Pain.
That was the first thing he felt. Not the scorching agony of dragon fire, not the crushing weight of the Eternal Dragon King's talons, but the dull, suffocating ache of a body too small, too weak, too fragile.
His lungs burned as if he had never breathed before. His heart hammered like a prisoner's fist against iron bars. He gasped, choking on air, and the world around him swam into focus.
A thatched roof. Cracked beams dripping with mold. The stink of rot and smoke.
Lioran Vale - no, The Dragon Lord—snapped upright. His hands trembled before his eyes, thin and pale, skin stretched tight over bone. These were not the hands that once wielded dragonsteel, nor the fists that shattered mountains.
"…Where am I?" His voice rasped, pitifully soft.
Memories crashed against him, shards of a shattered past: the battlefield, the deafening roar of the Eternal Dragon King, his own blood staining the skies. His death had been certain. He remembered the talons piercing his chest, the light fading—then the abyss.
Yet here he was.
Alive.
what...a..... ???. Reborn.
He clenched his frail hand until his nails dug crescents into his palm. "This is… not the afterlife. This is a curse. Or… a second chance."
The door of the hut creaked open. A gaunt woman stepped in, balancing a basket of firewood. Her eyes widened when she saw him upright.
"You—! Don't move too suddenly, boy! The fever nearly took you." She hurried to his side, pressing a cracked clay cup of water to his lips. "Drink. Slowly."
He obeyed out of instinct more than need, though the lukewarm water tasted like ash compared to the wines of his past life.
The woman's name, he recalled from fragmented memories of this body, was Mira—his mother. Or rather, the mother of this vessel he now inhabited. She was a widow, eking out a life in a backwater village called Ashvale, a place so insignificant it hadn't even appeared on maps during his reign.
So this was his new beginning.
A child of peasants.
A body on the edge of starvation.
His jaw tightened. To fall from Dragon Lord to this… was it mockery from the heavens? Or a challenge?
Mira brushed damp hair from his forehead, relief softening her weathered face. "You've been asleep three days. I thought… I thought I'd lost you too, like your father."
Lioran remained silent. He had no words for her kindness, no strength for false comfort. His mind raced elsewhere.
If this was reincarnation, if his soul had returned to the cycle of life… then perhaps the world had not yet discarded him. Perhaps fate itself was offering him the ember of another chance.
But to rise again, he would need power. And this body… had none.
He waited until Mira left the hut, then forced himself from the bed. Every joint screamed in protest, his knees trembling under the weight of his own frame. He staggered to a warped mirror of polished bronze nailed to the wall.
The reflection staring back was that of a boy, barely sixteen. Hollow cheeks. Lifeless gray eyes. Brown hair hanging like unwashed straw.
A shadow of a shadow.
"…Pathetic." His whisper cracked with disgust.
And yet, in those eyes, he caught a glimmer. Not the dullness of a peasant's son, but the burning ember of something ancient. His soul still lingered—the soul of the Dragon Lord.
His lips curled into a grim smile. "So be it. From ashes… I rise."
....
The Village of Ashvale
The days crawled by. Lioran —begrudgingly forced to answer to the name this body carried, "Lioran Vale"—observed the world with quiet calculation.
Ashvale was a dying village. Fields lay barren, crops withered by blight. The few villagers spoke with sunken voices, their eyes hollow from hunger. Bandits prowled the forests, and no lord sent protection.
In his past life, such a place would not even warrant a footnote in his chronicles. But now, it was the soil from which he would grow.
He tested his body each dawn, pushing its limits in secret. At first, he collapsed after mere minutes of exertion. Pushups left his arms trembling. Running a single lap around the village nearly stole his breath. The villagers whispered that Mira's son had gone mad.
But Lioran knew better. Weakness was not a curse, but a condition to be broken.
Each night, when exhaustion chained him to his straw bed, he reached inward. Not with hands, but with soul. Searching.
He found it on the seventh night.
A flicker. A spark.
Buried deep within his chest burned a crimson ember—the last remnant of his draconic soul. Small. Faint. But there.
He laughed aloud, startling Mira as she stirred from her sleep. "Quiet, mother. It's nothing," he lied. But inside, triumph roared.
Power still lived within him. It had not been stolen, only sealed.
And if a spark remained, he would turn it into flame.
....
The Egg
It came on the fifteenth night.
Drawn by a dream of roaring skies and burning wings, Lioran stumbled into the ruins outside the village. The villagers avoided the place, muttering of curses and spirits, but to him the ancient stone ruins whispered of familiarity.
There, beneath collapsed pillars, he found it.
A faint glow.
Half-buried in ash and vines lay an egg. Large as a man's chest, its surface black as obsidian, veined with crimson light that pulsed like a heartbeat.
Lioran fell to his knees, hands trembling as they brushed the surface. A warmth surged into him, and the ember in his chest flared in response.
Tears stung his eyes—tears he had not shed since his first death. "You… waited for me."
A dragon's egg. The last vestige of his lost kin. Perhaps one he had once commanded. Perhaps a new life altogether.
It mattered not.
This was his first companion, his first soldier, his first step back into the sky.
"I swear," Lioran whispered, pressing his forehead to the shell, "I will raise you. I will forge you in fire and blood. Together, we will tear down kingdoms. The world has forgotten the Dragon Lord. But through you, they will remember."
The egg pulsed brighter, as if answering his vow.
And thus, the ashes of his old life gave birth to the first ember of his new one
.......
The First Ember
When Kael returned to the hut, Mira questioned his late wanderings. He offered no answer, only a faint smile that unsettled her.
For the first time since his rebirth, his heart felt steady.
He had no army.
No castle.
No throne.
But he had his will.
He had his ember.
And now, he had his dragon.
The rebirth of the Dragon Lord had begun.