Kaito didn't sleep that night.
The symbol the villager had shown him kept resurfacing behind his eyes—unfinished, broken, but familiar. Not just seen before.
Lived with.
By dawn, he was back at the edge of the village.
The old house hadn't changed. Same moss. Same stone. Same feeling that the place existed slightly out of time.
The door was already open.
"I figured you'd return," the villager said from inside.
Kaito stepped in alone.
The interior smelled like dust and old paper—real paper, not academy prints. Shelves lined the walls, sagging under the weight of scrolls, stitched books, cracked tablets, and thin metal plates etched with symbols.
Ryo hadn't exaggerated.
This wasn't a home.
It was an archive.
"You shouldn't have these," Kaito said quietly.
The villager smiled without humor. "Most people don't know they exist."
He reached for a long, narrow chest and opened it with care. Inside were sheets of blackened parchment, edges burned as if once caught in flame but never fully consumed.
"These records predate the academy," the villager said. "Predate the Circle. Predate even the naming of this land."
Kaito's fingers hovered over one page.
His breath hitched.
The ink wasn't ink.
It was ash—pressed, sealed, mixed with something crystalline.
Dragon ash.
"You recognize it," the villager said.
Kaito swallowed. "I do."
One of the pages depicted a massive winged form, not fully drawn—more implied. Around it were smaller figures: a sea serpent coiled beneath waves, a horned sky-beast, a radiant stone-backed titan.
Friends.
His vision flickered.
"Long before people called you a guardian," the villager continued, "they called you the Flame That Ended Cycles."
Kaito flinched.
"I was there," the villager said.
Kaito looked up sharply.
"Not like this," the man added. "Not in this body. I was a scribe. One of many tasked with recording the era of dragons while it still existed."
He gestured to a cracked tablet leaning against the wall. Its inscription was old—older than any modern language—but Kaito could read it effortlessly.
When the Great Dragon fell, the world chose to forget.
"And some of us refused," the villager said.
Kaito's hands trembled as he traced a symbol carved deep into the tablet.
The same symbol the Insect God favored.
Scratched violently through.
"They betrayed you," the villager said softly. "Not all at once. Not openly. That's never how it starts."
Kaito's chest tightened.
A memory tried to surface—light tearing through the sky, wings burning, voices shouting warnings too late.
He pulled back sharply.
"You kept these records knowing what they'd do to me if found," Kaito said.
The villager nodded. "I kept them because I knew you'd return. Dragons don't vanish."
Silence pressed down between them.
"And now?" Kaito asked.
The villager closed the chest. "Now the ones who remember you are moving again. Twisting stories. Painting you as the disaster instead of the shield."
Kaito exhaled slowly.
"For centuries," the villager continued, "we feared your return would burn the world."
He met Kaito's eyes.
"I fear more what will happen if you choose not to be what you once were."
Kaito turned toward the door.
At the threshold, he paused.
"When I was a dragon," he said quietly, "I wasn't alone."
The villager smiled—small, sad, proud."No," he said. "You never were."
Outside, the morning sun crested the village.
And somewhere deep within Kaito, the past stopped being a dream.
It became a warning.