In the shadows above the royal treasury roof…
The night air was cool against skin, carrying the faint scent of jasmine from the palace gardens far below. A cloaked figure crouched like a proud alley cat surveying its kingdom from the highest peak, muscles coiled with the tension of predatory anticipation. His breathing was measured, controlled, the breathing of someone who'd done this dozens of times before. His gloved fingers traced the ancient tiles beneath him, feeling for the subtle imperfections that would mark a weak point.
"Tonight, destiny smiles on the legend…" he whispered with theatrical flair that belonged more on a stage than a rooftop. "The one, the only, Ravinder the Phantom Toe. Thirty-seven successful robberies across three kingdoms. Nine escaped treasuries without raising alarms. Four princesses who allegedly swooned at my charm and daring. And this—this glorious palace—shall be my final masterpiece. The heist that will cement my name in legend."
He adjusted the scarf around his neck with meticulous precision—a theatrical flourish that served no practical purpose but satisfied his ego immensely. He flipped once mid-air, executing a perfect aerial rotation that was entirely unnecessary, and silently landed on the cool marble floor of the treasury lobby with the grace of a trained acrobat.
His boots made no sound.
A faint click echoed through the chamber as he disabled the entry lock with practiced expertise.
He smiled, his teeth gleaming white in the darkness. "Too easy. Just like always. The greatest treasures in the world, and they protect them with such predictable methods."
But then…
The room pulsed.
A faint orange glow flickered from the depths of the corridor—an ominous light that had no business existing in a sealed treasury at night. The glow was warm, intensely so, and it grew brighter with each passing second.
Ravinder blinked, his confidence faltering for the first time. "What the—"
FWOOSH!
A sound like a volcano deciding to sneeze erupted through the corridor with apocalyptic force.
A wave of heat—pure, undiluted, dragon-tier heat—blasted through the hallway, incinerating everything in its path. Tapestries disintegrated mid-air. Stone pillars developed fissures. Shelves that had held knowledge for centuries turned to kindling in microseconds.
One second Ravinder the Phantom Toe was standing—smug, composed, victorious, already imagining his escape. The next, he was nothing more than a pair of smoking boots still standing upright like confused sentries, with two lonely, twitching legs inside them, still maintaining their rigid posture despite their owner's complete and total vaporization.
The most pathetic part? The boots were still smoking.
In the Inner Treasury Lobby
"DID—DID YOU SEE THAT?!"Aryan screamed, his voice cracking with pure panic as he dove behind a collapsed shelf, his entire body trembling like a leaf in a hurricane.
'What in the hells just happened?! Did that man just—did he just—'
SYSTEM: "Welp. That's one less thief in the world. Incinerated. Gone. Reduced to his component atoms and scattered across the treasury like confetti at a celebration of poor life choices. I warned you this was a terrible idea, but nooo. 'Let's loot the treasury,' you said. 'It'll be fun,' you said. 'We'll just slip in and slip out,' you said. Look what fun got us—a flambéed thief and a dragon that looks like it skipped breakfast and is now considering us as appetizers."
Roshni's eyes widened to impossible proportions, her warrior training temporarily overridden by the primal fear response. "Was that a… a fire dragon?! Is that what's down there?!"
"I'm gonna go with YES!"Aryan shrieked, his voice reaching frequencies that probably shouldn't be achievable from a six-year-old's throat. "YES, THAT WAS DEFINITELY A DRAGON, AND IT DEFINITELY JUST BURNED A MAN TO NOTHING!"
From the corridor—from the depths of the treasury where ancient seals and magical barriers were cracking like eggshells—a massive claw emerged. Not cautiously. Not gently. It crushed through a marble column like the column was made of chalk, pulverizing it into powder and rubble.
The beast emerged.
Taarask, the sealed beast of Vaikunth Dham's treasury, had awoken.
A Chakra 2, Stage 7 dragon-blooded hybrid that was a nightmare made manifest. Its body was a terrifying blend of reptilian and draconic features—crimson scales that glowed like molten rock even in the darkness, as if fire existed beneath its skin and was slowly burning its way outward. Eyes that burned like twin suns of judgment, ancient and terrible and utterly indifferent to human suffering. Wings that folded against its body could span the entire width of the treasury chamber. A tail that moved with conscious malice, destroying everything it touched.
It was breathing rage and fire—literal fire, visible flames licking from between its fangs—and it was not happy about intruders disturbing its slumber.
SYSTEM: "Correction. This is not merely a fire dragon. This is a house-arsonist lizard with wings who woke up on the wrong side of a century of imprisonment and is now making it everyone's problem."
Taarask's mouth crackled open—the sound of electrical discharge mixing with the roar of an inferno. Light built in its throat like a second sun was being born inside the beast.
"MOVE!"Roshni shouted, her survival instinct overriding her desire to observe, grabbing Aryan's sleeve with desperate force.
They sprinted—not ran, sprinted—just as another torrent of flame obliterated the lobby behind them, turning everything into an inferno.
"No!"Roshni gasped mid-sprint, her voice breaking. "That was a First Chakra Stage 4 manual! That shelf had everything we needed!"
Bookshelves exploded into splinters that caught fire before they finished falling. Pillars melted like candles left too long in the sun, their stone forms running like wax. The intricate tapestries of the royal vault—hand-woven by master craftspeople, worth fortunes in their own right—curled up like burnt leaves, their golden threads turned to ash.
Inside the Inner Treasury Chamber
The duo tumbled through a side passage and behind a golden pedestal—one of the few objects massive enough to provide genuine cover—their bodies heaving with exertion, their lungs burning with the effort of breathing smoke-filled air.
Aryan peeked over the edge of the pedestal, his eyes wide as saucers, barely believing what he was witnessing.
The dragon was tearing through history itself.
Ancient scrolls—some dating back centuries—were being consumed by flames. Sacred scriptures written by long-dead monks turned to ash in seconds. Cultivation manuals that represented generations of accumulated knowledge were destroyed like they were nothing but kindling for a casual bonfire. The beast moved through the library like a pyromaniac librarian, deliberately targeting the shelves, deliberately maximizing destruction.
'There goes everything we came for. There goes the entire treasury. There goes my cultivation path.'
SYSTEM: "Just saying… Grandpa Ganpath better be hearing this through divine karma somehow, because this is peak'bad idea' energy. This is what happens when you send a six-year-old to rob a guarded vault. This is what happens when you underestimate a dragon."
Roshni peeked out from the opposite side of their cover, her breathing ragged, her composure cracking. "He's wrecking everything! Those shelves had manuals older than our ancestors! Knowledge that can never be recovered!"
A sudden quake rocked the entire chamber—Taarask slammed its massive tail against the far wall with enough force to crack the reinforced stone. Massive statues tumbled from their pedestals. Entire sections of shelving collapsed under the impact.
SYSTEM: "Well, you wanted power. Congratulations. Now you're getting fired up."
"Now's not the time for puns!"Aryan hissed desperately, ducking as a flying stone slab the size of a man whistled overhead.
SYSTEM: "No, no, no. Now is exactly the perfect time to question all my life decisions. Why did I get bound to a six-year-old with a professional-grade looting addiction?! Why am I currently burning alive in a gold-plated oven made by sadistic architects?! Why didn't I negotiate for a vacation clause in my contract?!"
Another AOE fireblast rippled outward from the dragon's position—a dome of flame that engulfed half the treasury, turning everything it touched into charcoal and ash. The temperature skyrocketed. The oxygen seemed to burn away.
Aryan tackled Roshni behind a ruined pillar, their bodies pressed flat against the stone. The flames licked at the walls around them, scorching the very air itself. Dust and smoke curled in every direction, choking and blinding.
"How do we get out?!"Aryan yelled over the roar of the inferno.
Roshni looked up, her eyes watering from smoke but her mind still calculating, still strategizing even in this nightmare scenario. "The hallway's blocked—flames and debris everywhere. But maybe—if we slide through the rear passage there—it connects to the ventilation tunnels that run beneath the archive shelf. But we'll have to move fast. That lizard's got a flame thrower and zero chill."
The Desperate Escape
As they ran—pushing their small bodies to their absolute limits—Taarask roared and spewed another firewave. A flying slab of burning stone the size of a door missed Aryan's head by mere inches, so close he felt his hair singe and curl.
SYSTEM: "Did you dodge that, or did Luck just slap fire in the face for you?!"
'I don't even know anymore!' Aryan thought desperately, ducking beneath falling debris, his legs pumping harder.
They slipped through a half-broken gap in the stone wall—barely wide enough for children to squeeze through, far too narrow for a dragon—and into a service tunnel behind the archive shelf. The tunnel was cramped, dark, filled with the machinery of the vault's various support systems.
A Moment of Reprieve
A moment of silence descended.
Only the crackling of flames from the chamber behind them and Taarask's guttural growls—frustrated, enraged, echoing through the stone—remained.
Both of them, covered in ash and sweat, their clothes singed and torn, sat panting in the darkness, their chests heaving with the effort of survival.
Aryan whispered, his voice hoarse from smoke inhalation. "That was… too close. That was so close. We almost died. We almost became crispy orphans."
Roshni nodded, her braid slightly singed at the ends, several strands completely burned away. "I think my eyebrows are gone. I can't feel my eyebrows anymore. Is that normal? Do you still have your eyebrows?"
SYSTEM: "And so is our target. And the backup target. And the entire treasury. And probably our future and the palace's insurance policy. I just want to say—if you ever write a biography, and you inevitably will because your life is somehow more dramatic than a theatrical tragedy, don't forget to title it: 'How to Burn a Kingdom 101: A Cautionary Tale in Poor Decision-Making'."
The Aftermath of Destruction
Smoke curled up through the air shafts from the treasury chamber, carrying with it the bitter scent of destruction. Flamesconsumed every corner of the once-mighty treasury—a repository of knowledge and wealth that had stood for centuries, now being reduced to ash and memory in a single night.
Manuals turned to smoke and cinder. Ancient texts became carbon. Gold melted, flowing like water. Precious gemscracked from the heat. Even the dragon's own containment seal—the magical barrier that had kept it imprisoned for decades—had turned to magma, rendered useless by its own power.
The legacy of Vaikunth Dham's accumulated knowledge was… toast.
Literal, burnt, incinerated toast.
As Aryan crawled out the final stone passage—bruised, coughing, covered in more ash than flesh—his lungs screaming, his body aching, everything inside him vibrating with the aftershock of near-death, the System gave one last huff of resignation.
SYSTEM: "You know, kid… I think your Luck's starting to run out."