The nauseating sound of bones grinding together rose from all directions like a tide.
The sudden, eerie sight gave every archaeologist a chill down their spine, their faces turning death‑pale, a scream caught in their throats for fear of startling the corpses further.
Old Buck and Derek also felt a prickling scalp, their hair standing on end as they took several steps back, huddling together with the others.
Hop's gaze hardened; he flicked his hand, sending out several magical plant seeds. The "plant" spell made the seeds erupt into wild growth, thick thorny vines bursting from the ground, quickly forming a spiky barrier around the monument.
Yet the corpses showed no intention to attack.
They simply stared in silence; thousands of mummified bodies and bones fixed their hollow eye sockets uniformly on Elusha, who had just withdrawn her hand from the stone, and that wordless gaze was even more chilling.
Under everyone's tense stare, the rigid corpses shifted their orientation, turning from facing the monument to facing Elusha, who had just touched it.
Then, just as the ghosts had done the previous night, they all knelt before their "queen."
Elusha stepped back a half‑pace, startled by the sight; she stared at the sea of blackened, kneeling skeletons, as if she could see through them the shape of their repentance.
An indescribable wave of sorrow and anger rose again; Elusha murmured, "Are they begging for forgiveness again? But I'm not their queen..."
Hop observed calmly and said, "Their current state, I think, is because you touched the monument, triggering some mechanism that makes these corpses kneel to a 'queen.'"
"Did you notice that along our whole journey, aside from this massive monument, there hasn't been any other record of Queen Aileen?"
"You mean the corpses were originally kneeling to the carving of Aileen on the stone, but because I arrived, they mistook me for her."
Elusha understood, but her confusion deepened. She was an orphan, abandoned as a baby at a church doorway, and didn't even know what her biological parents looked like.
After more than four centuries, why do these ghosts and corpses treat her as Aileen?
At that moment, a sudden anomaly erupted.
An invisible wave surged from the monument outward, and the relief depicting the noble dragon slapping hands with a girl suddenly emitted a soft white glow.
The great dragon in the relief seemed to come alive, detaching from the stone along the light, and the pure white radiance coalesced in the sky into a tangible dragon.
Everyone stared in shock, for the dragon before them matched the carved image on the monument perfectly.
It... was the noble dragon Bellcereion!
But hadn't Bellcereion died in battle over 400 years ago?
The archaeologists were baffled, but Hop and Elusha, being magi, instantly thought of a spell upon seeing the massive figure solidify from illusion.
"Thoughtform."
It's a spell that creates a perfect duplicate; the thoughtform shares the caster's mind and can scale in power according to how much magical energy the caster invests—the more mana the original gives, the stronger the thoughtform.
The drawback is that, until the caster retrieves the allocated mana, their own power temporarily wanes to sustain the thoughtform.
Yet the spell possesses a god‑defying mechanism: even if the original dies, the thoughtform can continue as long as it retains enough magical energy.
After the caster's death, a thoughtform with identical thoughts could be called a second self.
And the Bellcereion before them was undoubtedly such a thoughtform duplicate.
"Bellcereion... senior."
Thinking that the dragon died for humanity, Hop's tone grew reverent as he pointed to the corpses littering the platform, "Are you the one controlling these dead souls and bodies?"
"That's right."
Bellcereion bluntly admitted with a low, cold chuckle, "Aileen was willing to sacrifice everything to protect them, yet all it took for them to betray Aileen was a half‑truth, half‑lie."
"They wouldn't even grant Aileen a shred of dignity!"
"If that's the case, I will make the people of this nation die without rebirth."
Elusha, weary of the betrayers' tale, looked at Bellcereion and asked, "Can you tell me how Queen Aileen met her end?"
Bellcereion's draconic eyes fixed on Elusha, their gaze sharp enough to pierce a soul, and his tone softened, "So you don't know either? Child, I was just about to ask you the same question."
Feeling Bellcereion's singular kindness toward her, Elusha found it odd that he assumed she knew Aileen's fate—how could she, when they were separated by nearly four centuries?
Bellcereion saw Elusha's completely clueless expression and sighed helplessly, "When my original self was dying, I used my last reserves of magic to create this thoughtform of me, but because the dying body's mana was unstable, I urgently needed to enter a dormant state to reorganize my magic, otherwise this thoughtform would disintegrate."
"I took residence within this monument; time was short, so I couldn't inform Aileen. However, before entering dormancy, I sensed that Aileen was pregnant."
"I intended, upon waking, to surprise Aileen and perhaps help care for her child. Yet in the third year of my slumber, a powerful force jolted me awake."
"When I awoke, I saw the nation of Doragunov annihilated in an instant by that force, and the silhouette of a dragon resembling me soaring into the sky."
"I located a few surviving humans and asked about Aileen's whereabouts; they stammered and refused to speak plainly, so I employed an 'append technique' to graft their memories onto myself."
"I witnessed pregnant Aileen betrayed by her husband, ministers, and people, subjected to countless tortures, her identity humiliated, her dignity trampled. The ordeal lasted three years, and Aileen endured it for the sake of the child within her..."
"Some people never learn to cherish!"
"Thus, I used magic to relocate the ruins of Doragunov to a remote place, taking my own revenge for Aileen."
Although Bellcereion is a 'coexistence' advocate among dragons, that doesn't mean he has a gentle temperament.
To avenge his sole dear friend, he forced the souls of the deceased Doragunov people onto this forest using the append technique, turning them into earthbound spirits.
As the forest naturally expanded, the ghosts' range grew. Before Dusk Town was developed, the area belonged to that forest, so the spirits could still roam there.
That is why Dusk Town is haunted at night.
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