The promotion had not changed much. At least, not in any obvious way.
Minjae's duties had grown larger. His opinions held more influence during meetings across departments. His title included the word Senior now. Still, the daily pattern of his routine stayed the same. He woke up early. He got to the office ahead of almost everyone. He only spoke when it mattered. Colleagues took his quiet nature for calm professionalism. Truth is, it was not self-control. It was just a way to get by.
About once a week, he walked past the strategy team's area. Yuri would look up from her computer then. She had that same expression that gave nothing away. It hung in the air a bit too long. It left him thinking she noticed things he wished she did not. Twice a week, Seori would catch him by the vending machine. She started with work updates. Those always turned into light teasing. It felt offhand, but it never really was. And nearly every day, Yura stopped him with questions from marketing. They did not actually require his thoughts. She just acted like they did.
It was subtle. Deliberate. Unspoken. And Minjae noticed all of it.
Yet his heart was elsewhere.
After dusk, inside a facility buried beneath chains of quiet shell companies, Minjae returned to a life no one else would recognize him for. The lab greeted him the same way it always did—with sterile light, faint hum, and a silence that belonged only to him.
He locked the door behind him. The sound of the biometric lock clicking shut was a ritual now, an affirmation that the outside world was gone. No coworkers. No polite smiles. No human expectations.
Only purpose.
The rune table still bore faint scorch marks from the last trial. He had cleaned the surface until his hands cramped, but the charred pattern had bitten too deep into the metal. It was fine. He didn't need perfection. He needed results.
"Veran," he muttered under his breath, the word tasting strange on his tongue. The syllables held resonance—a language his body remembered better than his mind did.
His last attempt had been reckless. Power without control. But tonight, he wanted understanding, not force.
He sat, opened the folder labeled Phenomena – Group C, and began scanning through the reports. They were messy collections of data from scattered incidents: strength surges, sensory acceleration, spontaneous deflection reactions—all from ordinary humans pushed beyond rational thresholds.
He had sorted them before by context—grief, fear, adrenaline—but tonight he noticed something different. The patterns didn't align with emotion alone. They aligned with pressure.
Pressure to survive. Pressure to protect. Pressure to endure.
Minjae's mind sharpened.
He scrolled through one report: a mother lifting debris after an earthquake to reach her child. Another of a man surviving an explosion with burns that should've killed him. Their physical states didn't explain it. Their will did.
Dragons once called that force Draknor. A word too heavy for human tongues, meaning intention sharpened by desperation.
He whispered the human version to himself: "Dran."
It sounded dull in comparison, but it would suffice.
He drew the rune slowly, letting the motion become a kind of meditation. Each curve carried weight—his memory of what it once meant to carve with flame instead of ink. When he finished, the line looked like a scythe's edge, sweeping into an open loop.
For a moment, he simply stared.
"You and I," he murmured, "are either madness… or memory waiting to be remembered."
The words weren't for anyone else. They were for the silence.
He set the recorder on. "Test fourteen. Rune: Dran. Initial conditions normal. Environmental stability confirmed."
He placed his hand above the rune. Not invoking—just listening.
Nothing.
He didn't expect it to move. Not yet.
He took a step back, grabbed his old field journal from a drawer, and flipped it open. The pages smelled faintly of graphite and sleepless nights. Notes from another life filled its margins—half-legible sketches of flow diagrams and annotations like veins of will and psychic response under duress.
Humans, he had written, lacked the second flow. Not a biological network, but an invisible circuit dragons used to direct energy beyond physicality. Still, humans occasionally brushed against it—during peak emotion, crisis, or unfiltered conviction. They didn't know how. They just did.
Minjae's hand hovered over the page, fingers trembling slightly.
"They've done it by accident," he muttered, "and I… can't, even after centuries."
He closed the book and looked at the rune again.
He placed his palm over it. No words. Just thought.
He drew upon that familiar feeling—pressure, the boundary between effort and surrender. His breath steadied, the air thickened. For a second, he felt warmth bloom through his veins. The faint hum of energy, the way it used to feel before he shed his scales.
Then it was gone.
"Not enough," he said under his breath.
He walked three laps around the lab, letting his pulse quicken. The air cooled against his skin. When his heartbeat found a steady rhythm, he tried again—hand over rune, focus sharp as wire.
Nothing.
His jaw tightened. Frustration flickered, then settled into quiet determination.
"You don't answer to emotion," he whispered. "You answer to truth."
The tablet on the far shelf lit up. A notification blinked:
Reminder – Team Lead Strategy Session, 9:30 AM. Conference Room 6A.
He didn't need to open it to know who'd be there.
Yuri with her calculated calm.
Seori with her half-smile and quick barbs.
Yura with her warmth disguised as professionalism.
All three—circling him in their own way. Observing. Testing.
He stared at the notification until it dimmed. Then back to the rune.
He placed his hand down once more. The metal was cold, grounding.
"Dran."
No flash this time. No spark. But something deeper stirred—a quiet echo within him, not in the room. A recognition.
He wrote it down: Response not external. Internal resonance detected.
For the first time that night, he leaned back and smiled faintly. Progress rarely announced itself loudly.
---
The next morning, Seori was already leaning on his desk when he arrived.
"You look worse than my desktop background," she said, handing him a canned coffee.
He took it without hesitation. "Thanks."
"Didn't sleep again?"
"I tried," he said, sitting down.
"Ah," she said knowingly. "So, no."
A few minutes later, Yura appeared, brushing her hair back with her usual rehearsed ease.
"You know, we pushed the meeting back thirty minutes because we assumed you'd pull another all-nighter."
"Only half," he replied, eyes on his monitor.
"Oh good," she said. "That means you'll only collapse halfway through the presentation."
Yuri's voice came from behind them—quiet, composed.
"He'll be fine. I already forwarded him the revised agenda, updated charts, and tagged notes for distribution."
Minjae looked up. "Thank you, Yuri."
She met his eyes briefly. "If you forget to eat again, I'm filing an HR report."
Seori raised her hand from her desk. "Vigilant and concerned."
"Responsible and exhausted," Minjae muttered, typing as he spoke.
Laughter rippled lightly across the room. The tension broke for a moment.
But as the day stretched on, the rhythm resumed. Reports stacked, deadlines folded into one another, and conversations dissolved into white noise.
Still, something in him felt different. Every cell in his body seemed to hum with a low, persistent awareness. It wasn't exhaustion. It wasn't caffeine. It was proximity—to truth, to power, to something beyond definition.
He caught himself pausing mid-analysis, staring at data sheets with an odd familiarity—as if beneath the graphs and numbers, he could see the pulse of something alive.
That night, the lab waited again.
He returned after midnight, shedding his office composure at the door. The hum of the air filters felt almost like breathing.
The rune from the previous night still lingered on the table. He hadn't erased it. He didn't want to.
He recorded a new entry. "Trial fifteen. Continuing Dran variable under consistent metabolic state. Previous tests suggest emotional pressure triggers partial resonance. Objective: identify sustained response pattern."
He positioned the sensors closer to his wrist, fine-tuned the readings, and lowered his hand over the rune.
"Dran."
Silence.
He inhaled, held it, exhaled. "Dran."
A faint pulse traveled through his palm. Warm. Subtle. Consistent.
He froze, watching the monitors. The readings shifted—minimal, but real.
"Response registered. Amplification needed," he said into the recorder.
He let his focus deepen—not through force, but alignment. Pressure, not panic. Intention, not will.
A soft vibration hummed beneath the metal. The air trembled lightly, just enough to ruffle his hair. Then it stopped.
But it was enough.
He stood in silence, heart pounding. He could almost hear it—the echo of wings, wind cutting through ancient skies, memory bleeding into the present.
He sat again, breathing steady. He didn't need more proof. The proof was in him.
For the first time in years, he felt… alive.
Not human. Not dragon. Something in between.
---
The next day, Seori cornered him near the elevator.
"You're hiding something," she said flatly.
He blinked. "I'm not."
"You're smiling."
He frowned slightly. "That's illegal now?"
"It's suspicious," she said.
From across the hall, Yura raised an eyebrow. "Are we interrogating him again?"
"Just an observation," Seori said.
Yuri stepped out of the meeting room, arms crossed. "I agree. He's quieter than usual. Which means he's either plotting or inspired."
"Or both," Yura added.
Minjae exhaled through his nose, suppressing a smirk. "You all really need hobbies."
"Don't tempt us," Seori said. "We might make you one."
Their laughter followed him into the corridor.
He didn't turn around. He didn't have to. For the first time, their noise didn't feel like interference. It felt… grounding.
That night, back in the lab, he looked again at the rune.
He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. The room pulsed faintly, as if listening.
"Dran," he whispered once, almost reverently.
This time, the warmth didn't fade. It lingered.
Not an explosion. Not a flare. Just quiet acknowledgment.
And in that quiet, Minjae finally understood—what he was searching for wasn't lost power. It was the bridge between what he had been and what he had become.
The human in him sought control.
The dragon in him sought freedom.
But the man he was now sought balance.
He smiled faintly. "We're getting closer," he said to the empty room.
No answer came, but he didn't expect one.
He turned off the recorder, closed his notebook, and stood.
Tomorrow would come like always. Reports. Meetings. Seori's teasing. Yuri's quiet concern. Yura's effortless charm.
And beneath it all, the quiet pulse of something ancient and awake—waiting, listening, remembering.