Azrynn opened her eyes to the pale light of the Arcanum Academy's observatory. She didn't know if it was dawn or some trick of the magically refracted starlight above, but it didn't matter. The world had already decided she was a failure.
She was born into the Academy as an anomaly — whispered rumors called her the "miracle child," yet no one ever meant it kindly. Her parents had sacrificed everything: wealth, comfort, even their health to secure her place here. And for what? For the Academy to mock her the moment her Binding Ceremony began.
When the day came, the hall was alive with fire and shimmer. Students summoned beasts of legend: Skyrazors slicing the clouds, Ember-Wolves igniting the stone floor with their fangs, Ironhorn Rhinos cracking the walls with every stomp. The air pulsed with magic, a symphony of controlled chaos.
Azrynn stepped forward. Her pulse thrummed in time with the murmuring crowd, the thrum of forbidden magic weaving through the chamber. She extended her hand — and from the tip of her fingers, a shadow flickered into being. Not fire. Not claw. Not wings. A small, formless ripple of darkness.
The hall went silent for a heartbeat, then erupted. Laughter. Sneers. A chorus of mockery. "That's it?" someone jeered. "A candle flicker? I've seen more life in moss!"
Even her teachers flinched. They had studied the ancient texts, the forbidden runes. They had warned of warlocks born from nothingness, and here she was — five years in the making, and the Academy had never seen anything like her.
The shadow pulsed, almost sentient. Azrynn could feel it writhing against the invisible bonds the other students' beasts had already mastered. It was alive. Hungry. Dangerous.
Her cheeks burned, not from shame, but from anger. She gritted her teeth and whispered to the shadow: Grow.
The ripple shivered, coalescing into the first of her dragons — small, jagged scales glinting with molten energy. Five eyes glimmered in the void, one for each elemental affinity she had somehow bound instinctively: Fire, Ice, Storm, Shadow, Light.
The crowd froze. Even the professors stepped back. The dragon was tiny, barely reaching her waist, but the aura it radiated made the air tremble.
"Impossible," muttered Master Hulius, her rival, summoning a Skyrazor that towered like a living storm. "It can't be done."
Azrynn's lips curled in a dangerous smile. Oh, it can be done.
Seven years passed like a slow, grinding war. The Academy became a crucible, each day a reminder of her "failure." Students laughed, professors doubted, and whispers followed her in every hallway: the girl with the useless shadow.
Yet in secret, her dragons grew. Every fight in the practice yards, every skirmish against the unruly lower-year warlocks, every stolen duel with Hulius and his Skyrazor — the dragons learned. They leveled. Their scales thickened, claws sharpened, and eyes gleamed with predatory intelligence.
Azrynn herself leveled alongside them. With each battle, her mana reserves, infinite from birth, flowed freely. She experimented in private, pouring her essence into the dragons until their forms twisted and evolved into something far beyond the mortal comprehension of the Academy.
By the end of her seventh year, she had become a shadow everyone feared to acknowledge. The whispers grew darker: Voidborn. Demon. Monster.
It was during an unsanctioned duel in the blackened ruins beyond the Academy that she realized the full scope of her power. A gang of warlocks, vampires, and rogue witches had cornered her. Hulius led them, his Skyrazor roaring above the corpses of lesser beasts.
Azrynn didn't hesitate. Her dragons rose from her mana, one by one, five silhouettes of elemental fury. Fire erupted, melting stone. Ice tore through the sky, freezing the breath of her enemies. Lightning danced along the ground, shredding armor and bone. Shadow devoured the weak, consuming light itself. Light shone so bright it seared eyes and scorched shadows, bending reality around her.
She and her dragons leveled in unison, and when the dust settled, the gang lay broken. The surviving warlocks fled in terror. Hulius himself staggered back, realizing for the first time that she was no ordinary student.
After the battle, Azrynn retreated to the hidden sanctum she had carved from the void between dimensions. Here, in the silence of untamed magic, she touched each dragon's scaled head, feeling their intelligence, their loyalty, and their insatiable hunger for growth.
"Level one," she whispered to them. "But we've only just begun."
She lit a bottle of stardust liquor and took a long pull, the warmth of alcohol mingling with raw mana in her veins. Drugs, magic, fire — all her experiments, all her indulgences, taught her control. And each night in her sanctum, she whispered plans of revenge, power, and domination to the dragons.
The multiverse awaited. Arcanum Academy was just the beginning. Beyond the black mirrors of her Dimensional Rift lay entire galaxies, worlds unbound by human ambition, and civilizations that had never imagined a warlock capable of commanding five elemental dragons at once.
Her first jump beyond the Academy took her to the Blood Kingdoms, a planet of vampires and cursed warlocks, where cities floated in rivers of black ichor. Entire warlock crews ruled territories with drugs and ritual magic. She dispatched a squad of rogue witches in minutes, absorbing their powers into her dragons with her Devour skill, leveling herself and them.
She drank, cursed, and bled alongside her dragons. Each battle was a lesson, each kill a permanent upgrade. She learned betrayal firsthand when one of her crew tried to sell her out to a vampire lord. The dragons tore them apart before her, claws and fire making it clear: no one would cross her and live.
As she stepped into another rift, a galaxy of shattered star systems waiting to be conquered, she felt the thrill of boundless possibility. Infinite mana. Infinite growth. Infinite power.
Azrynn laughed, a low, cruel sound that echoed across dimensions. She would fight witches, warlocks, vampires — all of them — and none would survive her rise. The multiverse was hers to claim.
And at the heart of it all, her dragons, five elemental forces, roared and swirled around her, leveling with each heartbeat. Fire, Ice, Storm, Shadow, Light — each a fragment of her soul. Each a weapon of unimaginable destruction.
She was Azrynn. The Warlock of Infinite Realms. The creator of dragons. The end of worlds.
And this was only level one.