Demonic Dragon: Harem System

The crack crossed the heart chamber like thunder trapped in ice.

It was not large.

Not at first.

Only a thin line appearing on the white floor, cutting through one of the ancient runic circles around the bed. But in that same instant, everyone inside the chamber felt the weight of it. Ingrid pulled the little girl back before she even understood what had happened. The guards raised shields of ice. The mages began reinforcing the lights without waiting for an order.

The little girl looked at the crack.

And heard.

Very far away.

But far too close.

A voice saying her name.

She covered her ears with both hands.

"No," she whispered.

The crack glowed gold.

Ingrid placed herself in front of her.

"Look at me, child."

"He spoke."

"I know."

"He said my name."

"Then forget his voice. Listen to mine."

The girl was trembling so much that the cup of milk fell from the bed and shattered on the floor. The warm milk ran toward the crack and, when it touched the golden light, evaporated into small grains of sand.

One of the mages shouted:

"Message to the Monarch!"

The chamber answered before she finished.

The blue runes on the walls lit strongly, and Mercedes’s voice crossed the space, cold, fast, and furious.

"What happened?"

Ingrid answered without taking her eyes off the crack.

"The chamber was touched. The voice reached her."

For one second, there was only silence.

Then Mercedes said:

"I am coming."

The communication fell.

The crack opened a little more.

On the other side of it, there was no stone.

There was sand.

In the Capital, Strax felt the spoken name as if someone had driven a blade beneath his scales.

He did not hear it with his ears.

He heard it through the bond.

Through the little girl’s fear.

Through the promise he had just made, which was now being stepped on by something buried beneath the Heavenly Capital itself.

White Fire exploded around him.

The golden eye on the floor narrowed.

Samira took a step back, raising the greatsword.

"Strax."

He did not answer.

The Emperor was on his knees, one hand on his chest, trying to breathe. The stolen fragment of his coronation name was still pulling something from him into the eye on the floor. His skin had lost color, and behind his eyes were golden flashes, like embers of another consciousness trying to learn how to use his face.

"He is using the Capital," the Emperor said with difficulty. "My name... the barriers... the records..."

"I noticed."

Strax’s voice came out far too low.

Samira looked at him.

"If you blow this up, does the city go with it?"

Strax stared at the eye.

"Maybe."

"Then try not to blow it up."

"I am thinking."

"Quickly would be good."

The eye spoke again.

"Anchor."

Strax stepped onto the edge of the drawing. The stolen names beneath his feet twisted, trying to adjust to him, but burned before they could form letters.

"You will not touch her again."

The eye’s voice came fuller now, as if every second gave it more weight.

"Cold. Blue. Little crown. Sweet name."

Strax vanished.

His hand struck through the eye drawn on the floor with White Fire and Black Ice together, but found no flesh, shadow, or common sand. It found a space between things. A thin layer where names, memory, and distance mixed. The blow did not destroy the eye. It cracked part of it. Several stolen names split and returned somewhere above, perhaps to their owners, perhaps to broken records.

The floor answered.

Twelve golden chains rose at once and bound Strax’s arms.

Samira cut four before they closed.

"I told you not to let that complete!"

"I am busy."

"Everyone is!"

The Emperor raised his hand, trying to regain control over his own authority. A weak golden aura spread, but failed halfway. The eye on the floor pulled that aura like sand into a funnel.

He let out a sound of pain and nearly fell.

Strax looked at him.

"Can you close this room?"

"Not while he has part of my name."

"Then tear it back."

The Emperor laughed once, without humor, blood on his teeth.

"What simple advice."

"You are welcome."

Samira drove the greatsword into the floor and held a chain that was trying to pass through her.

"Can you two stop talking like idiots and do something?"

Strax closed his hands around the chains binding his arms.

Instead of burning them, he pulled.

The eye resisted.

The entire hall trembled.

Above them, in the upper archives, Daniela slammed into a shelf and rolled across the floor, cursing before she even stopped.

"I hate this place!"

Cassandra was on her knees, both hands pressed against a mana circle that kept record plaques from crushing Derick and Frieren. The shelves moved by themselves, forming new corridors, closing others, trying to separate the group even more. The names hanging from metal cylinders swayed like bells without sound.

Frieren stood before the cylinder where Ouroboros had been imprisoned.

The problem was that every time she looked at it, she forgot why she was looking.

She blinked.

There was a cylinder.

Important.

Why?

Then Daniela shouted:

"That thread woman is inside there!"

Frieren closed her eyes hard.

"Ouroboros."

The cylinder trembled.

A tiny crack appeared in the metal.

Derick looked at her.

"Who?"

Daniela turned to him.

"Do not start."

"I really do not remember."

Cassandra took a deep breath, jaw locked.

"That is what he is doing. He is erasing her presence from the surface layers."

Frieren took a thin needle from her bag and drove it into her own finger.

Blood ran down.

She wrote a name on her own palm.

Ouroboros.

The instant she finished, part of the memory returned like a slap.

The silent woman. The ancient eyes. The threads. The warning. The gaze toward the desert. The way she spoke as if every sentence came from very far away.

Frieren became serious.

"Write it."

Daniela understood.

She took a knife and scratched the name into her own gauntlet.

Cassandra engraved it with mana onto her sleeve.

Derick hesitated, then cut the wrist of his own glove and wrote it too.

"If this is some kind of arcane heresy..."

Daniela looked at him.

"Shut up and write."

The cylinder trembled again.

From inside, a hand pressed against the metal surface.

Not physically.

Like memory pushing against paper.

Frieren cast three talismans, but this time she did not try to pull. She fastened the talismans to herself, Daniela, and Cassandra.

"We are not going to tear the cylinder out. We are going to remember her strongly enough to create an opening."

Derick looked at the shelves closing around them.

"Is that a plan?"

"It is what we have."

"Great."

Daniela took a deep breath.

"I remember she gave me horrible answers."

The cylinder cracked.

Cassandra spoke next:

"I remember she saw the thread before everyone."

Another crack.

Frieren placed her bloodied hand on the metal.

"I remember she said that if she looked too deeply, she would be seen."

The third crack opened.

From inside, a weak voice whispered:

"Continue."

Before they could do so, Vaelis appeared at the end of one of the bridges, smiling with that tired paper face.

"How touching."

Cassandra raised the barrier, but he did not even try to cross it. He only opened a book.

Daniela immediately felt that something was wrong.

"Frieren!"

Too late.

Vaelis read a line.

Not aloud.

He merely read.

And the name written on Daniela’s gauntlet began to fade.

She ran.

She leapt over a gap between platforms and threw a blade toward his face. Vaelis tilted his head, letting the blade pass, but that was enough to interrupt the reading. Cassandra used the opening to launch a mana needle into the book. Frieren pulled a runic chain and bound the book to the bridge.

Derick advanced from the side.

Vaelis raised an eyebrow.

"Brave."

"I am tired of being surprised by archivists."

Derick struck.

The sword passed through Vaelis’s body, which turned into loose pages. But Derick did not retreat. He had expected it. He spun the blade and hit the shadow projected on the floor, pinning it with an imperial seal engraved in the sword’s guard.

Vaelis stopped smiling.

Daniela smiled.

"That was good."

Derick clenched his teeth.

"Thank you."

Ouroboros’s cylinder cracked once more.

Below, Strax was still pulling the chains.

Samira was covered in fine cuts, not deep, but numerous. Each chain that passed too close tore something small from her. Not blood. Small useless memories. The name of a tavern. The face of an old enemy. An irritating song. She noticed and became furious.

"This thing is stealing little memories!"

"Then do not let it steal big ones," Strax said.

"What shitty advice!"

The Emperor rose with difficulty.

His hand glowed gold, but the light faltered. He looked at the eye on the floor, then at the chains bound to Strax.

"If I try to recover my name, it will pull harder."

"Do it."

"I may fall."

"Then fall after."

Samira laughed, even tired.

"You two are horrible together."

The Emperor closed his eyes.

When he opened them, there was something old in him. Not the entity. Not Vaelis. Something truly imperial. An authority built on generations, oaths, crowns, and blood. He raised his hand against the eye and spoke a word that was not meant for common ears.

The entire hall bent.

The golden fragment inside the eye answered.

Strax saw it.

A luminous line caught between the eye and the Emperor’s chest.

He released one of the chains he was holding, grabbed that line, and burned around it, not on it. White Fire cleansed the contamination. Black Ice froze the pull. The Emperor screamed, but remained standing.

"Now!" Strax snarled.

The Emperor pulled.

The fragment returned like a blade entering his chest.

He fell to his knees, but this time the eye on the floor lost brightness.

Above, the Capital answered.

The golden barriers flickered.

Then lit again, incomplete, but alive.

Monica’s voice burst from Frieren’s crystal.

"Part of the barriers returned! What did you do?"

Frieren answered while holding Ouroboros’s cylinder.

"We recovered a fragment of the imperial name. The situation is still terrible."

"Define terrible."

"Strax and Samira are separated below. Ouroboros is partially erased. Vaelis is here. The Capital has sand in the lower districts."

"That was not a definition. That was a list of nightmares."

"It is the same thing today."

The cylinder finally opened.

Not completely.

A narrow gap formed, and Ouroboros fell out of it as if she had been pushed from a place where time did not work properly. Cassandra caught her before she hit the floor.

Ouroboros was far too pale.

Her eyes had no focus.

Frieren crouched.

"Ouroboros."

She blinked.

"Who called?"

Daniela swallowed dryly.

"Oh, no."

Ouroboros looked at them as if she recognized them by instinct, but not by memory.

"I... lost some threads."

Frieren touched her forehead.

"How many?"

Ouroboros looked at her own hand.

"I do not know. I do not remember which ones existed."

That answer hurt more than any scream.

Vaelis, still pinned by his shadow to Derick’s seal, smiled again.

"See? Everyone loses something here."

Then his body began to tear itself apart.

Not by attack.

By choice.

He abandoned that form, leaving only empty clothes and paper skin falling to the floor.

His voice came from below.

"Run, if you want to arrive before the eye learns how to climb."

On the lower level, the golden eye reacted.

It was no longer only on the floor.

The light began to run into the walls.

Then the ceiling.

The drawing climbed.

Samira looked around.

"That looks a lot like it learning how to climb."

Strax looked at the Emperor, still kneeling.

"Can you walk?"

The Emperor wiped the blood from his mouth.

"I can."

"Then walk."

"To where?"

Strax stared at the eye climbing the walls.

"Up."

The eye opened a vertical slit at the center.

From the other side, sand fell.

A lot of sand.

And along with it, an enormous hand began to cross through.

Not whole.

Only fingers.

But each finger was larger than a man.

Samira stood still for half a second.

"Is that real?"

Strax ignited White Fire and Black Ice in both hands.

"Not for long."

The hand tried to grip the edge of the slit.

Strax advanced.

But in that same instant, the voice returned.

Not to him.

To the North.

In the heart chamber, the little girl screamed.

Mercedes arrived by smashing the door open in ice and wind, saw the open crack in the floor, and the sand beginning to form letters.

One almost complete word.

Her name again.

Mercedes raised both hands.

"Do not even think about it."

The entire castle answered.

Blue ice rose from the chamber, crossing walls, corridors, and towers. The North felt the Monarch pull her entire authority toward a single point. The crack tried to open.

Mercedes closed it.

The pressure threw everyone in the chamber against the walls.

Ingrid protected the little girl with her body.

The girl was crying, but remained awake.

Mercedes drove a spear of ice into her own forearm, bleeding blue mana over the chamber seal.

"You want ancient cold?" she whispered to the crack. "Then swallow."

The chamber froze from the inside out.

In the Capital, the hand crossing the slit stopped.

For one second, only one, the eye lost focus.

Strax used it.

The fusion of White Fire and Black Ice was born again between his hands, more unstable, more violent, less refined than before. Samira widened her eyes.

"Is that going to explode?"

"Probably."

"Great."

Strax launched the blade at the colossal fingers.

The energy cut.

The hand retreated.

Not with human pain.

With surprise.

The slit closed halfway, crushing the sand trying to cross.

The eye screamed.

Above, in the archives, everyone fell to their knees.

Ouroboros held her head.

"He remembered a part."

Frieren went pale.

"Which one?"

Ouroboros looked downward.

"Rage."

On the lower level, Strax was breathing heavily.

The Emperor staggered.

Samira spat on the floor.

"So we managed to anger the buried god."

Strax looked at the still-glowing slit.

"Good."

Samira turned to him.

"Good?"

"Rage makes mistakes."

The slit opened again.

This time, it did not try to cross with a hand.

It tried to cross with a voice.

The word came like a wave.

It was not a name.

It was an order.

"Kneel."

The Emperor dropped to one knee.

Samira locked her legs, but the ground beneath her feet cracked.

In the upper archives, Derick collapsed. Cassandra bit her own hand to keep from falling. Daniela screamed in rage and drove her blade into the floor to hold herself up. Frieren pressed talismans against her ears. Ouroboros simply cried blood from her eyes.

In the heart chamber, the guards fell.

Ingrid remained standing for three seconds.

Then fell too.

The little girl remained seated.

Trembling.

But seated.

Mercedes looked at her, surprised.

The girl was holding the pendant Strax had given her, her eyes full of tears and stubbornness.

"I do not want to," she whispered.

The order broke around her.

In the Capital, Strax smiled.

He felt it.

Not the name.

The resistance.

He planted his feet on the floor, facing the eye.

"Did you hear that?"

The pressure increased.

Strax opened his arms, White Fire on one side, Black Ice on the other.

"She said no."

Then he attacked again.