Chapter 326 — The Bargain in the Dark
The grove was still, moonlight spilling through the leaves in pale beams. Kael sat cross-legged with Umbra resting at his side, his breathing steady but his mind a storm. The council's doubts, the sheer impossible number of orcs, the looming shadow of the Overlord—it pressed against him like a weight too heavy to bear.
And then the air changed.
Umbra's hackles rose, her golden eyes snapping wide as shadows thickened unnaturally. The grove grew colder, though no wind stirred. The moonlight dimmed until only Kael's silhouette remained against the dark.
A voice slid into his mind like a blade of molten steel.
"You doubt. But you are the only one who can end this war."
Kael's chest tightened. "Who are you?"
The voice rumbled with a low, terrible mirth.
"I am the key. The chain. The flame that burns behind your blood. You are bound to me, as I am bound below. And I tell you this: you alone are strong enough to face the Overlord. The council cannot. The Hollow cannot. If you falter, the world burns."
The shadows trembled, and Kael's vision split.
He stood amid a ruined land, skies choked with smoke, forests burning, rivers turned red. Orc banners stretched across endless horizons, their horde grinding kingdoms to dust. The Hollow was ash. Its people lay in heaps of corpses. Even Thalren's ocean kingdom had been reduced to fire on the water. At the heart of it all, the Orc Overlord stood vast and unyielding, a titan of wrath and blood.
Kael staggered back, his throat tight. "No—"
"Yes," the voice thundered, shaking the very marrow of his bones. "This is the world if you do nothing. He will reign for centuries, and your name will be a forgotten whisper. But if you would end him, if you would burn his fate to ash, you must embrace what sleeps inside you."
The vision shattered. Kael was back in the grove, sweat pouring down his back. The voice pressed harder, wrapping around his mind like iron chains.
"Your dragon form is incomplete. What you wield now is but a shadow. A husk. But there is more—far more—waiting. Your true form. Your true fire. Power so vast that even the Overlord will tremble."
Kael's fists clenched. His voice was ragged. "How do I claim it?"
The voice sharpened, every syllable searing into him.
"Free me from my prison beneath the dungeon. Tear the chains from my body. Do this, and I will give you everything—your full dragon form, your fire unbound, your shadows without limit."
Umbra growled low, wings twitching, her instincts torn between defiance and submission. Kael swallowed hard, chest tight as the bargain sank into him.
But then the voice twisted, almost purring.
"A taste, to prove my words."
The world went white-hot. Kael gasped, falling forward to his hands as power unlike anything he had ever felt surged through his veins. Shadows erupted from his body, writhing with molten fire, black flames licking along his arms. For one heartbeat, his dragon form bled through—scales of obsidian edged with crimson, wings flaring with the force of a storm. His aura burned so violently that the grove itself bent, trees groaning as if bowing under his presence.
He roared before he even realized it, the sound tearing through the night like thunder. It wasn't his roar—it was something older, deeper, the roar of a dragon that had not walked the world in millennia.
Then, as quickly as it came, the surge collapsed. Kael staggered, chest heaving, his arms shaking as the flames flickered out. The grove smelled of charred earth.
The voice coiled close again, dark and triumphant.
"There. A sliver of what awaits you. Imagine it fully unleashed. Imagine striking down the Overlord with such force that the world itself remembers your name for eternity. All I ask is freedom. Grant it to me, and the fate of this world is yours to shape."
Kael fell to one knee, gasping, sweat dripping into the dirt. Umbra pressed against him, her body trembling, eyes locked on him with something like fear—and reverence.
For the first time since he had taken the Hollow, Kael was afraid of himself.
But beneath that fear, fire stirred.
The world demanded his decision.