Chapter 49: Dragonkind: A Grand Showdown
In that moment, realization crossed Luna’s face — they hadn’t formally met at all. She quickly recovered. "Apologies, my lady. I’m Luna, the new chef. I’m sorry if I—"
"It’s fine," Princess Elestar cut in, reaching for the gift. Beneath that red hair sat her closest friend from a past life, though she wasn’t yet certain what Vael had done to her name or her past — so anonymity felt like the safer play. "Thank you. I do appreciate the thought."
She stepped past Luna and headed toward her room, her instructor falling into step behind her.
She could feel Luna’s gaze lingering on her back, but she’d already decided — cold shoulder, deliberate distance. Better to keep her past buried until she was ready to face whatever came with digging it back up.
---
The sun had just started sinking when Draken stepped out of the mountain. He’d been starving all day, holding out for sunset before finally going to hunt.
Normally he’d have left at sunset to raid a village and drag a kill back to the mountain — but with the lie about the dragon’s death now circulating, he needed to stay far less visible.
As the sun dipped lower, Draken pushed into the forest, scanning for game. He hadn’t walked far when he spotted a wild boar near a tree, tearing into the carcass of something smaller.
Without a second thought, he closed in with precision, aiming for the boar’s neck before it could even register the danger.
He’d just reached down for it when a voice spoke behind him.
"For someone who’s supposed to be dead, you’re looking well."
Draken spun around. A few feet away stood a woman in a pristine, linen-blue gown, long black hair streaked with a few strands of red — someone he’d never laid eyes on.
"Who are you?" Draken asked, instinctively stepping back. Fear coiled through him, sharper than anything he’d felt fighting Lydia, though he couldn’t place why.
She stepped closer, smiling, though the expression carried no warmth at all. "Oh, dear brother. Forgotten me already? I’m Ursula. Your big sister."
"Big sister?" The question slipped out before he could stop it. He’d believed himself the last of his kind — she had to be lying. But that thought dissolved almost instantly. He could sense it, plain as anything. She was a dragon too.
"What are you? Who are you, and what do you want?" Draken bared his claws, every instinct in him screaming to run despite having no idea what she actually was.
Her smile flickered, then vanished into something far more severe. "I don’t enjoy repeating myself. I am your sister." She began closing the distance, unhurried. He tried to retreat and found his body locked in place, unable to move — whether from some ability of hers or pure fear, he couldn’t tell.
She reached him in seconds, standing a few inches taller, leaning in close enough to cup his face in both hands. "Don’t you think you’ve lived longer than you should have? Time to sleep, don’t you agree?"
Something surged in him then — pure instinct to survive. He tore free of whatever held him and threw himself backward.
He didn’t wait for a reply before unleashing a stream of fire at her. The flames struck and split cleanly around her, as though deflected by an invisible shield.
She laughed softly, brushing smoke from her shoulder. "Not bad. Not bad at all."
Draken lunged, claws extended, but she caught the strike mid-air with her free arm behind her back — and before he could process what had happened, she’d torn the arm clean off.
Draken screamed and staggered back, clutching the ruined stump. She let his severed hand drop to the ground with a dull thud.
He stared down at it, then up at her, her expression as flat and indifferent as before. He knew, without question, that she was a dragon — but he hadn’t seen another since the human-hybrid experiments had ended everything.
As he straightened, his black hair fell across his eyes before settling back into place, and the first piece clicked. His hair matched his old scale color exactly. But hers was both black and red at once, which only deepened the confusion.
During the dragon era, only five royal lines had ever existed, none of them multicolored — the snow dragons, pure white; the lava dragons, red; the sky dragons, black, his own line; the earth dragons, brown; the mist dragons, grey. Never once in recorded history had a dragon carried two colors, not even among crossbred lines. And yet, here she stood.
"Who are you?" he snarled. "What — what are you?"
Her smile returned, faint. "Isn’t it obvious, brother? I’m your siblings."
"Siblings?" he repeated, confused by the plural. Silence stretched as he tried to make sense of it, and then a memory surfaced — decades old, from when he and his siblings had first been caught by the Church and locked away underground.
One line had stayed with him through it all: ’No matter what, we’re siblings.’
That was the last piece falling into place. His brother’s scales had been black, his sister’s red — and here she stood, wearing both.
He didn’t want to believe it. Couldn’t bring himself to accept it. "What are you?" he asked again.
She sighed, clearly running thin on patience. "Are you slow? How long does it take you to connect this? I am your siblings."
Draken’s voice cracked with anger. "I heard you the first time! Even if my body believes it, my mind won’t. What happened to my siblings?"
Heat rolled off him in a visible wave as fury overtook him. "If you won’t tell me, I’ll beat the answer out of you."
He charged again, but she was gone before he closed half the distance. Before he’d even registered her speed, his skull was slammed into the dirt, then yanked back up as she pulled him close. "Don’t let it get to your head."
Her knee met his face next, driving deep enough to send blood pouring from every point of impact.
She lifted him by the hair, his body dangling in the air, and Draken met her gaze — cold, unreadable, a faint, cruel smile curling at the edges.
He’d fought the hero Aurelian himself, crossed blades with more adventurers than he could count, and none of it had prepared him for her. She operated on an entirely different plane. She hadn’t used a single ability yet, and her raw strength alone was more than enough to overwhelm him completely.
But one thought kept circling in his mind. If she truly carried both his siblings within her, why turn on him like this? Why hurt him at all?
Before he could chase the thought further, a brutal punch to his gut sent him crashing through tree after tree until he finally slammed into a thick trunk further down the slope.
She approached at an unhurried pace, hands folded behind her back, that same practiced smile never leaving her face.
Draken slumped against the tree, exhaustion pulling at every limb. He lifted his eyes to meet hers one last time.
"If you’re going to kill me, at least give me the truth. Who are you, and why do you want me dead?"
She studied him for a while, as if weighing the question, then sighed. "I’m the combination of both your siblings. I carry their memories, but I’m not either of them anymore. I’m simply me."
She let that settle before continuing, her smile widening. "I hold no grudge against you. But—" She paused again. "I intend to birth a new dragon species, one meant to stand as the true pinnacle of our kind. And you’re still a problem. A flaw that doesn’t fit the plan I’ve built."
Draken looked at her for a moment, then down at the ground. She was supposed to be proof that the dragon species could return, but instead of bringing hope, their meeting was deadly. She was much stronger, and as the first hybrid, there was a high possibility she was far more evolved than him. Meeting another of his kind after all these years should have been thrilling, but nothing about this encounter brought him joy.
Draken didn’t lift his head, lost somewhere in his own thoughts, eyes fixed on the dirt. After a moment, she sighed again, and seeing no more fight left in him, raised her hands, gathering an attack.
A ball of white flame surged from her palms — and then something strange happened. If she hadn’t been paying close attention, she might have missed it entirely.
She waited for the smoke to clear. Standing in front of Draken now was a woman in a cropped shirt and short black skirt, her smile far brighter than the moment called for.
The attack had simply parted the instant it reached her. She glanced at Draken, then at Ursula, and spoke.
"You’ve been throwing him around pretty badly. Let’s see you try that with me."