. Margaret Owin, dragged by her hair by Kyle, suddenly jerked awake and began to shriek horrifyingly.

By coming into contact with the black dragon, she had entered his domain. She had just recalled a fact she had long forgotten: that she had forged a ‘Secret-Eating’ pact with this monster long ago. And she realized she had just broken the terms of that contract—and that the price for it was the exposure of her secrets, followed by death.

It was inevitable. From the very beginning, Kyle had bound the pact with the absolute certainty that Margaret Owin was the type of human who would undoubtedly break it. Just like the petty thief from days past.

“R-Rochshan…!” she wailed, her eyes darting frantically until they locked onto him. “My beloved nephew, please save your aunt! Save me from the hands of this monster…!”

The secret Margaret Owin had fed to the black dragon was this: She was the mastermind who had assassinated her own biological brother, Edwin Owin, and his wife, Isabelle Owin, disguising it as a carriage accident. Only one detail had gone awry in her meticulous plan: her nephew, Rochshan Owin, had unexpectedly survived.

Kyle Blackburn had decided to use her while she was intoxicated by the role of the benevolent adoptive parent taking in her orphaned nephew. He used her as a shield to fend off all the swindlers and schemers who would approach the naive, high-born orphan until Rochshan reached adulthood. He promised to keep her secret. In exchange, the condition Kyle dictated was simple: ‘Do not attempt to harm your nephew.’

“I’ve waited quite a long time. Only now can I finally keep my promise to Isabelle,” Kyle murmured.

She had pleaded for him to kill her murderer in the most cruel and wretched way possible once her utility had run out.

“Rochshan.”

The black dragon gazed at his Nest, his face flush with manic expectation.

“You wanted to avenge your parents too, didn’t you? This woman finally broke her contract with me today. So now, I can kill her. Can I kill her?”

“You mean to say, my aunt…”

Rochshan grasped the truth. Kyle Blackburn was stating that Margaret had murdered his parents. His chillingly cold irises shifted toward Margaret. At that, she crawled on her knees, desperately scrambling as close to her nephew as possible, shaking her entire body as she vehemently denied the accusation.

“It’s a bald-faced lie! Don’t believe him, Rochshan. That monster is framing me! He’s trying to drive a wedge between you and me!”

Two conflicting stories for a single event. Someone was undoubtedly lying. But who?

It was then. Kyle Blackburn snapped his thumb and index finger together. It was the cue for the remaining two actors waiting in the wings to take the stage.

The first to step forward was Giggs Smith, who had been held in Kyle’s right hand. Staggering to his feet, the middle-aged man’s eyes were glassy and vacant. He began to speak with a slurred tongue.

“M-Madam told me, embraced in my arms the night before the accident that took the Count and the Countess. She told me to loosen the tightening screws on the carriage wheels just a fraction. Not enough to break down immediately, but just enough so the wheel would pop off after running for a couple of hours, right around the time they passed the uneven cliffside… S-She said the carriage debris would be smashed to pieces anyway, so no evidence would be left behind…”

“Dear god, Giggs…!”

Margaret’s face contorted in sheer horror at the betrayal of the man she thought she had completely subjugated. Giggs, oblivious, continued his confession.

“I couldn’t refuse Madam’s request. I was…”

It was because he had been caught red-handed stealing belongings from the master of the estate, Edwin Owin.

Edwin Owin had been a compassionate Count, but he was a man who drew a razor-sharp line between public and private matters. He was not one to forgive a servant’s corruption simply because they were a longtime member of the household. It had been mere days before the carriage accident.

I cannot house a thief under my roof. Edwin had decisively rebuked Giggs Smith with a look of pure contempt, stating flatly that he would implement the termination procedures within a few days and that Giggs should find other lodgings and prepare to leave. Not reporting him to the police, he said, was his final shred of mercy.

But where else would anyone hire a slow-moving, hunchbacked, limping middle-aged man with a speech impediment? Edwin’s sentence was a judge’s gavel slamming down, signaling Giggs’ descent into the abyss. Left as he was, his only future was begging for scraps and taking shelter under strangers’ eaves until he eventually froze or starved to death somewhere. Throwing him out knowing full well how miserable he would become! A twisted hatred for Edwin Owin inevitably took root.

I will never throw you out, Giggs. If you just help me this once. That was why he had succumbed so easily to Margaret Owin’s temptation.

This was the very secret Giggs Smith had fed to the black dragon. The dragon had laid down the following condition to keep his secret: I will keep silent about your complicity in a horrific murder plot, so testify to the truth whenever Margaret Owin is brought to judgment.

This was the sheer cunning of a Secret-Eating pact. Once caught in the dragon’s claws, the contractor was nothing more than prey forced to endure unilaterally disadvantageous conditions. They could not refuse the paradox of having to voluntarily expose their own secret as the price for keeping it hidden.

Furthermore, until when and from whom would this secret be hidden? The simple phrase ‘I will protect it’ was a bait riddled with loopholes. In other words, Kyle Blackburn had promised to keep Giggs Smith’s secret safe ‘only until exposing Margaret’s crimes before Rochshan’s eyes’ and ‘only from people outside the Owin estate.’ It was a meaningless, terminal promise.

Thus, in this moment, Giggs’ secret lost its putrid luster. The dragon, completely losing interest, spat his secret back out. However, Giggs Smith had obeyed the condition set by the dragon. Thus, he would at least be spared the fate of being torn to shreds and killed by him.

Following him, the next actor walked into the center of the drawing room. It was Giggs’ daughter, Laura Smith, bearing the same glassy-eyed gaze.

“Madam planned the exact same crime again,” she confessed flatly.

“Laura!”

“She planned to kill Count Rochshan by disguising it as a carriage accident similar to his parents’. This time, she asked for my help. Saying she needed to lure the Count to the same accident site to orchestrate a dramatic tragedy… I received orders to p-poison the Vice Butler, whom the Count cherishes most, with a lethal toxin. I secretly visited Madam’s estate periodically to receive poisonous powder that induces an endemic disease. It must have been a year already. Sneaking the poison into the Vice Butler’s meals.”

She would never realize it, but the one who had incited that conspiracy was none other than Kyle Blackburn himself.

“Then Kyle collapsing was…”

Rochshan’s dreadful suspicion hit the mark. It was true. The only person besides Rochshan who knew that the special medicinal herb grew wild near the Owin family’s villa was Margaret Owin. She was the only one capable of concocting a conspiracy using Kyle Blackburn’s illness as bait to lure Rochshan Owin to the cliff leading to the villa, sending him to a violent death exactly like his parents.

The first witness stepped forward once more. Giggs’ decisive revelation followed.

“Just one hour ago, Madam visited my quarters for the first time in a long while.”

It was also the exact moment Kyle Blackburn recognized that Margaret Owin had broken the Secret-Eating pact and opened his eyes. For that specific moment, Kyle had deliberately placed himself into a state of suspended animation. It was practically the final exertion of rational judgment he had made before going mad.

“Madam told me Count Rochshan would soon come looking for a horse. She ordered me to hammer the nails of that horse’s horseshoe plates in backward… so that ultimately, the horse’s ankles would break.”

“No, no…”

In the end, Margaret Owin’s downfall was due to the constraints of her Secret-Eating pact with Kyle. Though she had completely forgotten about it until being driven into this extreme corner, she had been subconsciously avoiding methods to harm Rochshan directly for many long years. What if she had simply murdered the young Rochshan Owin herself with her lethal poison, instead of bothering to drag Giggs Smith and Laura Smith into it? All her evil deeds wouldn’t have been exposed like this, and her murder plot wouldn’t have failed.

Only now did she realize. The fact that she had blown all those countless opportunities to kill her thorn-in-the-side nephew was entirely because of the mental suggestion this monster had placed upon her.

“No, no, it’s all a lie! You’re all in league together, trying to kill me!”

Having finished their accusations, Giggs and Laura lost consciousness once again and collapsed like ragdolls. Thus, only the culprit remained in the courtroom. Margaret Owin now began to foam at the mouth and thrash about in pure desperation. She cursed Kyle, dragged Isabelle and Edwin down with her insults, and shrieked maliciously to rationalize her crimes.

A cold streak of tears flowed down Rochshan Owin’s cheek as he watched her pathetic display. He asked Kyle, who stood behind his aunt, in a calm voice. It wasn’t to deny it. It was simply a final reaffirmation before executing an irreversible revenge.

“Are you telling me this is truly all a fact?”

“I told you, Rochshan. The only blind one here is you.”

The black dragon, standing at a distance with the sinner between them, was tender toward his Nest even in this moment.

“I wondered thousands of times why my aunt let me live if it was going to be like this,” Rochshan murmured.

Every time I was abused by you.

Recalling his horrifying past, Rochshan’s voice sank calmly. His aunt could never even look him properly in the eyes. It was only natural. It must have reminded her of the woman she murdered. Under the guise of it being too dangerous, she hadn’t even retrieved their remains. She had merely buried empty coffins and erected tombstones.

All the while, she shackled her nephew by forever harping on about being his lifesaver, about her boundless, heaven-and-earth-like grace. Despite being the very one who orphaned him. Despite intending to murder even him someday.

It was then. A long tail had sprouted behind Kyle’s back. Swishing that tail, Kyle asked the trembling Rochshan softly.

“Can you forgive her?”

“…I cannot forgive her.”

“Can I kill her?”

“…Yes.”

Finally, he had obtained the permission he had waited so long for. Rochshan witnessed the manifestation of the dragon right then and there. Massive wings that looked ready to blanket the entire drawing room tore out from Kyle’s back with a grotesque squelch. The widely spread darkness instantly contracted, ambushing the screaming Margaret Owin.

The black dragon. Kyle Blackburn was the black dragon. Then I am…

Crunch, craaack. Inside the dragon’s folded wings, which imprisoned Margaret in the shape of a heart, the old woman’s shrieks and the sickening sound of flesh and bone being chewed continued until, presently, silence fell. A cold hand rested upon the shoulder of the panting Rochshan. It was Philip Bright-Ash.

“That bastard finally tasted human blood,” Philip remarked grimly.

“Your Majesty.”

“It cannot be undone now.”

The two boys’ long-festering revenge had been successfully concluded, but that did not mean the remaining problem was solved. Kyle Blackburn was already half-mad, and it was certain that he would soon lose his mind completely, turning the country into a slaughterhouse with his power and his greed for blood and flesh.

“Rochshan. I am sorry, but you are a Nest who failed his role.”

“…!”

The word ‘Nest’ thoroughly clawed at Rochshan’s heart this time.

“Is now not the very moment to repay my past sins? Kyle!”

Kyle Blackburn had already hidden his wings and returned to a human form. But while his shape was human, his core was already nothing but a foul-smelling beast. Even the act of recognizing his name and looking at his half-brother seemed like a mere reflexive response.

Toward such a brother, Philip pulled out a lacquered box he had kept hidden in the folds of his cloak. Click. Opening the lid, he thrust it toward his growling brother. Rochshan could not see what was inside.

“Kyle, this is what we’ve been searching for so desperately.”

The only way for a dragon to forget its Nest. In other words, the only way to nullify a Nest contract.

“I obtained the Oblivion Herb.”

Philip had dispatched countless spies across the world to find the Oblivion Herb, also known as the phantom herb. Most of them had died, but the sole survivor had dramatically returned with the herb. It had taken a staggering fifteen years.

“Kyle. I know your pain. You suffer because of love. It’s alright now. I will end that suffering caused by me. It’s simple. You just have to stop loving. You just need to return to a time before you knew love.”

“No!”

“Chew the Oblivion Herb and forget your first Nest. Without leaving a single trace.”

“No, absolutely not!”

Like a lightning strike, Rochshan realized what the king was offering Kyle. He intended to completely erase the existence of Rochshan Owin, his Nest, from Kyle Blackburn’s mind.

“It’s too late for regrets, Rochshan,” Philip said coldly.

The dragon had already gone mad. Even if the Nest realized his true identity now, what would change?

“You failed to give Kyle what he desperately desired. That is why you made him like this. Craving, starving, until he withered away and lost his mind.”

Rochshan’s face crumpled in utter devastation. He bit his lip until it bled. A trembling excuse scattered from his lips.

“I… I simply didn’t know. I didn’t know what Kyle wanted…!”

“Truly? Or is that just what you wish to believe?”

Pity, icy detachment, exhaustion at his stubbornness, fury toward one who took no responsibility—a multitude of emotions loaded into Philip’s sneer pierced Rochshan once again.

Stepping past Rochshan, Philip began to coax his brother, who had taken the condensed form of a dragon. Rochshan lunged to stop the king but tripped, and as he tried to crawl forward, Knight Commander Vizak blocked his path. Glancing sideways at the struggling blond Count, Philip continued his speech.

“I learned something from my past fatal mistake.”

That not all Nests hate their dragons. “Having seen the possibilities, the next solution is easy. I won’t make a mistake this time. I will prepare a new Nest for you—a proper Nest that can offer you comfort and rest. Even this woman wouldn’t matter. She’s a greedy one, isn’t she? Her love for power and wealth is genuine, so surely her feelings for you, who provides them, would naturally follow.”

Philip threw a fleeting glance at the collapsed, soulless Laura.

It would have been this easy from the start. All he had to do was strip the dragon of its right to choose its Nest.

Perhaps it was the dragon itself that courted impossible love. Wasn’t it instinctively drawn to an incompatible partner, walking right into a living hell? In that case, he simply needed to castrate that right of natural selection.

Dragons were naive creatures. Since the premise that a Nest could also be drawn to a dragon was established, he only needed to scout a suitable candidate and manipulate the situation so the dragon fell in love with them.

“Or, I will lock you away for your entire life so you can never form a Nest.”

This was one of the classic methodologies for controlling a dragon, nothing new at all. The reason the Tuskan royal family ruined things time and time again despite this was because they couldn’t suppress their desire to utilize the dragon’s abilities. But Philip himself was different. He no longer needed his brother’s powers. He had firmly resolved from the very beginning to end this vile custom of exploitation in his own generation.

“If you never meet a Nest in the first place, you’ll have no reason to go mad either.”

Step. Philip advanced another pace.

“You will be the only dragon in history to live a long life.”

Even if you wither away in solitude.

“Now, my brother. Take the Oblivion Herb. Let’s sever the chain of this vicious cycle. If you forget Rochshan, this gruesome contract will be as if it never existed.”

“No, absolutely not!”

A tearing scream ripped through the air.

Philip commanded decisively without even looking back at Rochshan.

“Count Owin. Let my brother, let Kyle go now.”

“…”

“Did you not tell me yourself? That you would do anything to save Kyle. Then give him up. Because this is the only way to save him.”

Philip’s persuasion continued.

“Do not worry. I will share a spare portion of the Oblivion Herb with you as well. To be fair. Rochshan, you do not need to be bound by this agony either.”

Of course, it was a provocation made knowing full well Rochshan wouldn’t be able to let go. Moreover, somewhere in his heart, Philip also believed that Kyle would reject the Oblivion Herb. In other words, this was a mechanism designed to induce an extreme choice.

“It was bound to end up like this for you two anyway. A dragon and a Nest who meet naturally inevitably rush toward ruin. You simply were no exceptions.”

Though I had hung onto a thread of hope.

It was that moment. An unexpected situation occurred that flustered even Philip. Kyle reached his blackened, grotesque hand toward the box.

Is Kyle truly… exhausted?

Even Philip was genuinely shocked. Unleashing a deafening roar, Rochshan shook off Grand Duke Vizak with strength surging from somewhere and charged forward. He ran, tripped, and unable to properly rise, crawled across the floor on his knees. At that pathetic sight, both Kyle and Philip fixed their gazes upon the thrashing blond man.

“Absolutely not.”

Madness shimmered in Rochshan’s bloodshot eyes.

In that instant, reason returned to Kyle Blackburn’s irises.

The black dragon shuddered. He realized it instinctively. The cruel, selfish, unutterably horrifying confession he had been hopelessly waiting for was finally about to begin.

“I won’t let you forget me…!”

Dragging his body wretchedly like a casualty who had lost everything below the knees, Rochshan ground his teeth with a hoarse voice. A highly toxic confession bereft of all restraint followed.

“I won’t forget you either. The Oblivion Herb? What could that pathetic weed make me forget? I swear I will remember you again.”

Tears streamed down the Count’s cheeks.

“I know you waited until you were exhausted and completely lost your mind. So what? No matter how much blood is shed, or if this country falls to ruin, I don’t care! Just forget each other and it’s over? Don’t make me laugh! Do you think I’d leave whatever bitch or bastard becomes your next Nest alone? I will absolutely tear them apart and kill them. I won’t leave them be even in death.”

His trembling, pale back of the hand dug between the dragon’s and the king’s shoes. The incredibly proud and arrogant Count Rochshan Owin had plummeted into the most lowly existence on earth in this moment, yet he knew no shame and didn’t care.

“Give me just one more chance…”

If it meant he could hold onto Kyle, he didn’t care if he became an earthworm.

“Curse me for not knowing how much you suffered by my side all this time, beat me, strangle me, I don’t care.”

The back of his hand touched Kyle’s shoe.

“Just once, let me repay you… Kyle!”

It was a false deception. The wretched Rochshan was eyeing the perfect opportunity.

“I’ll give you everything you want this time. Do whatever you want to me with that incredible power. A child? Fine, I’ll bear as many as you want. Please, make me that way. Hmm?”

Even just saying the words made his lower abdomen feel far heavier. As if something were truly inside. Unaware of the fact that he was already pregnant, Rochshan blabbered anything that came to mind.

It was a trap for a counterattack. Rochshan knew that Kyle would die from this confession. He had decided to no longer turn a blind eye to this twisted love. Leaving his oblivion be for the sake of Kyle’s happiness might be pure love, but no, he absolutely couldn’t do that.

Rather. The moment you die, I will die with you.

The situation between the first king and the black dragon was finally being reversed after hundreds of years.

Perhaps I will die from this terrible sin and lose you, but that’s alright. I will be born again and again, and I will chase you. I will never give up. Rochshan swore an oath with a silent scream. It was an oath as powerful as the dragon’s Word.

“So please.”

Frantically clutching the hem of Kyle’s pants with both hands, Rochshan rubbed his forehead against his shoe and begged.

“Please don’t, leave me.”

Forever. “Don’t abandon me, please.”

Forget each other and lead gentle lives? Fuck that. He would rather bind him with today’s lies and watch him turn ice-cold. Tears flowed unceasingly, soaking the shoe and the floor.

“I love you, Kyle.”

However, this alone was the absolute truth among truths.

“I love you like crazy.”

A black confession so pitch-dark that it was purer than pure white.

“Rochshan.”

He had finally heard the heart he desired. Tears streaked down Kyle Blackburn’s cheeks as well. Kyle wept tears that even the dragon of the past, who had thrown himself off a cliff, had not shed. It was the first tear of his life, and proof that he had become identical to Rochshan, exactly as he had desperately wished.

At that moment, the chime of the clock resonated fully through the corridor. It struck twelve times, and the day changed.

It was the day of the Nest Wedding. Today’s marriage would be the only one of its kind.

Within the fully spread wings of the dragon, Rochshan willingly allowed himself to be consumed by the darkness and closed his eyes.