The Dragon Lord's Aide Wants to Quit [BL] - Chapter 203

Chapter 203: Kael Dravaryn, the Mad Dragon
Sure enough, as if the world wanted to test his limits, even the small grace Kael had been holding onto was eventually taken from him.

“…What?!” Riley blurted out, his voice pitching up in disbelief.

The golden dragon didn’t answer right away. He only gave a faint nod, slow and deliberate, before turning his gaze toward the window.

Outside, the rain had started to fall, thin streaks sliding down the glass like silver threads.

“At least it was just rain this time,” Kael said quietly. “Before that… it was far worse.”

Riley was suddenly worried. The man before him was starting to look a little too pale.

Kael’s expression barely shifted, but the weight behind his words made the air grow still.

“Even now, we still don’t know what happened,” he said. “But a few decades before I became dragon lord, I woke up with an unprecedented fever. They said I’d gone mad. Cold sweat, fire in my veins, clawing at my own chest. Apparently, I frightened the entire estate.”

The relatively fragile mortal blinked, horrified. “And you don’t remember?”

“I remember everything,” Kael said. “That was the problem.”

He wasn’t delirious. He wasn’t lost to instinct. He was completely lucid.

And that clarity was torture.

Because Kael knew, with agonizing certainty, what had happened.

Something had shifted—something vital that had always been there.

The bond.

It had always been a weight on his core, a chain he carried quietly, a constant reminder of failure. Yet even as it reminded him of loss, it had also reassured him. It had meant the bond was still alive somewhere, fragile but real.

And then one day, he woke up, and there was nothing.

No familiar pull. No pressure in his chest. No quiet pulse that tied him to another.

Just silence.

The absence was a hollow so deep it hurt to breathe.

Kael had lived with that presence for so long that he no longer knew who he was without it.

The closest to him saw it too.

But soon enough, that fact became obvious to everyone.

__

The problem with modern history was that it remembered too well.

Unlike the distant past, when events faded into legend and memory blurred with myth, the most bizarre details of the golden dragon’s latest years had been recorded.

Speculations about him, all his known outbursts, and the many scars he left on the world were likely listed down somewhere, somehow.

At some point, one would have thought that all of Eryndra’s problems originated from him, which was far from the truth.

Lord Karion was even worried because many attributed their crimes to the dragon, who had actually been chained at his own request.

Then again, it was something that was relatively understandable. Because even when chained and contained to the best of their abilities, there was no stopping someone of his caliber.

Kael Dravaryn. The Golden Heir. The rightful successor to the position of Dragon Lord.

From the moment of his birth, strength had been expected. It wasn’t even questioned—golden dragons were naturally more powerful, a blessing they got from being favored by the Primordial Dragon. Everyone knew this.

But Kael was different.

It wasn’t just his power. It was how early he reached dragon maturity. For humans, that might have meant several milestones, but for dragons, it was only the beginning—the starting point for explosive growth.

So imagine hitting that much earlier than everyone else?

And while dragons of the earlier times were stronger because of their need to survive, Kael, who was supposed to grow up during more peaceful times, actually grew up nursing rescue, vengeance, and survival in his heart.

And someone who lived for that kind of purpose could never simply stay still.

Impossible.

It was true that he had kept his head down for centuries as he busied himself with the search, but all of that just served to increase his strength.

So if anything, it would be everyone else who just simply forgot what and who he was, mistaking restraint for weakness, forgetting that he had always been a walking calamity.

Until it broke.

When his outrage, fury, and anguish finally found nowhere else to go, the world remembered.

And that was when the moniker Kael Dravaryn, the Mad Dragon, was born.

“I went on a rampage,” Kael said simply.

Riley froze. “…Excuse me?”

“Yeah. But for the record, I volunteered to be restrained. Then again, what was the use of those restraints when they barely stopped anything?”

“For months, the weather reflected my emotions,” Kael continued, his tone disturbingly calm. “The people had to find ways to survive it.”

“Hurricanes. Hail. Fire. My parents tried to stop my mana from exploding. They raised barriers wherever beings settled. But even with their combined strength, containing a spiraling dragon was nearly impossible.”

He looked away, expression unreadable. “In the end, they decided to sic me on the criminals of Wyrmfall.”

Riley let out a startled sound that wasn’t quite a laugh, more a gasp of disbelief.

Kael glanced at him, one brow lifting slightly. “They thought if I had to burn something, it might as well be deserving.”

Riley’s mind scrambled to process the image: Kael, furious, grief-stricken, rampaging across the continent while the heavens themselves mirrored his despair.

He remembered something then.

In class, years ago, professors had spoken about strange disasters—the kind that couldn’t be explained by natural law alone. They said those born during a certain period had it rough, their birthdays marked by storms, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions.

There had even been a chart for it, a disaster calendar, pairing each day with a catastrophe.

In Riley’s case, it was called The Crimson Veil.

A day when the heavens bled. They said it was a day when a crimson veil unfurled across the sky, and even the stars hid behind it.

Back then, Riley remembered sharing a laugh with his classmates, comparing days to see who must’ve had it worse.

Some were born during quakes, some during floods, others when mountains were flattened somewhere across the world.

Then they speculated about what might’ve happened, trying to determine whether it was the solstice or some other phenomenon.

But now…

Now Riley realized none of it had been a coincidence.

All of it—those so-called natural disasters—had been the manifestation of Kael’s uncontrollable pain.

And as the truth settled over him like a suffocating blanket, Riley couldn’t stop the ache that rose in his chest.

He didn’t even realize he was crying at first.

The tears came quietly, slipping down his cheeks without warning. His eyes just stayed fixed on Kael, wide and glimmering, his throat tight with words he couldn’t form.

Kael’s brow twitched, then rose slightly. “What now?” he asked flatly.

Riley blinked, startled. Then, realizing what Kael was looking at, he scrubbed at his face with the back of his sleeve, muttering something incoherent. It didn’t help much—his eyes only reddened further.

“You’re crazy,” Riley managed after a moment, voice soft but shaky. His fist that couldn’t even hurt magical flies came up and pressed weakly against Kael’s chest. “It seems you wept a lot before…”

Kael’s expression shifted. The faintest crease appeared between his brows, confusion and curiosity mixing together as he studied the crying human.

Riley’s lip trembled as he tried to keep his voice steady. “But in all that time… did anyone ever weep for you?”

The words fell softly, almost lost in the air between them.

Kael was going to open his mouth, about to mention that his mother was definitely one. Maybe his father, too, and those remaining subordinates they had left.

But before he could speak, the suddenly angry twig frowned and blurted, “You didn’t even get compensation! You dummy!”

The words were absurd, so sudden that Kael just stared at him, unsure what was happening.

But Riley looked utterly serious, glaring through his tears like someone genuinely offended on his behalf.

But how could he not?

All that, and this idiot didn’t even get laid!

Worse, they didn’t even get to exchange names!