The first thing I became aware of was the sound.
Thump-THUMP.
It wasn't a sound I heard with my ears, but one I felt in the marrow of my bones, in the fillings of my teeth. A deep, resonant, two-stroke beat that echoed through the cavernous space of my own chest. It was the rhythm of the Dragon Heart, the engine I had forged in the heart of the inferno, and it felt less like a part of me and more like a barely-tamed celestial body I had somehow swallowed.
For a long, disoriented moment, I just lay there on the cold stone floor, listening to it. My old heart, the faulty, treacherous little muscle that had quit on me, was gone. This new one didn't just pump blood. It generated.
I could feel it now that the agony of the transformation had subsided. The air in the cavern wasn't just air. It was thick, heavy, and saturated with something I could now perceive as clearly as light. Aether. It was an invisible, silent river flowing through the world, and my new heart was a dam, a turbine, and a refinery all in one. With every beat, it drew that raw, wild Aether into itself. And what flowed out through the rest of my body wasn't the same.
It was different. Warmer. More pliable. It felt like my own.
Mana.
The realization settled in not from the book's memory, but from a new, instinctual understanding. The Dragon Heart was my personal converter, taking the chaotic, universal energy of Aether and turning it into a fuel that I, specifically, could use. It flowed through channels in my body that hadn't existed an hour ago, a humming network of power that made my skin tingle.
This was it. This was the foundation of the hero. Now I just had to… get up.
That turned out to be a problem. My brain sent the signal to stand, a command honed by twenty-eight years of experience in a normal, Tier-nothing body. But the body that responded was something else entirely. It was a Tier 2 machine, brimming with the potential of an Adept, but it was being run by the software of a Tier 1 Initiate—the level Lancelot was at before all this.
I pushed up with my arms, expecting a normal amount of resistance. Instead, the power in my limbs engaged with a sudden, lurching surge, launching my torso upward with enough force to throw me completely off balance. I pinwheeled my arms, a frantic, undignified motion that ended with me crashing hard into a nearby pillar of rock. I slid to the floor in a clumsy heap, the impact jarring me but doing more damage to my pride than my body.
"Okay," I grunted, the voice that came out a low baritone that was definitely not mine. "Right. So, we're a toddler in a tank. Got it."
Pain, frustration, and a healthy dose of terror swirled in my gut. I needed to get a handle on this. Lancelot's most basic skill, the only thing he'd managed to learn as an Initiate, was to draw a tiny bit of Aether to his hand to create a faint light. My new body ran on mana, but the principle should be similar. I needed to see if I could manage even that.
I sat up, took a breath, and focused on my palm, trying to coax just a sliver of the power from my heart. I remembered Lancelot's frustration, the weeks it took him to produce a pathetic flicker. I pulled.
It was like trying to sip from a fire hose.
A violent surge of brilliant blue mana, far more than I called for, shot down my arm. The channels, accustomed to a Tier 1 trickle, were overwhelmed. It felt like a lightning strike traveling through my nerves. A blinding flash erupted from my palm with a sound like frying bacon, and an agonizing jolt shot all the way up to my shoulder.
I screamed, a real, full-throated scream this time, clutching my arm as phantom sparks danced in my vision. My entire limb felt numb and scorched from the inside out. My hardware was Tier 2, alright, but my software—my control, my technique—was so far out of its league it was laughable.
A wave of despair washed over me. In the book, The Crimson Dragon's Lament, this was the moment Lancelot's power awakened. He was supposed to emerge from this cave with a host of new, innate draconic abilities that would let him shock the world. I had the memories of the book, a perfect roadmap of the incredible powers he was supposed to develop—the armored scales that could erupt from his skin, the breath of pure energy, the terrifying physical might.
I had the instruction manual for a weapon I couldn't even figure out how to turn on. Right now, I couldn't even make a simple light without electrocuting myself.
It was in that moment of pathetic self-pity that I heard it.
A sound. Faint. Distant. A man's voice, stretched thin and distorted by the echoing stone. I froze, every new, over-tuned sense straining in the dark.
It came again, clearer this time, a formal, desperate shout.
"...celot! Lord Ashworth! Can you hear us?!"
My blood, now supercharged with dragon's fire, turned to ice.
Ashworth.
They were calling Lancelot's name. They were here for me.
Panic flared hot and sharp in my chest. I scrambled to my feet, once again overcorrecting and stumbling against the dragon's massive, cooling corpse. A search party. From his family, the County of Ashworth. I remembered from the book they'd sent one, a token effort that found nothing and turned back after a week. They weren't supposed to make it this far. The plot was already changing.
I looked around wildly, a corner, a shadow, anywhere to hide—
Too late.
A warm, flickering light began to grow at the far end of the tunnel. The voices grew louder, laced with exhaustion and disbelief.
"Keep calling! He might be injured!"
"Sir, look! The light... it's not a dead end."
The light spilled into the cavern, throwing long, dancing shadows across the cavern floor. Three figures appeared in the tunnel mouth, clad in the leather and steel of household guards. They stepped inside, their eyes slowly adjusting to the vast, dark space.
Their torches washed over the scene. Over the cathedral-sized body of the dead dragon Infernus, over the cratered boulder, and finally, over me—a strange, wild-eyed boy standing half-supported by the creature's corpse, my hand still smoking faintly from my failed spell.
Their jaws dropped. The lead guard, a grizzled man with a thick mustache and the Ashworth crest on his pauldron, lowered his torch slightly, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and utter disbelief.
"By the gods," he breathed, his voice cracking. "Lord Lancelot?"