The car pulled up to the apartment building as the morning light was beginning to warm the streets.
The building was the same as it had always been—faded paint, cracked steps, the smell of years pressing down on it like a weight. But it felt different now, returning to it. It felt like coming home.
Elena was asleep on Yuuta's back, her small arms wrapped around his neck, her face pressed into his shoulder, her wings folded against her spine.
She had not woken when they left the academy, had not stirred when they got into the car, had not opened her eyes when the driver wished them luck and told them they would be in touch about Elena's start date.
She was exhausted, Yuuta knew. The past two days had been harder on her than she let anyone see. She had been brave, had been strong, had been everything he needed her to be. Now she was sleeping, and he would carry her up the stairs, and he would lay her in her bed, and he would let her rest.
Erza walked beside him, her hands in her sleeves, her face turned toward the building with an expression that might have been annoyance or might have been something else. She kept looking at her ring.
The white dragon coiled around her finger gleamed in the morning light, the violet stone pulsing faintly, and she looked at it as if it were a puzzle she could not solve, a question she could not answer, a thing that had no right to exist.
It had chosen him. The ring that had been in her family for generations, that had been passed from queen to queen, that had waited centuries to find someone worthy—it had chosen
Yuuta.
A human.
A mortal.
A man who stumbled up stairs and forgot to buy milk and talked to his car because he had been lonely for too long.
It had taken the shape of Zareth's dragon, the black dragon, the primal dragon who had created the ring with Seraphina and bound his power to hers. It had taken that shape for him.
She looked at him. He was climbing the stairs ahead of her, one hand steadying Elena on his back, the other gripping the railing.
His legs were still weak from the night in the field, his hands still bandaged, his movements careful, deliberate. He was not graceful.
He was not powerful.
He was not anything that the ring should have wanted.
And yet it had chosen him.
"Maybe I am mistaken," she murmured to herself. "Maybe he is a hidden dragon. Something ancient. Something that has been waiting to wake up." She looked at him again, at his stumbling steps, at the way he nearly tripped over his own feet. "No. He is not even human. He is something lower. Something that crawls."
He stumbled again, caught himself on the railing, and let out a breath. "Damn. How can I not walk? My legs feel like they belong to someone else."
She sighed. "Dragon. Ridiculous. He does not even look like a human to me. That is how low he is."
Then All of Sudden, She remembered the hug.
The way she had run across the field, had fallen to her knees beside him, had grabbed him and held him like she would never let go.
The way she had buried her face in his hair, had felt his arms around her, had let herself be something other than the Dragon Queen for one moment, one moment too long.
Her face went red.
"Damn it," she said, the words sharp, angry, meant for herself.
"I have to remove this memory. I have to erase it. So that when I kill him, I do not hesitate. So that I do not remember the way he looked when he gave me the ring. So that I can do what I have to do."
She would kill him. She would do it when the time came.
She would not let a moment of weakness, a moment of forgetfulness, a moment when she had let herself be human instead of a queen—she would not let it change what had to happen.
They reached the door. Yuuta shifted Elena on his back, fumbled for his keys, and pushed the door open. The apartment was dark, quiet, the way it always was when they left it. The kitchen where he cooked. The sofa where she read. The table where they ate together.
It was small, cramped, nothing like the rooms they had slept in at the academy. But it was theirs. A Home.
Yuuta stepped inside. He looked around, at the familiar walls, the familiar light, the familiar silence that had been his companion for so long. And then, without thinking, he said the words he had said every day for years, to an empty apartment, to a silence that had never answered, to a hope that had never been anything more than a habit.
"Welcome home."
The words hung in the air. He had said them a thousand times, ten thousand times, in the years before Erza and Elena. He had said them to the silence, to the walls, to the absence of anyone who might hear. He had said them because saying them made the emptiness feel less empty, made the loneliness feel less lonely, made him feel like someone, somewhere, might be listening.
Now, there was someone to hear.
Elena stirred on his back, her voice soft, sleepy, the voice of someone who was still half in a dream. "Welcome home, Papa."
She snuggled closer, her arms tightening around his neck, and was asleep again.
Erza looked at him. Her expression was the same cold mask it always was, the mask she wore to keep the world at a distance. But there was something underneath it, something that might have been annoyance or might have been something else entirely.
"You are not going to make my child as pathetic as you," she said. "Do not put your useless habits into her."
He turned to face her, Elena still asleep on his back. "She is our child, Erza. Not yours. Ours."
"What do you mean, ours?" Her voice was sharp, cutting, the voice she used when she was defending something she did not want to lose. "She is clearly my child. Look at her. She has my hair. My face. My power. You were simply—involved. That does not make her yours. Do not put your rubbish teachings into her."
"That is not rubbish teaching," he said. "She needs to become a queen someday. That is why I am teaching her."
Erza went still. Her eyes, which had been cold, went colder. Her voice, which had been sharp, went flat. "What do you mean? You are teaching her to become a queen?"
Yuuta's mouth snapped shut.
His face went pale.
He had said too much.
He had let his guard down, had forgotten who he was talking to, had let the words slip out before he could stop them. His plan—the quiet, secret plan he had been building since the moment Elena called him Papa—was to teach her to be kind. To be good. To be the kind of queen that her mother was not.
To leave something behind, some legacy, some proof that he had been here, that he had loved her, that he had tried to make her something better than what he was.
He could not let Erza find out. If she knew, she would kill him. Not in a year. Now.
"If you do not tell me what you mean," Erza said, and her voice was the voice she used when she was about to read someone's mind, when she was done waiting, when she was ready to take what she wanted, "I will look into your brain. And trust me, mortal, you will regret it."
He looked at her face. At her cold eyes, her steady hands, her absolute certainty that she would find what she was looking for. She would find it. She would find everything. The hope he had been hiding. The love he had been trying to bury. The plan he had made to leave something of himself behind.
He gently lifted Elena from his back and placed her in Erza's arms. She was soft, warm, still sleeping, her small face peaceful against her mother's chest. Erza took her without thinking, without planning, without doing anything except holding her daughter close. It was so natural, so automatic, that for a moment she forgot to be angry, forgot to be cold, forgot to be anything except a mother holding her child.
Yuuta went outside and closed the door.
The door was closed. He was gone. She could hear his footsteps on the stairs, fast and panicked, the footsteps of someone who was running for his life.
"YOU IDIOT MORTAL!" Her voice tore through the hallway. "WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU GOING?!"
His voice floated back, distant and breathless.
"I'M GOING TO BUY BREAKFAST!"
He was not going to buy breakfast. They both knew it. He was running. He was running from her, from her questions, from the magic that would reach into his mind and pull out every secret he had ever tried to hide.
Erza stood in the doorway, holding her sleeping daughter, watching the empty stairs.
He was gone.
He had run away.
From her.
She should be angry. She was angry. She was furious. She was going to kill him when he came back, and then she was going to kill him again, and then she was going to—
She looked down at Elena.
Small. Warm. Trusting.
She had taken her from him without thinking.
She had trusted him to hand her over.
She had not hesitated.
She closed the door.
She stood in the hallway, Elena's weight warm against her chest, and looked at the apartment around her.
The kitchen where he cooked. The sofa where she read. The table where they ate together. It was small. It was cramped. It was nothing like the palace she had left behind.
She thought about the words she had wanted to say. The words she could not bring herself to say when he was there, when he was looking at her, when she was still pretending to be cold. The words she had been practicing in her head since the moment they left the academy, since the moment she saw the letter, since the moment she knew that Elena had been accepted.
"Welcome home," she whispered.
The words were small, quiet, meant for no one but herself. She said them to the empty hallway, to the silent kitchen, to the table where they would sit when he came back with breakfast. She said them, and her cheeks were red, and her heart was beating faster than it should, and she did not know why she was saying them at all.
She walked into the apartment, Elena still in her arms, and waited for him to come home.
After Erza stepped inside the apartment, Yuuta headed out, muttering to himself about breakfast as he made his way down the street. His footsteps faded into the distance, leaving the area wrapped in its usual quiet routine, where nothing seemed out of place and life moved at its normal, uneventful pace.
A few minutes passed before a white car slowly pulled up in front of the building, its presence immediately feeling out of place in such an ordinary setting.
The vehicle gleamed under the sunlight as if it had never once touched dust, and engraved across its surface was a polished cross surrounded by intricate holy symbols that shimmered faintly, giving off an authority that was impossible to ignore.
The door opened, and several figures stepped out, each dressed in pristine white robes that resembled the formal attire of the Orthodox Church.
Their movements were precise and disciplined, lacking even the slightest hint of hesitation, as if every step had been practiced countless times before.
They moved to the side of the car in perfect coordination and lowered their heads in unison, their actions not born from habit but from deep respect toward the person they were about to receive.
When the second door opened, a woman stepped out, and her mere presence altered the atmosphere in a way that could not be explained with logic alone.
The gardener nearby unconsciously slowed his movements, his attention drifting toward her without his permission, while a passerby found themselves unable to look away, as though something about her demanded silence rather than admiration.
She was undeniably beautiful, yet it was not a beauty that invited closeness or casual praise, but one that created distance, as if she belonged to a realm far beyond ordinary people. Her attire flowed gently around her, marked clearly with the symbols of a saint, and though a blindfold covered her eyes, it did nothing to diminish the weight of her presence. Instead, it made her feel even more untouchable, as though sight itself was unnecessary for someone like her.
One of the attendants stepped forward, bowing deeply before speaking with a voice filled with reverence.
"Greetings, Saint. This is the place where your beloved child has been staying."
Saint Mary was a name known across many lands, spoken with admiration for both her intelligence and her unmatched beauty, and surrounded by stories that claimed her prayers could cure any disease. To the world, she stood as a symbol of faith and miracles, someone whose existence alone inspired belief in something greater.
However, to Yuuta, she was not a distant figure of worship, but his godmother, someone tied to his life in a far more personal way, and the reason for her arrival was far from simple curiosity.
A letter had reached her, one that she could not bring herself to believe no matter how many times she read it, and the only way to silence that doubt was to see the truth with her own eyes.
Yet what she did not know was that Yuuta was not inside the apartment at that moment, and within those walls, someone else remained, quietly occupying the space without concern for the outside world.
That presence was not ordinary in any sense, for it belonged to someone who, if ever driven by boredom or interest, could bring destruction upon the world itself without hesitation, and even now, that same existence sat calmly, absorbed in a book as if nothing around her held any importance.
And without realizing it, Saint Mary had just arrived at the doorstep of that very presence.
To be Continue...