‘I should go out through the back door.’

Simons, who had become an elephant, would still be there since his large body couldn’t move anywhere except the hall. The front entrance was impossible, so the only option was to move through the back door.

Litania ran down the corridor, avoiding the debris from the collapsing ceiling. The doors in the hallway were in a mess, as if the beasts had forcibly broken them to escape.

‘There it is!’

Fortunately, there was no one near the back door. Litania held Snow with one arm and turned the doorknob with the other.

Click, thud.

The doorknob turned, but the door wouldn’t open.

‘It’s not locked, so why?’

Litania grunted and pulled on the door, then realizing it was hopeless, she briefly set Snow down and grabbed the doorknob with both hands.

Crack, crack. Something cracked at the top of the door.

‘Ah, it’s stuck!’

As cracks formed in the wall and the door frame broke, the collapsing wall was tightly gripping the door. Litania recalled that all the room doors in the corridor she had run through were broken.

The animals that had returned to their original forms didn’t break down the doors because they didn’t know how to open them, but because the walls and ceiling had collapsed, making the doors impossible to open, so they had to break through with their bodies to escape.

“Ugh, it won’t open…!”

Litania tried pushing the door with her body, but the large door remained stubbornly wedged against the wall.

If only she had known, she would have trained her body.

A belated regret washed over her.

“What should I do, Snow…?”

Should she give up on escaping and find shelter elsewhere?

But where?

Just as Litania was about to pick up Snow again and leave to find a safe place.

Thud, crash!

There was a sound of something heavy hitting the door, and then the door split in two as a large knight in armor entered.

“Kyaaah!”

“My lady!”

The face that approached her as she fell to the ground screaming was a familiar one.

The captain of the knights, Bain.

While all the servants in the dragon castle had turned into beasts, he remained in human form, just as she remembered.

‘Is Bain human? He must be, since he’s a knight sent by the imperial family?’

Bain approached the confused Litania, knelt on one knee, and held out his hand.

“I don’t know what’s happening, but the castle suddenly started collapsing. We need to evacuate quickly.”

We need to evacuate. We need to escape from Orbis.

Suddenly coming to her senses at those words, Litania grabbed Bain’s hand like a lifeline. The grasped arm pulled, and her body was lifted.

“There’s a lot of debris on the ground, it’s dangerous. Excuse me for a moment.”

Bain lifted Litania’s body and leapt over the collapsed debris, slipping out through the broken back door.

As her view opened up and the outside air pierced her lungs, she felt relief for the first time.

However, that relief was short-lived.

“Gasp…!”

The magical dragon castle’s former splendor was nowhere to be found, no matter how hard one looked.

The garden, once blooming with colorful flowers, was now desolate, with only bare trees that had shed all their leaves remaining on the barren land. The garden’s scenery had transformed into a dark and gloomy sight, as if symbolizing an uninhabitable wasteland.

“How did this…?”

“We’re not sure either, but there’s only one thing we can guess as the reason for the dragon castle’s sudden change.”

“Re-reason?”

“Has something happened to the Divine Dragon Orbis?”

At Bain’s question, Litania tightly hugged Snow in her arms.

“I-I don’t know.”

She really didn’t know.

Litania had only said goodbye, but suddenly the castle was collapsing, the servants had turned into beasts. The garden had become desolate, and the dragon castle had turned into ruins.

‘Why? Why didn’t he harm me?’

In the original story, Orbis tormented Litania, who didn’t follow his will, to the brink of death.

He ruined Litania’s body and mind, reasoning that as long as she didn’t die, he could revive her.

She remembered the scene of flesh being torn, blood flowing, the smell of burning, and painful screams echoing.

‘It’s different from the original…’

Different, but some things remained unchanged.

The fact that she was still afraid of him.

“Kuk!”

“Kyaah!”

A massive flame along with a whitish stream of water shot up, passing over the heads of the two.

Hiss.

A large tree hit by the water stream immediately burned black.

“Wh-what is that?”

“This is…”

Bain looked down in disbelief.

The water in the lake, which had been as clear as a mirror, was now bubbling. The forests beyond the lake were burning black, turning to ash and being blown away.

“Fireballs falling, ice rain pouring…”

The phrases used to describe the dragon castle, which she had thought were just rumors, suddenly came to mind.

That’s when it happened.

Crack. Thud.

Hailstones fell from the sky along with a strong wind.

“Ouch!”

A hailstone struck Litania’s foot hard before rolling away.

From her ankle to her knee tingled as if she had been hit with a large stone.

“My lady, we need to take shelter first.”

“Captain!”

In the distance, she heard knights calling for Bain urgently. Thankfully, other people had survived too. Litania was carried by Bain into the eastern annex.

Thanks to the repairs the knights had done earlier, the condition of the annex was better than the main castle.

Although half of it had collapsed and was unusable, the inner reception room was relatively intact, with thick pillars supporting the ceiling.

“The lady is safe. What about the others?”

“We were scattered when the central staircase collapsed. For now, there are only six of us here.”

Her heart sank. Could the other knights be seriously injured? Litania became more anxious seeing Bain’s face turn pale.

“Wh-what… What about the others? We should go look for them…”

“Please calm down, my lady. You mustn’t leave this place now. The others who couldn’t make it here would have found their own safe places to hide.”

“But…”

“We are trained knights. We’re not so incompetent as to panic over this level of disturbance.”

Bain’s stern words slightly calmed the anxiety that had been welling up inside her.

Litania consciously took a long breath and stroked Snow in her arms.

As her fingers burrowed between the twitching ears, Snow turned his head and nuzzled his nose against Litania’s palm.

“My lady, this rabbit…?”

“Ah, this rabbit is… Snow. My attendant.”

Bain’s eyes widened at Litania’s words.

She quickly added.

“I understand. It’s hard to believe. But…”

“Has he been cursed to become a rabbit?”

Perhaps it was easier to imagine that a human had been turned into a rabbit by a curse rather than a rabbit actually being human, Bain asked.

Litania pondered how to explain, then simply nodded.

Whether Snow was originally human or a rabbit didn’t matter. Either way, he was Snow, and what mattered was that she needed to protect this fragile child now.

“But Bain, about this curse…?”

“The tailor turned into a raven right before our eyes.”

So Raven was a raven.

The servants originally in the dragon castle were truly all animals.

Litania felt her heart grow cold.

Yes. It was strange. It had been strange from the beginning.

And she hadn’t realized it at all until now.

“What happened to Raven…?”

“He flew away.”

According to Bain, while they were discussing the design of the new knight uniforms with Raven, he suddenly stood up, shaking.

His shoulders swelled and black feathers sprouted, then his sleeves split open as his arms turned into wings.

In that moment of confusion, when the knights drew their swords, Raven quickly jumped onto the windowsill to avoid them.

Bain explained that he saw a hard beak form on Raven’s mouth, and when he had fully transformed into a large raven, he cawed loudly before breaking through the glass window and flying away. Litania felt an indescribable sense of despair at his explanation.

‘It’s all over.’

She would never again face the polite butler Simons, the cook Pepper who made delicious meals, the nagging but jovial court physician Hazel, or the tailor Raven who always spoke excitedly about the things he loved, as she used to.

The dreamlike year at the dragon castle had truly ended like a dream.

“Hic…”

Tears welled up in her eyes.

Sadness, fear, dread of an uncertain future, and longing for the lost past mixed chaotically.

A piece of happiness had fallen out of what she thought was a complete life.

The sharp edges of fragmented memories scratched at her heart.

Everything had been a lie.

A terribly sweet illusion.

“Bain. We need to escape from here.”

“But…”

Flames are everywhere. The sparkling lake has turned into a valley with lava flowing between black rocks.

Only humans permitted by the dragon can enter the dragon castle.

This also means that leaving this place is impossible without the dragon’s permission.