It was one of those days. I was lying in bed trying to sleep when I heard the creaking sound of a door. I turned my gaze toward the faint light seeping through the door crack. Veriton stood there.

“Hey, brat, already sleeping?”

His voice was slurred and twisted from alcohol. He must have drunk quite heavily, staggering with every step he took. With an ominous feeling, I bolted upright from the bed. I tried to quickly leave the room, but Veriton grabbed me.

“Let go. If you’ve been drinking, just go sleep it off.”

“Hey! You’ve got some nerve talking to an adult like that! Wait, but didn’t the brat live longer than me? No, that’s not important. I’m planning to make a major confession today.”

Every word he spoke carried the sharp smell of alcohol. My face immediately scrunched up.

“Ugh, seriously, that alcohol smell!”

I tried to pull my caught hand free, but it wasn’t easy. Unfortunately, the human body I wore was that of a young child. So overpowering Veriton, an adult male, with strength was practically impossible.

On top of that, using this human shell had caused the mana in my body to almost completely disappear. This was also the doing of that damned mage.

Veriton’s grip on my hand tightened. Perhaps because of this weak human body, it hurt a little. He let out a long, heavy sigh. Soon, a trembling voice reached my ears.

“I… committed an unforgivable great sin.”

Veriton’s tiresome drunken rambling had started again. He came to me like this in the middle of the night whenever I’d almost forgotten about it. Now I didn’t even want to respond, so I kept my mouth firmly shut, but he spoke again.

“Because of my research, innocent dragons and humans died. If only I hadn’t fanned the flames of their desires… everyone wouldn’t have suffered the pain of losing their families…”

His trembling voice now began to sob. I’d heard this countless times already, so I could predict what he’d say next.

“What kind of mage am I supposed to be? I’m just an incompetent bystander who can’t do anything. Don’t you think so?”

“……”

From the stories I’d heard over several years, he had initially researched the origins of mana at the Magic Tower. In that process, he discovered that dragons created mana by resonating with nature, and he pondered ways to coexist with them and use this beneficially.

However, the hardliners who viewed mana as their property tried to *buse this, and in the process, most moderates like Veriton were eliminated.

Then black magic to kill dragons was researched, and the hardline mages finally started a war. Veriton tried to prevent the war somehow, but there was nothing he could do. Behind the war was this country’s emperor.

The long, long war continued, and soon only the last dragon family remained in this world. Then rumors spread that eating a dragon’s heart would grant eternal life, and the emperor who heard this slaughtered the last remaining dragon family.

And unfortunately, that dragon family was my family.

When I first learned all these facts, I wanted to kill this man. I tried to hack his entire body apart and kill him in the most painful way in the world. But even killing this human wouldn’t bring my family back. Besides, strictly speaking, weren’t the hardline mages and the emperor more deserving of death?

Moreover, Veriton had already risked his own life to perform magic when he spirited me away. He threw his life into a gamble not knowing if I could survive properly, and if people discovered I was a dragon, he wouldn’t be able to preserve his own life either.

Also, I knew that his fervent research into bizarre toys was due to his powerlessness and self-blame regarding reality.

‘Though that doesn’t mean I can forgive him…’

So I quietly listened to what Veriton said until dawn broke. Most of what he said was his wish to turn back time if only he could. I actually knew he secretly researched time magic in his hidden study. The problem was he’d never succeeded.

How I should feel toward this man was a lifelong challenge. I resent Veriton. At the same time, I pity him. Though I wonder if it’s right for me to pity him, I know that unlike his bright exterior, deep despair gnaws at his inner self.

For countless hours, we would walk this endless cycle of emotions. In the process, we would hurt each other, and occasionally my nightmares and his guilt would become blades aimed at each other. In the very distant future, there might sometimes come days when we laugh.

And today, the same morning sun rose like yesterday.

***

Veriton died. It was a death truly befitting an eccentric mage. He just suddenly decided one day that he would die. And he spouted an absurd plan to transform his soul into mana and have it dwell in this manor.

So I mocked him. I think I felt relieved at the thought that the disgusting mage would finally die.

But when he actually died, strangely my chest felt hollow. Should I call it a sense of futility? Or emptiness? Maybe it was because I couldn’t mock him to my heart’s content.

Instead, he left behind a doll made in his likeness. It was a doll that looked exactly the same not just in appearance but in speech patterns, behavior, and expressions.

“Greetings. From today, I will serve the Young Master in place of Master Veriton.”

It said it would now properly manage the manor. It revealed that while it would prevent people from approaching the annex, it planned to have many humans stay in the main building. Even when I got angry, the doll wouldn’t yield, saying it was Veriton’s will.

‘What would a mere doll know?’

I couldn’t contain the surging irritation whenever I saw that thing. What made me so angry? I think it was hard to bear watching it imitate him with a face and voice exactly like Veriton’s.

He was dead, yet something resembling him brazenly wandered around the manor—I hated it.

The more the doll managed the manor, the more humans appeared who had never been there before. Just encountering them brought up such disgusting revulsion that I wanted to kill them on sight. I gradually lost my place to stand. I spent many days doing nothing but looking out the window.

Then one day, Veriton’s study suddenly caught my eye. I knew he wouldn’t be there, but for some reason I wanted to go.

Then I discovered a letter. He must have known that someday I would come to this study after he died.

『How are you doing, brat?

By the time you read this letter, I won’t be in this world. Are you already crying and missing me? If you’re crying, I’d love to see that sight and snicker at you.

Enough small talk—I have two pieces of bad news and one piece of good news. It would be better to tell you the good news first, wouldn’t it?

I’m going to tell you how to return to the dragon body you’ve longed for so much. It’s by truly connecting with a descendant who inherited my blood with a sincere heart.

I can picture you cursing about why such a thing is the way to break the magic, but there’s a reason for this.

Your human body has been bound by my magic for a long time already. Because of that, to break the magic, it must be someone with high affinity for my mana. So it must be my descendant.

I think you understand this part by now, so let me tell you the two pieces of bad news.

Until now, I helped discharge mana using magic, but now that I’m gone, you need a way to expel the dragon mana generated in your body. And unfortunately, that method can only be done through human women.

Don’t ask how to do it. Even if you stay still, those cursed by it will take care of it for you. If you refuse mana discharge, your body will collapse along with unimaginable pain.

And another piece of bad news is that I don’t know when my descendant will come to Herlin Manor. It could take several years, or several decades, or maybe even several centuries.

If you’re unlucky, you might never meet them in your lifetime. There’s no way to recognize them either. Well, they might be a little special compared to ordinary humans.

Then I’ll end this letter wishing you good fortune. Your longtime friend, Veriton.』

“Friend, what friend…”

He was truly a mage I disliked from beginning to end.

***

Just like Veriton said, before long, burning pain throughout my body came. Even closing my eyes and trying to sleep didn’t help. Every joint felt like it was being hacked with a knife, making even breathing agonizing. My entire body was soaked in cold sweat and I had to suffer from chills.

During this time, the doll Veriton made came to find me several times.

“Please open this door, Young Master. If you continue like this, you’ll really die!”

The reason the doll came to find me was obvious. It intended to use human women to discharge the mana accumulated in this body.

But I had an intuition that this method would definitely be unpleasant. There was no way Veriton, who usually did crazy things, would have thought of an ordinary method.

Several more nights came. My consciousness melted hazily and the boundary between dreams and reality collapsed. At first, my beloved family appeared before me and died miserably. Later, their crying voices blaming me echoed from all directions. Then Veriton mocked this state of mine.

“I told you you’re just a brat. Are you going to die like this without even getting revenge?”

The voice was too vivid to be an illusion. I wanted to shout at him to shut up for babbling carelessly. Unfortunately, my mouth was parched and I couldn’t speak properly. And the world surrounding me turned to blackout.

My consciousness was hazy, unable to distinguish between dream and reality. I stepped toward the endless darkness.

Perhaps I was dead.

Only in reaching death could I finally be free. From the sense of duty to avenge my family, from the despair of living by begging for life so wretchedly, from the relief of no longer having to endure alone. For the first time since my family died, I laughed.

Then someone gently stroked my body. The darkness that had descended gradually thinned. My consciousness slowly returned to the creepy sensation like maggots crawling. Even though I wanted to refuse, my body wouldn’t listen. Desperate pleas circled in my mouth.

‘Please stop. I don’t want to live anymore.’

Hot breath touching my lower body and the following human moaning sounds. Pleasure that was only pain dominated my body. I wanted to carve out the body defiled by humans. Carve it out again and again until nothing of my existence remained.

Such a night more despairing than nightmares was passing.