Drakain Dynasty BOOK ONE: Chapter 2: The Dying Star and the First Encounter
For the first time in his life, Marcellus felt what he believed was true freedom. The crushing weight of Pandora, its continents, and its people—all of it was fading into a distant pinprick of light. The loneliness of the orphanage, the sting of his name, the shame he'd been born with—it all seemed to evaporate in the black, beautiful emptiness of the universe. He was an outcast by choice, a genius who preferred the solitude of shadows, and here, in the vast nothingness, he was finally alone. This was his sanctuary.
As his ship approached the forgotten galaxy, his scanners blipped with a strange anomaly. The solar system before him was a cosmic graveyard, a trinity of dying stars whose light was a sickly, red-orange pallor. And yet, defying all known laws of physics, the planets of this system were not scattering into chaos. Instead, they were locked in orbit around a single, small world—a planet twice the size of Earth, a mere pebble in the shadow of Pandora.
Marcellus read the energy signature on his console. The stability was physically impossible. He concluded, to his astonishment, that the orbits were being maintained by a sustained magical current—an **unknown Tier 7 stabilizing force**, a magnitude of power that broke every axiom of Pandorian magic theory.
He edged his ship closer. As he did, the dark spot on the planet's surface, a stain of absolute black, felt strangely **comforting** to his core. His **Dark Magic** affinity was pulling him toward this place of ultimate darkness. Through the viewport, he saw the dark spot resolve into a shape, something out of a myth.
He went in for a closer look. What he saw wasn't a forest at all. It was a ghostly, translucent thing thirty miles wide, a colossal specter in the shape of a dragon. Its eyes were two burning pools of gold, and they seemed to be staring directly at him. As his ship breached the atmosphere, the spectral dragon shrank in size, becoming smaller and smaller as he approached. By the time he was a few hundred feet away, it had settled into a form a single mile wide, no longer translucent but solid, its black, obsidian scales absorbing all light. The golden eyes held no malice, only a strange, knowing smirk.
And then, a sound that should have been impossible in the vacuum of space filled his cockpit. It was a voice, deep and resonant, a roar that shook his very soul.
"Hello, human. I am **Zoth**."
"Oh, shit," Marcellus whispered, the word escaping his lips without his consent. "This thing can speak?"
Before he could process the thought, Zoth's mind-link reached out, a gentle, probing force that bypassed his shields and his mind's defenses. It wasn't an attack. It was a calm, telepathic message, a voice in his head that felt like a universe whispering a single word. *Come.*
The voice was not a threat; it was an invitation. And in that moment, Marcellus, the boy who had spent his life running from a world that had rejected him, knew he was about to make a choice that woul
d change everything.