Lys stood alone at the edge of the ridge as dawn broke.
In the soft, fractured light, he could finally see himself clearly—reflected in a shard of volcanic glass half-buried in the stone. He did not look like a king, nor a god, nor the ancient terror whispered about in half-burned texts. He looked like a boy who had survived too much.
His hair was black, thick, and perpetually unkempt, falling into his eyes no matter how often he cut it. When the light struck just right, faint ember-red strands threaded through it—not dye, not magic, but a remnant of what lived beneath his skin. His face was sharp but not hard, still holding the traces of youth: a narrow jaw, high cheekbones smudged with ash, a thin scar along his right brow where shadow steel had once kissed too close. But it was his eyes that marked him unmistakably.
They were dragon eyes.
Not merely amber, but molten—layered gold and deep copper, with vertical pupils that narrowed and widened like living fire. In shadow, they seemed almost human. In light, they reflected the world with unsettling clarity, catching movement before it happened, heat before it rose, intention before it struck. When Lys drew upon the Well, ancient sigils briefly ghosted through the irises, as if something vast were looking out through him. People did not meet his gaze for long.
His body bore the cost of what those eyes belonged to.
Burn-marks traced his forearms in faint, branching patterns—old channels scorched and reforged by dragonfire. The seals beneath his skin appeared as subtle distortions, like heat haze pressed into flesh. His right shoulder still ached where black frost had once tried to claim him, the skin there pale and tight, forever colder than the rest. He was not tall for his age, but he carried himself like someone heavier than he looked. Every movement was deliberate now. Balanced. As if part of him was always aware of the ground beneath his feet, the air above, the pressure of the world waiting to push back.
Lys turned from his reflection and looked outward—toward the land he had been born into, and reborn for.
This was a world stitched together by old power and newer fear.
Once, dragons shaped the continents. Their bones were mountains. Their breath became storms. When they fell, humanity rose in the spaces they left behind, building cities atop sleeping volcanos, carving sanctuaries into ribs of stone they never truly understood. Magic here was not infinite—it was borrowed. Drawn from Wells bound to the earth, the sky, and things deeper still. Every use came with a cost. Every gift left a mark.
The Eclipsed were proof of what happened when that balance was broken.They were not invaders from elsewhere. They were us—cities swallowed by shadow, people reforged into weapons by something that promised survival at the price of choice. The Great Shadow did not conquer through fire or blade. It consumed through resonance, rewriting reality until the world forgot what it had been.
And Lys—
Lys was the counterweight.
Not a savior sent by fate, but a contingency left behind by a dragon who had learned too late what unchecked power could destroy. He was a vessel, yes—but also a decision. A chance to do what the Dragon of the North had failed to do before: protect without ruling, burn without erasing. Behind him, voices echoed faintly—Nyra arguing with Valerius, Elda quietly reforging wards. Allies. Imperfect. Mortal.
Important.
Lys closed his eyes, dragon pupils narrowing as he placed a hand over his chest, feeling the seals—quiet for now, but never truly at rest.
This world was not asking for a god.It was asking for someone willing to stand in the fire and still choose restraint.
When Lys opened his eyes, the sun had fully risen, its light catching in his dragon gaze and scattering like flame across the stone.
The war had not begun with his awakening.
It had only been revealed.
And this time, the Dragon would not face it alone.