The dragon’s jaws opened.
A pitch-black breath surged from deep within its throat. It wasn't fire. It wasn't frost. It was “denial” itself.
Before the breath even hit the ground, Bell’s mind exploded.
It wasn't pain. It was something more fundamental being torn apart. The image of Dracula standing before the inheritance stone pillar—that reborn body, the sickly green irises, the fangs emerging from his abdomen—the colors were fading. The outlines were blurring.
Bell bit the tip of his tongue hard. The metallic taste of blood rushed into his nose.
His memory stabilized.
But the wave of “denial” did not stop. It wasn't just targeting him. It radiated in all directions.
Bell whipped his head around.
“Dracula—he triggered the Inheritance Reversal! It’s because of him that Salomos—”
He stopped mid-sentence.
Margaret stood three meters away. Dust dripped from the hem of her mentor’s cloak. She looked up at Bell.
Her face was a mask of pure confusion.
“Dracula?”
The name was uttered clearly. No hesitation. No lag in her memory. It was genuine, heartfelt bewilderment.
“Who is Dracula?”
A chill started at the base of Bell’s spine and climbed up.
“The Vampire King Dracula!” His voice was still raspy from his earlier shouting. “The old man in the red robe! He broke into the inheritance chamber with Cecilia—he took all the blood source essence from the nine ancestors—”
Footsteps approached from the side.
Lilian walked over. Her Crown of Thorns was crooked, and half its withered petals had fallen off. The wound on her right hand was still bleeding.
She reached out.
Her palm pressed against Bell’s forehead.
It was cool. A vampire’s body temperature.
“Has Master been scared out of his wits?”
Her tone was worried. Genuine. Unfeigned.
Her next words froze Bell’s blood completely.
“Am I not the only vampire in the world?”
Bell’s knees buckled for a second.
He took a step back, his soles grinding against the rubble.
Bell turned to Leon.
Leon’s left arm was still in a sling. The wound where the broken bone had pierced the skin was wrapped in strips of cloth. He leaned against a section of broken wall, his right hand resting on his knee.
“Leon.” Bell’s vocal cords were trembling. “Dracula. The Vampire King from three thousand years ago. Do you remember?”
Leon looked up.
“What king?”
A pause.
“Bell, what are you talking about?”
It was over.
Everything had been erased.
It wasn't hypnosis. It wasn't a memory seal. It was an alteration of reality itself.
Just like with the Wood Elves. Just like with Aunt Philan. Salomos had directly deleted the existence of “vampires” from the world’s underlying logic.
The three-thousand-year-old Vampire King. The lineage of the ten ancestors. The inheritance stone pillars. The history of the Blood Dance Tattoo. None of it existed anymore.
Only Lilian remained. A solitary “only vampire in the world.”
And Bell was the only person who remembered the truth.
Because his soul did not belong to this world.
A low-frequency vibration came from above.
Bell snapped his head up.
Salomos’s pitch-black body was coiled atop the shattered dome of the Night Rose Palace. Its crimson vertical pupils slowly shifted downward from their high vantage point.
It wasn't looking at Bell.
It was looking at Cecilia.
Cecilia was suspended in mid-air, held by Leovet Victor’s wind cushion, still unconscious. Her golden hair was disheveled, and her limbs hung powerlessly. The dark red glow of the Blood Dance Tattoo had completely vanished.
Salomos’s bone wings folded slightly. The muscles in its hind legs bulged beneath pitch-black scales. The vertebrae of its spine tightened, one by one.
It was gathering strength before a dive.
Bell’s brain made a judgment within zero point five seconds—it was going to recover them. The blood source essence of the nine ancestors within Cecilia, the World Tree Heart, everything.
The bone wings snapped open.
The massive black dragon, large enough to blot out the sky, dropped from the dome. Its speed was completely disproportionate to its size. In an instant, it was above everyone’s heads.
A dragon claw extended.
Five pitch-black phalanges, each as thick as an adult’s arm. The tips curved into hooks. Light vanished wherever the black mist swirling around them passed. The refractive index dropped to zero. A patch of absolute blackness spread along the trajectory of the claw.
It was heading straight for Cecilia.
Bell’s legs sprang into action.
But he couldn't make it. The distance was too great. He was too slow.
A blast of cyan light exploded in the darkness.
A wind blade.
Extremely precise. It didn't aim for the joints or gaps in the claw—it struck the side of the dragon claw.
It deflected the trajectory.
The claw was pushed half a meter sideways by the force. The five phalanges brushed past Cecilia’s face. The black mist caught a few strands of her golden hair, which vanished into nothingness the moment they touched it.
The wind cushion was withdrawn at the same moment.
Cecilia’s body plummeted.
Bell’s right foot shattered a protruding stone slab. He leaned forward, arms outstretched in the air.
Her back crashed into his arms. The weight forced his knees to sink ten centimeters. A tearing sensation came from the old injury in his spine.
He gritted his teeth. He didn't fall.
The person in his arms remained unconscious, her chest heaving weakly.
After missing its target, Salomos’s entire body performed an impossible sharp turn in mid-air. For such a massive body, its turning speed was so fast that the afterimages didn't even have time to dissipate.
The crimson vertical pupils locked onto Bell.
More accurately, they locked onto what he was holding.
The dragon’s jaws opened again.
A dragon’s roar.
It didn't come from its throat. It was a frequency that ground directly across the soul.
The remaining stone walls of the secret chamber shattered. The rubble didn't fly—it was vibrated into powder. The powder suspended in the air, then vanished.
The entire Moon Phase City was trembling. The half-collapsed walls of the North District gave way completely. The dull thuds of falling stones drifted in from the distance, one after another.
Bell’s eardrums throbbed with pain. His balance failed briefly, and his body tilted to the left.
Leovet Victor rose into the air.
There was no mana fluctuation. No jumping motion. His body simply detached from the ground. Upward. Slowly. Steadily.
His mentor’s robe was missing its left sleeve, and his trouser legs were torn in two places. Other than that, he was unharmed.
He stopped directly in front of Salomos.
The difference in size was absurd. Leovet’s height was less than the length of a single digit on the dragon’s claw.
But Salomos stopped.
The dragon’s roar cut off.
The crimson vertical pupils shifted away from Bell, focusing on the tiny human before it.
The slits narrowed.
It felt it.
Cyan wind elements condensed around Leovet. It wasn't a flowing current, but a physical, dense wind armor. The edges of each layer of airflow sliced through the dust in the air. The dust drew countless fine white trajectories around him before breaking and dissipating.
Bell held Cecilia, the metallic taste of blood from the dragon’s roar lingering in his throat.
He turned.
He shouted at Lilian and Leon behind him.
“Run! Grab Tia—run as far as you can!”
Lilian froze for half a second.
Only half a second.
Then her body moved. Her Crown of Thorns was askew as the last few petals fell off during her run. She sprinted toward the deep pit. Tia’s Mithril body was still at the bottom, her left side not yet fully repaired.
Leon didn't go to help Tia.
He ran straight for Bell.
His right hand grabbed Bell’s collar, dragging him and the unconscious Cecilia toward the escape passage deep within the secret chamber.
“Let me—”
“Shut up.” Leon’s broken arm swung as he ran. The end of the bone piercing the skin was wrapped in bandages, and blood seeped out to drip onto the ground. “Your legs are even shakier than mine right now.”
Lilian scooped Tia out of the pit with one hand. Tia’s left side was still a work in progress, with filaments of liquid Mithril dangling from the breaks. Her right eye glowed with a faint light.
Lilian hoisted Tia onto her shoulder. A vampire’s strength was in full effect at this moment.
The four of them—along with the unconscious Cecilia and the damaged Tia—rushed into the escape passage deep in the secret chamber.
Behind them.
In the sky.
Two forces ground against each other.
Cyan and pitch-black.
The shockwave of the explosion poured into the passage from the hole in the dome. Heat and rubble chased them from behind.
Leon used his body to shield Bell’s back. Rubble struck his shoulder blades with a dull thud.
The passage shook violently. The cracks in the stone walls widened, and dust fell from the ceiling.
Bell was dragged forward by Leon, clutching Cecilia. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lilian running ahead with Tia. Tia’s remaining right hand gripped Lilian’s shoulder, her five Mithril fingers trembling slightly.
Another collision echoed from behind.
This time, there was no explosion.
Only silence.
A silence more terrifying than any sound.
Bell looked back.
At the entrance of the passage, amidst the churning dust.
Leovet’s figure hung in mid-air.
The cyan wind armor was shattered at one corner.
And Salomos’s left wing—a crack had appeared.
Dragon blood seeped from the rift.
Pitch black. Falling onto the ruins.
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