Chapter 95: Human Fatality
"Dragons weren’t made to impress the world. The world simply couldn’t help but stare."
~ Rebel Beast
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The brief shadow that swept across her face was enough to jolt Charlotte awake.
Her eyes flew open.
She shot upright in bed so quickly she nearly made herself dizzy. Instinctively, her gaze snapped toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, and just as she expected, a lone figure soared through the distance.
A dragon.
Charlotte threw off the covers, snatched her phone from the bedside table, and hurried out of the room before either of her roommates had the chance to wake.
She couldn’t blame them for sleeping in.
The four of them had spent most of the previous night cleaning, and even then, there were still piles of dusty sheets waiting to be washed before the day was over. But that wasn’t on her mind at the moment.
Charlotte’s heartbeat quickened as she stepped into the hallway, her eyes eagerly taking in everything around her.
House Aetheris was already awake.
Students moved through the corridors in every direction, preparing for the day’s classes. Some hurried past with bags slung over their shoulders while others stood in small groups, chatting as they walked. The towering halls reverberated with footsteps, laughter, distant conversations, and the occasional flutter of wings from the smaller avians in their beast forms.
Charlotte felt like a child stepping into an amusement park for the very first time.
No matter where she looked, there was something new demanding her attention. The ravens, the eagles, the dragons... everything!
It was overwhelming. It was magnificent.
Unfortunately, her excitement didn’t go unnoticed.
Several dragons glanced in her direction before openly scowling. One female dragon wrinkled her nose as though Charlotte’s mere presence offended her. Another deliberately bumped shoulders with her while walking past, never bothering to apologize.
Charlotte barely noticed. How could she?
There was simply too much to see.
Almost absentmindedly, her feet carried her farther down the corridor until the familiar open-air walkway came into view.
The moment she stepped onto it, she froze.
"Oh..." The word escaped as nothing more than a breath.
Spread out before her was the morning sky, painted in soft shades of gold and pale blue as the first rays of sunlight bathed the academy grounds below. But it wasn’t the scenery that stole her breath.
It was the dragons.
Students stepped onto the broad stone platform one after another before shifting seamlessly into their dragon forms.
Charlotte’s mouth slowly fell open.
There had to be at least five of them.
The first dragon gleamed a deep crimson, his scales catching the sunlight until they resembled molten rubies. Great ivory horns curved backward from his head while smoke lazily escaped his nostrils.
Beside him stood a dragon cloaked in shimmering sapphire scales that reflected the morning light like gemstones. Elegant silver horns framed her head, and every movement she made possessed an almost regal grace.
The third was unlike anything Charlotte had ever seen.
Emerald scales covered his body from snout to tail, broken only by streaks of gleaming gold running along his spine. His folded wings were so enormous they cast shadows over the platform beneath him.
The fourth dragon was midnight black. His scales were so dark that the sunlight seemed to disappear against them. His eyes burned a vivid amber, glowing like twin embers beneath heavy ridges.
The last dragon was a brilliant pearl white, her scales almost luminous beneath the morning sun. Even standing still, the dragonness looked impossibly elegant.
Charlotte’s eyes shone with unshed tears.
She couldn’t breathe. For years, she had watched documentaries, collected books, and memorized every piece of information she could find about dragons. None of it came close to seeing them with her own eyes.
One of the dragons lifted his head, and a low rumble vibrated through his chest before it grew into a powerful roar that rolled across House Aetheris like thunder.
Its fellow answered with a roar of his own, followed by another and another, until their voices overlapped, echoing through the towering halls until the very walls seemed to hum beneath the sheer force of it.
The sound was primal, and powerful enough to make several of the smaller avian beasts instinctively scatter into the air. Some of those in human form even flinched.
But that wasn’t the case for Charlotte. To her, it was the most beautiful sound in the world.
Those magnificent roars, they were the sweetest thing she had ever heard.
A laugh escaped her lips before she even realized she’d made a sound.
"I’m really here..." Charlotte whispered to herself. "I’m actually here."
The dragons then exchanged playful growls as though challenging one another.
It seemed they were racing.
One dragon scraped his claws against the stone while another spread her wings to their full, breathtaking span. The others followed suit.
Then, almost as if responding to an invisible signal, all five dragons launched themselves into the air at once. Their enormous wings came down with explosive force.
WHOOOOSH!
A violent gust tore across the open balcony, and Charlotte’s smile disappeared.
The wind struck her before she even realized what was happening, and her feet left the ground.
Her eyes widened.
"No—!"
There was nothing to grab onto or steady herself with. For one horrifying second, Charlotte’s body hung weightless above the open balcony before gravity claimed her.
Charlotte’s scream echoed through House Aetheris as she plunged over the edge of the building.
Luckily for Charlotte, they had been assigned to the ground floor. Hence the fall only knocked every bit of air from her lungs.
She landed hard on the grass below, lying flat on her back as she stared up at the cloudless blue sky, struggling to understand how everything had gone so wrong in the span of a few seconds. Then the laughter reached her.
It came from every direction.
Charlotte turned her head just enough to see students lining the balconies overhead while others had gathered in the courtyard below. Some of them pointed openly at her, while the others made no effort to hide their laughter.
Heat flooded her cheeks. Then a shadow suddenly fell across her face and
Charlotte looked up.
Rhydian stood over her, his arms folded across his chest, his expression caught somewhere between annoyance and disbelief.
Her heartbeat immediately quickened.
"Good thing I had Tamara put you fragile little things on the ground floor," Rhydian said, his deep voice carrying easily across the courtyard. "Otherwise, I’d be explaining a human fatality before breakfast."