It was early morning, when the sun was only just beginning to rise.

Though it was the end of winter, Vlad was looking down at the city of Nassau while still feeling the cold wind.

"It seems this whole affair ended up working out in Captain Haven's favor."

At Joseph's voice from beside him, Vlad quietly shook his head.

"Haven won't think of it that way. He treasured his original ship a great deal."

"Did he? Well, the captain did seem unusually attached to his ship."

The sea glittered beneath the rising morning sun.

Cutting across that sparkling surface, a large ship was slowly leaving Nassau's harbor.

The galleon-class vessel, said to be all but impossible to see in the North, was the very ship Vlad and the sailors had captured from Barbosa's men.

"At least we managed to salvage the flag."

Watching the ship slowly head out to sea alone, Vlad spoke quietly.

Haven's new ship had lost its original form, but it had at least inherited the name.

As if to prove that, a flag embroidered with a red rose was now fluttering from the very top of the mast.

It was the only trace Vlad had painstakingly brought out of the sinking Zemina.

"Where will you go now?"

Watching the new Zemina sail away toward the North, Vlad spoke.

The matter with the dwarves was over.

Through this affair, Joseph had obtained what he wanted, and Vlad had safely fulfilled the contract he had thought unfinished all this time.

In other words, there were no longer any obligations or debts between Joseph and Vlad.

"I am going to the central region. To be precise, I intend to meet the lords near the northern border."

"The central region?"

Joseph, who had opened the carriage door, answered Vlad with a gentle smile.

"There are no longer any forces in the North who support me. So now I will have to try drawing them in from somewhere else."

"... I see."

"My final destination is the House of Count Oscar, my mother's family. If I go there, they should offer me something."

Joseph was still saying he intended to aim for the position of Family Head of Bayezid, but Vlad could only feel some inexplicably unfamiliar sensation in his words.

Unlike the fierce man he had once been, there was somehow a smile on him that seemed to have grown lighter.

At that subtle change in attitude, one that only those who had watched him up close could notice, Vlad felt a sense of strangeness that was hard to put into words.

"What do you intend to do?"

"I..."

At Joseph's question, Vlad was left momentarily speechless.

What he had to do was clear, but he still had no idea where he should actually go.

"I hear dragons are dying."

"Pardon?"

"Starting in the West, that is. There was information that their corpses have been left in various places."

As if he knew all of Vlad's worries, Joseph shrugged and continued.

"They say the trail of those traces is probably heading toward the central region."

"..."

With those words as his last, Joseph entered the carriage and poked his head out through the open window.

"If you want, I can at least lend you fodder for your horse and a campfire along the way."

"Thank you."

"But not my carriage. This fellow is much narrower than it used to be."

Not for something that had to be repaid, but for the direction each of them was taking.

Following Joseph's slowly moving carriage, Vlad gripped Noir's reins.

As if glad to be leaving the sea at last, the son of the plains began snorting roughly.

"He follows well."

"He was always the sort who knew exactly what he wanted."

At Jager's words from across from him, Joseph quietly looked out the window.

The winter road was still frozen solid.

But before long, the touch of spring would arrive.

"Still, unlike before, it seems he has developed a little tact."

But until then, Joseph, finding it hard to endure the cold, carefully opened the box the dwarves had handed him.

Inside the box, which looked antique to anyone's eyes, were tea wares.

The teacups inside were objects that clearly bore the touch of a master craftsman, so exquisite they seemed difficult even to touch, yet Joseph, without the slightest hesitation, took out the tea wares and brewed tea.

"I am glad teaching him was worth the effort."

The Zemina, Vlad, and Joseph.

Nassau was now a city from which those who had been where they belonged were departing.

In the deep sea there, there were silver ripples moving after the ship that was leaving for the North.

In those depths, where humans would not dare approach, the sea was filled with squid heading north in search of a slightly colder home.

※※※※

People stood lined up along a splendidly adorned hall.

The red carpet laid across the floor was decorated with gold thread, and the polished white marble walls were adorned with all manner of jewels and colorful flowers.

'... In the end, he is taking it after all.'

The faces of those gathered were as impressive as the splendid banquet hall itself.

Noble royals, radiant nobles, and even honorable knights.

Yet among them, on the face of Court Duke Armand, who held the highest station, there was only a shadow he could scarcely erase.

"... From the day the Empire was founded until this very moment, I have wondered how I should express my gratitude to the Dragonblood Duke, who has faithfully fulfilled his duty."

The first to speak in this place filled entirely with noble and radiant figures was a boy whose baby fat seemed not yet to have left him.

But upon the boy's head rested a heavy crown that seemed far too much for someone his age to bear.

"And so I decided. For Duke Sarnus, who was more loyal than anyone in the history of the Empire, I should grant a reward worthy of that loyalty."

The words he spoke were fluent, as though rehearsed, but his voice itself trembled without pause.

Perhaps the young emperor had been overwhelmed by the aura of the man kneeling before him.

"Rise, Dragonblood Duke. For you, who have been loyal to me, I bestow this box in the name of the emperor of the Empire."

At the very young emperor's command, attendants were bringing out a strangely shaped chest.

The chest, which looked somewhat like a coffin, was bound all over with silver chains.

"... This is far too much for me, Your Majesty."

The man who said it was too much for him while kneeling before the emperor had brilliant golden hair.

"I fear I may repeat the mistakes of the past."

The two eyes he lifted were a bluer color than any jewel embroidered in this place.

"But if this is another duty the Empire lays upon me, then I shall gladly accept it."

Yet when he finally rose, his presence was greater than that of anyone else in this place.

Greater even than the young emperor standing before him.

"T-This fragment is now yours, Duke Sarnus."

The oldest dragon. Sarnus Dragulia.

He was reaching toward the box the Founding King had split apart and that successive Court Dukes had guarded.

"Thank you, Your Majesty."

Court Duke Armand could only force himself to turn his gaze away as he watched the oldest dragon reach toward the most perfect fragment.

Blue pupils were shining.

Through eyes that, until just moments ago, had been human, but were now narrowed tightly into vertical slits.

What he had longed for over a very long time was now before his eyes.

※※※※

"... What a sinister basement, quite unlike a ducal house."

The moisture lingering around him was thick.

The spiral stone stairs were so slippery that taking even one step was difficult, and the air, growing colder the farther he descended, still made the hair around his neck stand on end.

"Was there any need to make it this deep?"

In the capital, Brigantes, there was a mansion that held shadows as deep as the years that had passed through it.

The carvings etched everywhere were splendid, but it was somehow gloomy, and perhaps because of the direction in which it had been built, it was the kind of mansion that rarely received sunlight even in ordinary times.

The mansion of Dragonblood Duke Dragulia.

Bishop Pierre, who was secretly roaming the masterless mansion, shone the torch in his hand down the stairs.

"... I cannot even see the end."

What he saw there was only darkness so thick that the light he relied on seemed nowhere near enough to endure it.

Beneath the stairs illuminated by the torch, there lingered only a darkness that even a faithful servant of God did not dare to measure.

CRUNCH.

After descending the stairs that seemed as though they would never end and finally reaching the floor, Bishop Pierre could not hide his tense expression at the dull sound that struck the tip of his foot.

Feeling uneasy, Bishop Pierre hurriedly swung his torch around, and only then did he realize that he was standing in a huge circular hall.

'... It is as though there is another mansion beneath the mansion.'

If it had been an ordinary mansion, the underground would not have been dug this deep.

Looking at Dragulia's secret basement, whose purpose he could not possibly grasp, Bishop Pierre felt as though his senses as an inquisitor were coming back to life.

"... S-Save..."

"...!"

A faint voice suddenly reached him.

Hearing someone's voice, as faint as a lamp about to go out, Bishop Pierre hurriedly thrust his torch toward the darkness.

"Who is there?"

Around the circular hall touched by the light, strange bars had been erected everywhere.

Looking at those places that seemed like prisons, Bishop Pierre quietly made the sign of the cross over his chest, then held the torch toward the place where the voice had come from.

"Hrrgh..."

In the middle of the darkness he illuminated stood an old man.

A withered old man, like a fallen leaf in autumn.

"Get me, get me out of here..."

The old man, who had been flailing his hands toward the light, recognized the gray-white eyes looking at him and began to make a strange expression.

"Bishop Pierre?"

A place he had reached for the first time, an old man he had never seen before.

Yet hearing his own familiar name echo in that place, Bishop Pierre tried hard to hide his flustered expression.

"Do you know me?"

"I-It is me, Bishop Pierre."

As he looked at the radiant torch the exorcist priest shone on him, light finally returned to the old man's clouded eyes.

"I am Radu. Radu Dragulia."

"... What?"

The color of the light that returned was blue.

His face was a mess because of all the crumpled wrinkles, but the color of his eyes that had returned was certainly familiar.

"P-Please get me out of here. Bishop."

"... Radu? Radu Dragulia?"

"Yes, yes. That is right. Please, please, Bishop!"

Looking at the old man sobbing sorrowfully, Bishop Pierre found himself taking one step back without realizing it.

Because an unknowable revulsion rising from within him was warning him not to come any closer.

"... Look upon me and answer me, I pray. Give light to my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death."

Following the verse the exorcist priest murmured, the torch he held began to burn radiantly.

Then, from the depths of Dragulia where there had been only darkness, pure white light began to ripple outward.

"... My God."

But what the sacred light illuminated here was a terrible hell.

A prison like a hell made only for dragons.

Inside the bars, a sticky stench of blood was everywhere, so thick he wondered how he had failed to notice it until now.

"Please, get me out of this den of vampires..."

In the hidden depths beneath Dragulia, the air was filled with the muffled screams of dragons.

They were the screams of pitiful sacrifices who had to offer their blood for the oldest possibility.