POV: Kaelion
Pain.
For a thousand years, that's all I've known. The chains burning into my essence. The seal slowly drinking my power like poison. Every second feeling my brothers and sisters die, one by one, their screams echoing in the darkness.
I stopped counting the days after the first century. Time means nothing when you're trapped in eternal torture.
But today, something changed.
I felt it—warm blood touching the ancient seal. Not just any blood. Contract blood. Someone was performing the forbidden ritual.
The chains around me screamed as they shattered. The seal cracked like thunder. And after a thousand years of darkness, I felt something I'd forgotten existed.
Freedom.
Black fire exploded from my core as I surged upward. My massive form filled the shrine—wings stretching wide, claws scraping ancient stone, scales gleaming like midnight stars. I roared, and the sound shook the earth itself. Mountains trembled. The dead lands outside quaked.
I was free.
Rage poured through me like molten metal. The humans would pay. Every single one who built their empire on my stolen power. I would burn their cities. Destroy their—
Then I saw her.
I pulled my power inward, compressing centuries of fury into human form. My dragon body dissolved into black flames that reformed as flesh and bone. Two legs. Two arms. A shape these pathetic creatures could understand.
And there, standing in the center of my ruined prison, was the most ridiculous sight I'd ever seen.
A girl. Tiny. Dressed in rags that were more holes than fabric. Her hand was bleeding, dripping onto the floor. She looked up at me with huge, terrified eyes.
She was so weak I could kill her by thinking too hard.
"Finally," I breathed, my voice rough from centuries of screaming. "After a thousand years of torment, a little thief breaks my chains."
She tried to back away, but her legs wouldn't move. Good. She should be terrified.
Then I felt it. A burning sensation over my heart. I looked down and watched in horror as a glowing mark spread across my chest—the dragon sigil of the ancient contract.
No.
I spun back to the girl. She was staring at her own chest, where the exact same mark was forming on her skin. Glowing. Binding. Connecting us.
"What did you do to me?" she gasped.
My hands clenched into fists. The shrine trembled with my barely contained rage. "You performed a blood contract, you fool! You offered your life force in exchange for power. Congratulations—you're now bound to the World-End Dragon."
Her face went white.
"Your life is mine," I continued, stepping closer. "And mine is unfortunately yours. If you die, I return to my cage. If I die, you follow me into darkness."
I could snap her neck right now. End this. But the moment her heart stopped, the contract would drag me back into that seal. Back into the darkness. Back into the pain.
I wanted to scream.
The ceiling groaned. Chunks of stone crashed down around us. Breaking the seal had destabilized the entire shrine. We had seconds before the whole structure collapsed and buried us both.
Fine. I'd keep her alive. For now.
I grabbed her arm—she felt like nothing in my grip, fragile as paper—and pulled the darkness around us. Space folded. Reality twisted. We shot through dimensions in a rush of cold fire.
When the world solidified again, we were standing in an abandoned tower. The girl collapsed immediately, gasping for air. The contract was already draining her pathetic magic reserves.
I could let her die right here. Just walk away and watch her life fade.
But something stopped me.
I knelt beside her, studying her face. She was barely breathing, her skin pale and clammy. The dragon mark on her chest pulsed weakly.
That's when I felt it—the thing that made no sense.
Beneath all that weakness, beneath the laughable trickle of magic she called power, there was something else. Something hidden. Something that had touched the seal and recognized it as friend, not enemy.
I pressed my hand against her chest, sending a thread of my power into her to stabilize the bond. The moment my magic touched hers, I felt it clearly.
This girl had dragon-blessed blood.
Impossible.
We killed that bloodline. Every single one. The humans hunted them down after the war, terrified of anyone who could bond with dragons as equals. There were none left.
Yet here she was.
"My brother," she whispered, barely conscious. "The curse... please..."
I almost laughed. She was dying, bound to the most dangerous creature in existence, and she was worried about someone else?
"Show me," I demanded.
She tried to speak but couldn't. So I dove into her memories through the contract bond, ripping through her mind without permission. I saw everything—a tiny shack in the slums, a boy barely ten years old, his veins turning black with poison.
A curse. A tracking curse.
My blood turned cold.
I knew that spell. I'd seen it before, centuries ago. The magisters used it to hunt dragon-blessed children. They'd curse someone the child loved, then wait for the child to seek forbidden magic to save them. When the child revealed themselves, the magisters would strike.
"They're hunting you," I said quietly. "That curse on your brother? It's bait. They know what you are, even if you don't."
Her eyes fluttered open, confused and terrified.
I should kill her now. Should break the bond and take my chances with returning to the seal. This girl was marked for death. Anyone connected to her would become a target.
But I hadn't felt another living dragon-blessed bloodline in a thousand years. And if the magisters were hunting her, that meant they still feared her power.
Which meant she was valuable.
A weapon I could use.
"Fine," I said, making my decision. "I'll save your brother. And then you're going to tell me everything—who you are, where you came from, and why your blood touched my seal like it recognized an old friend."
I grabbed her arm again and pulled us both through space, materializing in her pathetic hovel. The boy was there, exactly as I'd seen in her memories, barely breathing.
I placed my hand on his chest and burned the curse away with a thought. Simple. The boy gasped and his eyes flew open, the black veins fading to normal.
"Serina?" he croaked.
So that was her name.
She was unconscious, drained completely by the teleportation. I laid her on the filthy bed next to her brother and stood back, studying them both.
The boy looked up at me with wide eyes. "Are you... an angel?"
I almost smiled. "No, child. I'm the monster from your nightmares. And your sister just bound herself to me to save your life."
He started crying.
I should feel nothing. After a thousand years of torture, my heart had turned to stone. These humans meant nothing to me. They were tools. Weapons. A means to revenge.
But looking at the girl who'd freed me—this tiny, worthless thief who'd broken my chains not for power or glory, but to save one dying child—something twisted in my chest.
Something that felt dangerously close to the emotion I'd buried centuries ago.
Hope.
I turned away, heading for the door. But as I reached it, I felt something through the contract bond that made me freeze.
Power. Real power, stirring in Serina's sleeping form. The seal on her magic was cracking, responding to the dragon bond.
And beneath that seal, I felt something that made my breath catch.
A familiar magical signature. One I'd known intimately. One I'd mourned for a thousand years.
No. It couldn't be.
I spun back to stare at the unconscious girl.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
Because if I was right—if she was what I thought she was—then everything changed.
The magisters hadn't just cursed her brother.
They'd found the one thing they feared more than me.
The reincarnation of the Dragon-Keeper herself.