Frostbound Dragon's heir

CHAPTER 7

The air inside the inner sanctum of the Repository was sterile, reeking of incense and old parchment. It was a place where history went to be dissected and completely silenced.

I hauled the heavy display crate toward the pedestal, my muscles trembling slightly. Every movement felt like a chore to me. The frost was no longer just in my veins; it was a physical weight, a lethargy that made every limb feel like it was forged from lead.

My left hand was entirely useless now. It had become a pale, mottled grey claw hidden inside my tunic, and the cold was crawling up my shoulder, nipping at the base of my neck.

"Careful with that," the chief curator barked, his face a mask of nervous sweat. "The Emperor is due in three days. If that glass is smudged, it’ll be your head, boy."

I nodded, keeping my gaze lowered. I maneuvered the crate onto the velvet-lined dais. As I began to unseal the transport locks, I caught the metallic clink—a sound I had heard in my nightmares for months.

My grandfather, Alros, had carried it his entire life. It was a chain of interlocking, translucent dragon-scale steel, a relic that hummed with a low-frequency vibration that rattled my teeth.

The Binding Chain!

I scoffed in disbelief. They hadn’t destroyed it and somehow it hadn't been buried in the glacier's collapse either. 

My breath hitched as I stared at the chain as it laid coiled on the cushion like a sleeping viper. If the Imperial mages managed to bridge their connection to it, they would see the truth.

The chain was still tuned to the frequency of the Vornic spirit—the incomplete spirit currently cannibalizing my organs. They would trace the resonance and there’s only one person it’d lead them back to…me.

"Leave it," the curator commanded, waving me away. "The High Mages will handle the final stabilization."

"I just need to... check the seal on the glass, sir," I stammered, my heart slamming against my ribs. "There’s a hairline fracture on the side. If the containment fails, the artifact's aura might leak."

The curator paused, looking at the display with a mix of greed and fear. "Fine. Quickly, and don't touch the glass with your bare filthy hands."

I stepped forward and took a deep breath. The Repository was a tomb, but standing this close to the chain, it felt like the heart of a winter storm. I could feel the spirit inside me screaming—a silent howl of recognition. 

It wanted its anchor back and it wanted to be whole.

I reached out slowly to inspect the glass, but my focus was entirely on the chain. My fingertips brushed the surface, and the reaction that coursed through my veins was instantaneous.

The dragon spirit exploded inside of me like a volcano eruption.

A wave of concentrated energy sizzled out from my skin and a delicate, crystalline web of frost began to bloom on the inner surface of the display glass, racing with impossible speed—not away from the chain, but toward it. 

The ice crawled like a living thing with white tendrils reaching out to touch the steel links, bridging the gap between the relic and its host.

Stop it, I screamed internally, but the spirit ignored me. It was desperate and ravenously hungry. It was finally…home.

I yanked my hand back, but it was too late. The glass was now a map of intricate, pulsating ice-patterns, a beacon of my presence screaming into the dark.

"What is that?" The voice was cold, sharp, and entirely too close to me.

I spun around sharply, trying to catch my breath. A senior Repository mage, his robes embroidered with the silver sigils of the Imperial Inquisitors, had stepped out from the shadows of a nearby pillar. His eyes were not human; they were glowing, mana-drenched lenses that could see the flow of energy in the air.

His eyes were fixed directly on me rather than the display. He watched the frost on the glass, then traced the line of the cold back to my sleeve. His gaze lingered on my tunic, where a faint blue light pulsed beneath the fabric of my chest—the dragon’s very own heartbeat.

The silence in the vault was suddenly suffocating. I felt the mana in the room begin to solidify, the mage preparing a binding spell that would anchor me to the floor and strip the skin from my bones.

He knew. He had seen the resonance, the way the cold reacted to the chain, and the way the boy before him was shivering, not from the temperature, but from the raw, leaking power of an ancient dragon god.

"A refugee," the mage whispered, his voice dripping with sudden, realization-filled contempt. He lifted his hand, a ring on his finger glowing with a harsh, golden light. "From the North."

My survival instinct, honed by months of starvation and terror, shattered the paralysis. I didn't reach for  the frost instead of a weapon.

I didn't care about the Repository anymore. I didn't care about the stealth, the deception, or the delicate dance with Liora. I reached into the hollow, freezing void of my chest and tore the gate wide open.

"You should have left it in the ice," I hissed.

I slammed my left hand onto the stone floor. The pulse of cold that erupted fractured the very foundation of the vault. The stone groaned, cracked, and then exploded outward in a storm of scattered ice-shards.

The mage’s binding spell hit the blast-wave and shattered like glass. He flew backward, crashing into the stone shelves, his robes instantly turning brittle and frozen.

I didn't wait to see if he was dead. I turned back to the display case, the glass already shattered by the shockwave. I snatched the Binding Chain from its velvet cushion. It was freezing, a biting cold that pierced against my palm, syncing with the frantic, ragged beating of the dragon-spirit in my blood.

As I bolted toward the emergency exit, the Repository alarms began to wail—a deep, resonant tolling that shook the marble floor.

I had the chain and  the power. But I had also just declared war on the most powerful man in the world, in the very heart of his palace.

I was no longer a gardener nor a refugee. I was a Vornic, and for the first time since the glacier fell, I felt the dragon’s eyes opening in the dark of my own mind, ready to feed.