Blake died first.
The protective one. The brother who always stepped in front when the whispers turned cruel and the shoves turned hard. The one who forced a smile even when his hands trembled from fever.
Not because he was the weakest — none of them were weak — but because Chediak-Higashi syndrome had finally decided his body had endured enough.
Cruel irony.
The one who shielded them all became the most fragile the fastest.
The rare inherited disorder had stalked the quadruplets since birth, a shadow written into their very blood.
Everly followed days later.
The stubborn one. The one who argued with doctors. Who insisted she felt "fine" even when she could barely stand. Who refused to cry in front of anyone.
But even Everly could not out-stubborn death.
Then Freya.
Quiet. Watchful. The one who rarely spoke her fears aloud. But even in silence, she fought — fought hardest of all — because she didn't want to leave Lilith alone.
Lilith held on the longest.
The most gentle. The most sensitive. The one who still believed people could be kind, even after the world proved otherwise. She stayed, clinging to life with trembling determination, as if sheer will could hold her siblings close.
But even she could not win.
They had always done everything together — learned to walk together, learned to read together, endured the whispers together. It was only fitting that even death would not separate them for long.
Born with Chediak-Higashi syndrome, a recessive genetic disorder that attacked their immune systems and shortened their lifespans, all four had also been born albino. Their skin was impossibly pale, their hair pure white, and their eyes an eerie violet that seemed almost unnatural under the orphanage's flickering lights.
The other children called them ghosts. Monsters. Curses.
The caretakers rarely intervened.
Most children with their condition never made it past ten.
They made it to fifteen.
Fifteen years of hospitals.
Fifteen years of weakness.
Fifteen years of only truly belonging to each other.
On their final night, when breathing felt like inhaling broken glass and their bodies were too tired to keep fighting, the quadruplets did the only thing they had ever been certain of.
They prayed.
Let us be together.
Let us be healthy.
Let us have another chance.
And then—
Darkness.
*********************************
At first, there was nothing.
Then there was pressure.
Blake became aware of it first — something tight, pressing against his back and chest. It was warm. Too warm. His limbs felt wrong, heavier in some places, lighter in others.
Blake?
Everly's voice.
But not a voice.
It echoed directly inside his mind.
You hear that too, right? Freya's thoughts overlapped, sharp with panic.
Where are we? Lilith demanded.
They were not speaking.
They were thinking — and somehow, they could all hear it.
The space around them was cramped and suffocating. They couldn't see. Couldn't stretch. Every movement scraped against something solid and curved around them.
They began to panic.
All four of them thrashed instinctively, pushing against whatever confined them. Their bodies felt unfamiliar — their necks too long, their backs too heavy, something dragging behind them when they twisted.
But fear overrode curiosity.
They pushed.
Kicked.
Scraped.
Something hard struck the inside wall of their prison.
A sharp crack echoed around them.
They froze.
Did you hear that? Everly whispered mentally.
Keep going! Freya ordered.
They struggled harder, driven by shared terror and shared determination. The cracks spread, thin lines spiderwebbing through the darkness around them.
More cracking.
More breaking.
Then suddenly—
Light.
Blinding, golden light burst through the fractures.
With one final, desperate shove, all four shattered their prisons at once.
Shells exploded outward.
They tumbled forward together, collapsing into a tangled pile of limbs and wings—
Wings.
Silence fell.
The air felt different — fresher. Richer. Powerful.
Blake lifted his head first.
His vision was sharper than it had ever been. Colors were deeper. The world felt bigger.
He saw claws where hands should have been.
Scales instead of skin.
A long, powerful tail coiled beneath him.
Everly gasped — a small puff of smoke escaping her mouth.
Freya stared at her reflection in a shard of broken shell.
Lilith slowly spread something massive at her back.
Wings.
Large. Scaled. Magnificent.
They were no longer human.
They were dragons.
And for the first time in either of their lives—
They were not sick.
They were not weak.
They were not dying.
They were powerful.
Together.