THE DRAGON BLOOD SON-IN-LAW

chapter 8

The metal gave first

not with a crash but a grinding shriek like the building was clearing its throat.

Adrian spun towards the sound.

A seam opened up in the archive floor, steel plates buckling along an old weld line with dust tumbling down into the darkness below.

Something was moving in the gloom.

Seraphine backed away, grandfathers device already up.

"Adrian."

"I see it."

"No." She lowered her voice by an octave. "You don't."

The overhead light stutters once, twice and then every cabinet in the room snaps shut at once, a flat BOOM reverberating through B7 to finally die against the concrete walls.

Adrian's Dragon Sight flared to life

the white walls dissolving into the layers of silver current running through the structure, bloodline markings appearing like the veins beneath skin and strange symbols pulsing gently along the metal cabinets, waiting to be read.

And beneath it all a thread, thin and silver running from the seam in the floor to Seraphine's side.

Adrian's jaw tightened. "Get behind me."

She didn't move. "Why?"

"Because it's looking for you."

The floor split open to reveal a hand emerging from the gloom, the fingers unnaturally long with near transparent skin and silver light lacing through the veins that should have been hidden.

Seraphine's arm came up, device trained on the limb. "Don't fire."

"Why not?"

"It's not attacking." The hand stilled its fingers opening to reveal a small black ring resting within its palm.

Adrian went still. A dragon curled around a broken crown carved into the metal marking, the same one Vaelric had shown him, the same one buried in his mothers memory, the same one hidden within the archive.

Seraphine's voice is barely a whisper. "That's the mark."

Adrian took a step closer. The hand shoved the ring into his direction.

His System flared to life.

[UNKNOWN DRAVARYN ARTIFACT DETECTED.]

[WARNING: ARTIFACT RECOGNIZES HOST.]

"Why would it recognize me?"

No response. His gaze drifted to the second line.

[ARTIFACT CONDITION: BLOOD MEMORY REQUIRED.]

"Blood Memory," he muttered.

Seraphine caught his wrist. "Don't touch it."

"You already said that."

"And your already reaching for it." He gives an amused smile. "Fair."

His eyes meet the paused hand. It isn't attacking, it isn't even threatening. It's simply waiting, the way a trap would be.

Adrian reaches out and takes the ring in his palm.

The pain doesn't bloom it slams into his senses a white crack behind his eyes before he is elsewhere, fire licking up stone walls, a red moon hanging low over a burning corridor, a woman running with a child screaming against her chest.

Elysra.

Vaelric.

A third figure stands between them wearing a silver crown, their face nothing but static.

"Remove the Core."

Elysra's scream rips through the memory. "No."

"You know what will happen if he keeps it."

"He's a child."

"He's the last door." The scene distorts, Adrian lunges forward trying to force the face of the crowned figure into view -

[MEMORY ACCESS DENIED.]

[UNAUTHORIZED INTERFERENCE.]

[DO NOT IDENTIFY THE CROWNED ENTITY.]

His eyes snap open, wrenching his had back in time for the ring to hit the floor, spinning before coming to a stop.

Seraphine catches him before his knees hit the ground. "Adrian!"

"I'm fine." He stares at the ring as if it might come alive again. "Someone ordered my Core removed."

She goes stiff. "Who?"

"I don't know." He hesitates. "What did you see?"

"I saw a man." She frowns. "Vaelric?"

"No." Somehow that statement felt more hurtful than answering with a yes.

"What did he look like?"

"I couldn't see his face, just a crown. Silver."

Her expression sharpens. Before she can ask anything else, the archive speaker crackles to life, Aleric Sterling's voice filling the room. This time it isn't as calm

"If you're hearing this, the Crown has found him."

Seraphine freezes.

"Adrian, if you're alive — listen."

The lights flicker with the static.

"The Dragon Bloodline was never the beginning. The Dravaryn were guardians. They were never meant to rule."

Adrian's pulse thumps against his ribs. "Then what were they guarding?"

"The Gate."

The floor trembles beneath his boots.

"The same gate Ravian tried to open?" Seraphine whispers.

"No." Something cold coils in Adrian's sternum. "Ravian wasn't trying to open the gate. He was trying to open something beyond it."

Aleric's recording cuts back in, final.

"If the heir awakens before the Crown is destroyed, the gate will recognize his blood."

"And if it does?"

Three seconds of static.

"It will open for him."

The speaker dies, the archive plunging into darkness.

Seraphine's hand finds his in the dark, neither speaking. After a moment something clicks beneath the floor, a small panel opening where the ring had fallen. Inside a black metal case sits, no lock, no handle but two symbols burned into the surface, a dragon and a silver crown.

Seraphine crouches beside it. "That's not Sterlings tech."

"No it isn't."

"How do you know?"

Adrian's Dragon Sight flares to life, current wrapping the case, a heartbeat hidden beneath it. Slow. Old. Alive.

"It's not a container," He murmurs. "It's a prison."

The case shudders, once. Twice. A voice calling out his name spilling from the gap.

"Adrian."

Seraphine straightens. "That voice-"

He nods. The same one had called to him beneath the mansion. His mother's voice but wrong underneath, softer on the top, with something older and hungrier beneath.

"Adrian..." A hairline crack splits the case, gold light oozing out.

Seraphine raises the device again. "Should I destroy it?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"If that's tied to my mother, destroying it could kill her."

"And if it isn't?"

"Then we find out what it is before it finds out what we are."

The crack widens and a pulse of energy slams into them both, Adrian pulling Seraphine into him, turning so the impact takes him across the back. His Dragon Physique soaking up most of it.

[DRAGON PHYSIQUE ACTIVATED.]

[ENERGY IMPACT ABSORBED: 63%.]

[HOST STABILITY: 11%.]

He breathes through it as Seraphine stares down at him. " You said you were fine."

"I lied."

She smiles, small and involuntary. "At least you're honest now."

The case finishes splitting open, nothing inside save a single folded sheet of paper. Adrian reaches for it, Seraphine grabbing his hand.

"I'll do it."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because whatever's in that case already reacted to me, not you."

Her fingers close around the paper. The instant she does her words shift, dark blood rising to form the words, not black but dark red.

THE SON MUST NEVER MEET THE FATHER BEFORE REMEMBERING THE MOTHER.

His face tightens. A second line bleeding up beneath the first.

BECAUSE THE MAN YOU CALL FATHER IS NOT THE ONE WHO RAISED YOU.

Seraphine's breath catches.

Adrian reads it again, a third time.

"No."

The paper burns to ash in her fingers.

"Adrian." Seraphine's hand tightens on his arm.

He looks at her, the first time since he'd woken into this life that she saw something else in his eyes other than fear and anger.

Betrayal.

"Then who raised me?"

Footsteps answer him, slow and even walking down the corridor towards B7.

Seraphine's weapon comes up, Adrian rising to his feet, every muscle coiled. The footsteps stop just outside the archive door.

A voice cuts through the dark. "That is exactly what I came here to tell you."

Adrian's stomach drops to his knees. He knew that voice.

The archive door splits open and Vaelric steps through it, silver hair catching what little light was left and something in his face, the first time he looked afraid of what he'd come to say.