Chapter 183: The Balance Before the Cataclysm

Time: 7:30 PM

The clock on the wall read 7:30 PM.

The evening had fully settled over Luna City, the last traces of sunlight fading behind the buildings, leaving the apartment bathed in the soft glow of the table lamp and the flickering blue light of the television that no one was watching.

The city hummed outside, distant traffic, the occasional siren, the murmured voices of neighbors going about their lives.

Yuuta and Erza sat on the floor.

Not on the couch. Not at the table.

On the floor, backs against opposite walls, as far apart as the small living room would allow. Their knees were drawn up.

Their hands rested awkwardly in their laps. And neither of them could look at the other.

It was embarrassing.

Yuuta’s lips were still wet from the kiss, not just a kiss, but a deep, desperate, consuming thing that had started as an embrace and somehow transformed into something far more intense.

Erza had bitten his lower lip with those sharp dragon teeth of hers, had marked him, had claimed him in a way that words never could.

And he had responded in kind, his teeth finding her lip, leaving a small mark that was still visible in the dim light.

His tongue still tingled where she had bitten it.

His lips throbbed where her teeth had pressed.

He could still taste her, something cold and sweet, like winter air and honey, like nothing he had ever experienced before.

It was not their first kiss. But it was the first kiss that had felt like this.

Wild.

Desperate.

Hungry.

The kind of kiss that happened when two people had been pulled apart for too long and finally, finally found their way back to each other.

Erza stared at the opposite wall, her back rigid, her hands clenched in her lap.

The memory of the kiss played behind her eyelids every time she blinked, the taste of his blood on her tongue, the soft sounds he had made when she bit him, the way he had held her as if he would never let go.

She was a queen.

She had faced gods.

She had never been so completely undone by another being.

"Listen, mortal." Her voice was cold, or trying to be. It cracked on the first word, wavered on the second, and emerged as something closer to a whisper than a command.

"Whatever happened earlier... just forget it."

She paused, gathering herself, trying to summon the ice that had always protected her.

"Unless you want to die."

Yuuta looked at the floor, his face burning.

"Yes. I will forget, my queen."

The silence that followed was unbearable.

Both of them could hear the other’s heartbeat, loud, frantic, synchronized.

The sound echoed through the small apartment, filling the spaces between their ragged breaths, making the awkwardness somehow worse.

Erza pressed her hand against her chest, as if she could physically silence the betraying organ.

"Why is your heart making so much noise?" she demanded, her voice too loud, her cheeks flushed pink.

Yuuta’s own hand drifted to his chest.

"It’s not just my heart. Yours is beating just as loud."

"Don’t try to blame me, you useless mortal." Erza rose abruptly, grabbing a book from the coffee table, any book, she did not care which, and buried her face behind it.

The leather binding was cool against her burning cheeks.

The words on the pages blurred together, unreadable, meaningless.

Yuuta busied himself with the floor, gathering Elena’s scattered blocks, arranging them in neat piles, wiping imaginary dust from the wooden planks.

Any task.

Anything to avoid looking at the woman on the sofa, to avoid thinking about the kiss, to avoid the unbearable awareness of her presence.

The silence stretched.

It was awkward.

Terribly, painfully, beautifully awkward.

Two people who had faced Death, monsters, and the crushing weight of fate itself had somehow been reduced to this, two embarrassed idiots unable to even look at each other properly after one kiss.

Yuuta kept stacking Elena’s toy blocks despite the tower already being finished three times over. Erza sat with a book in front of her face, though she had not turned a single page in several minutes. Neither of them knew what to say anymore.

In the end, Erza was the first to break the silence.

She kept her face hidden behind the book as she spoke quietly.

"Where is that old fossil?"

Yuuta let out a nervous laugh while adjusting another block that absolutely did not need adjusting.

"He went out."

Erza’s eyes slowly lifted from behind the book.

"Where?"

"I... don’t know," Yuuta replied honestly.

For a few seconds, Erza said nothing. Then she quietly lowered her gaze back to the pages.

"Good."

Her voice sounded calm, almost emotionless, but something hidden lingered underneath it. Relief perhaps. Or worry. Maybe both.

Yuuta smiled weakly before lowering his head slightly.

"Yeah..."

The atmosphere grew quiet again, though this time the silence felt heavier.

Erza’s fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the book before she finally spoke once more, her voice softer than before.

"I hope he did nothing to you."

Yuuta paused.

The words hit him like a physical blow.

The memory came flooding back, Isvarn’s cold voice, his crushing aura, the weight of his words pressing down on Yuuta’s chest like stones. You are nothing. You have nothing. You ruined her life.

His face darkened. The guilt was sudden and overwhelming, a tidal wave that swept away the warmth of the kiss, the joy of their reunion, the fragile hope that had begun to bloom in his chest.

He thought of Erza.

Of what she had sacrificed, her chance at godhood, her pride, her dignity.

All for him. Because he had Sexually assaulted her in a moment of weakness, because he had taken what was not offered, because his lust had set in motion a chain of events that could never be undone.

And the worst part,

She was paying for his sins.

And he could never repay her.

The warmth of the room seemed to drain away.

Erza felt it.

The connection between them, the bond she had tried to ignore, the thread that tied their souls together, pulsed with sudden, sharp sadness.

Not her sadness.

His.

She looked up from her book, her violet eyes finding Yuuta’s face.

He was sitting on the floor, surrounded by colorful blocks, his hands still. His face was dark, shadowed, haunted by something she could not see.

Is it because of the nightmare? she wondered quietly, her fingers tightening around the edge of her sleeve. Or did he not like it when I threw myself at him...

Her thoughts grew heavier, more uncertain, the kind of silence that slowly turns into doubt when no answer comes.

She tried to recall every moment again, every expression he made, every breath he took when she kissed him.

Did I... do something wrong way?

A faint warmth rose to her cheeks as another thought slipped in, softer but far more embarrassing. Did he not like my taste... or the way I kissed him?

She immediately shook her head as if trying to erase the thought, but it refused to leave so easily. Instead, it lingered stubbornly, making her heart beat a little faster for reasons she did not want to admit.

Then her gaze drifted around the room.

She looked around the room, really looked, not just glanced, and she saw what she had missed before.

The scratches on the walls, thin and deep, carved into the wood and plaster by something that was not a cat or a dog.

The pressure damage, the cracks that had not been there yesterday, the furniture that had been shifted slightly out of place.

This was not the aftermath of a tantrum or a fight. This was the aftermath of aura. Dragon aura. The kind of pressure that only a being of immense power could generate.

Her gaze swept across the room, cataloging every detail, every clue. And then she smelled it.

Blood.

Yuuta’s blood.

She knew the scent, had tasted it once, in a moment of intimacy, had committed its unique composition to memory.

His blood was not like human blood, not entirely. It was laced with something else, something ancient, something that did not belong in the veins of a mortal man.

She followed the scent to the kitchen.

The sink was stained red.

Dried droplets, splattered across the stainless steel, trailing down the drain. More blood on the floor, near the refrigerator, near the spot where Isvarn had been standing when she left.

Erza’s mind raced, connecting the dots with terrible speed.

The aura pressure. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

The blood.

The sudden shift in Yuuta’s demeanor.

The fact that Isvarn was not here, had fled the scene, had left before she could return.

Her aura rose.

The temperature in the room plummeted.

The lamps flickered.

The windows rattled in their frames. Erza’s violet eyes, which had been soft and vulnerable moments ago, hardened into something cold and absolute.

"Where is this fucking old fossil?" she said.

Her voice was low, almost a whisper, but it carried the weight of mountains. The book in her hands fell to the floor, forgotten. She stood, her body tensed, her wings half-spreading behind her as if preparing for flight.

Yuuta snapped out of his stupor.

The sudden shift in Erza’s demeanor, from embarrassed lover to avenging queen, jolted him back to the present.

He looked up at her, at the darkness spreading across her face, at the fury burning behind her violet eyes.

She turned without another word and began walking toward the balcony, her movements cold and deliberate. Every step carried killing intent so heavy that even the air inside the apartment seemed to tremble beneath it. She had already made her decision.

She was going to find Isvarn.

And when she found him.

She was going to kill him.

Yuuta’s heart nearly stopped. Panic surged through him as he quickly grabbed her Waist, trying desperately to stop her before things became irreversible.

"No," Yuuta said as he stumbled to his feet, his voice shaking. "Erza, wait, This is not what you think..!."

But Erza had already seen enough.

The rage burning inside her had long crossed the point of reason. To her, Isvarn had touched what belonged to a dragon. He had interfered with her mate, humiliated him, broken him emotionally, and for that alone, death was already mercy.

At this moment, she did not care that Isvarn was her grandfather.

She wanted his head.

Yuuta tightened his grip on her, his breathing uneven. It was not that he liked Isvarn or wanted to protect him.

Far from it.

But Yuuta understood something Erza was too furious to think about right now.

If two dragons of their level fought seriously on Earth...

The world itself would not survive it.

Cities would vanish. Mountains would collapse.

Millions of innocent people who had nothing to do with their conflict would die without even understanding why the sky was burning above them.

And the most terrifying part was that Erza and Isvarn were equals.

Neither of them could end such a battle quickly.

Once it began, there would be no stopping it until everything around them had turned to ruin.

Yuuta looked up at her desperately, his hands trembling as he held onto her.

"Please... don’t do this..."

But the fury inside the Dragon Queen was still burning.

Who knows what would really happen.

---

While Yuuta was trying to save the world in his own way, far beyond his awareness another storm was already forming.

Hidden beyond the boundaries of ordinary perception, the Demon King’s castle existed like a scar stitched into reality itself. It was not marked on any map, not sensed by any kingdom, and not reachable through normal means. Even its presence seemed to reject being discovered, as if the world itself had agreed to forget it existed.

And yet within that forgotten place, power gathered like a living storm.

The fortress was massive, built with structures that defied logic and materials that did not belong to any known civilization. Its outer defenses alone were enough to make entire cities tremble if ever revealed. Beings of immense strength guarded its depths, each one capable of reshaping battlefields with a single movement. The air around it carried a pressure that made weaker minds instinctively bow without knowing why.

At the center of this impossible stronghold stood the Royal Hall.

There, upon the Demon King’s throne, Allen sat in silence.

He did not move. He did not speak. But his presence alone made the hall feel heavier, as if reality itself was holding its breath around him.

Allen had already come to understand something that disturbed even him.

Erza was not a high elf.

She was a dragon.

And not just any dragon, but one whose existence alone could tilt the balance of entire worlds. If a dragon chose war, it would not be a conflict, it would be annihilation dressed as battle. Allen understood this clearly. And yet, even knowing this, he could not afford to retreat.

He had come too far.

He was on the verge of awakening into the power of the Seven Deadly Sins of Neferions. If he stepped back now, everything he had built, everything he had sacrificed, would collapse before he could ever reach his goal. The Demon Realm would remain bound forever under the Goddess of Contract, and he would become nothing more than another forgotten failure in history.

Allen slowly turned his gaze to his right.

There, standing in the shadows of the Royal Hall, was one of the Upper Blood Demons, silent, patient, waiting for command.

The tension in the room thickened.

Allen’s fingers tightened slightly against the arm of the throne.

For the first time... doubt surfaced in his eyes.

Not fear of defeat.

But fear of what was already approaching.

And then, in a voice that echoed through the entire Royal Hall like a death sentence, Allen finally spoke.

"Bring me Baelcor the Sealer..."

A pause.

The air itself seemed to stop breathing.

"...before the dragon realizes what we are preparing."

The Upper Blood Demon bowed.

And in that instant.

Somewhere far beyond the castle, something looked back.

To be continued...

(End Credit Scene: The Dragon Princess’s Birthday)

Elena: Hiiiii Dragon Readers! (⁠＾⁠∇⁠＾⁠)⁠ﾉ

Guess what! Guess what! \⁠(⁠ϋ⁠)⁠/⁠♩

Today is Elena’s birthday! Yayyy! (⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)

Elena is very, very happy today!

Thank you for reading Elena’s story.

Thank you for staying with Mama and Papa.

Thank you for loving our little family.

Elena has a birthday wish...

Elena hopes God gives every Dragon Reader lots of happiness, yummy food, good sleep, and big, big smiles! ෆ⁠╹⁠ ⁠.̮⁠ ⁠╹⁠ෆ

And... and...

Please don’t forget Elena, okay? ༼⁠ ⁠つ⁠ ⁠◕⁠‿⁠◕⁠ ⁠༽⁠つ

Elena wants to go on many more adventures with all of you!

Thank you for being here

Now come eat cake with Elena! (⁠つ⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)⁠つ