THE DRAGONS ASHES

The cold of the iron training sword seeped straight through Samson’s threadbare leather gloves, aching in the marrow of his knuckles. Rain hammered down on the courtyard of Castle Oakhaven, turning the churned dirt into a soup of mud, manure, and rotting straw.

"Up, boy! Or are you fixing to sleep in the mire?"

Sir Ronald’s voice boomed across the yard, accompanied by the dull, metallic clack of his blunted broadsword tapping against his gilded greaves. Ronald was a knight of the High Council—broad-shouldered, thick-necked, and possessing the sort of casual cruelty that came naturally to men who had never known a day of hunger or cold.

Samson spat a mouthful of bloody mud onto the stones, pushing himself up onto his knees. His chest burned where Ronald’s practice strike had caught him across the ribs.

"Again," Samson rasped, his throat raw.

"Look at him," a voice sneered from the covered portico above the courtyard.

It was Julian, second son of Duke Vance, wrapped in a velvet cloak insulated with silver-fox fur. In his right hand, Julian casually spun a glowing orb of crackling azure light—a simple display of elemental mana, effortless and arrogant. Beside him stood three other young noble apprentices, snickering into their silk sleeves.

"An orphan picked off the gutters of the lower ward," Julian mocked, letting the orb pulse until its light cast harsh shadows across Samson's bruised face. "No house, no silver, and not a single drop of mana in his veins. The Grand Master must have been senile to allow a mana-less dog to swing iron in these halls."

Samson didn't look up at the gallery. He knew better. In the Kingdom of Valen, mana was divinity. Those born with rich magical veins became mages or spell-knights, ascending to nobility. Those with weak mana became common guards, farmers, or craftsmen.

And those like Samson—born entirely hollow, incapable of channeling even a spark of the world's natural energy—were lesser than peasants. They were defects.

"Focus your eyes forward, orphan!" Sir Ronald barked, stepping into a low stance. "A real knight doesn't whine about his betters. Hold your guard!"

Samson raised the heavy iron practice sword. His muscles trembled with fatigue. He had been cleaning the stables since three hours before dawn, scrubbing armor until his palms bled, and now he had endured four hours of relentless sparring. He had no magical shields to soften the blows, no haste spells to quicken his footwork. Only bone, muscle, and a stubborn, quiet fury that refused to let him stay down.

He lunged forward, executing a basic overhead strike.

Ronald didn't even bother to parry. With a quick, disdainful pivot, the seasoned knight brought the flat of his blade around, slamming it squarely into Samson’s temple.

The world went white. Samson hit the mud hard, his sword clattering against the cobblestones, out of reach.

Laughter erupted from the portico above. Julian’s voice carried over the patter of the rain. "Give him a broom, Sir Ronald! That's the only iron he's fit to wield!"

"Class dismissed," Ronald growled, wiping the rain from his face as he turned his back on the fallen apprentice. "Clean the weapons, boy. If there’s a speck of rust on a single blade by sundown, you won't eat until Sabbath."

Samson lay in the freezing mud, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. Blood dripped from his brow, stinging his left eye. He forced his hand to close around the mud-slick grip of his iron sword, his knuckles turning white.

Not yet, he thought, staring blindly into the red-tinted darkness behind his eyelids. I won't die in their gutter.

By nightfall, the storm had transformed into a howling gale. High in the northern towers, the mages of the Royal Order were holding a banquet to celebrate Julian’s upcoming induction into the High Arcana. The warmth of roaring hearths and the scent of roasted venison floated down through the stone shafts, mocking the frigid darkness of the lower armory where Samson worked alone.

He scrubbed a rust spot on an officer's steel breastplate, his hands numb, his ribs throbbing with every breath.

Suddenly, the stone beneath his boots vibrated.

It wasn't the deep rumble of thunder. It was a sharp, unnatural tremor that set the racks of halberds ringing like iron bells.

BOOM.

A blast shattered the night air, far louder than any lightning strike. The heavy oak doors of the armory rattled in their iron frames. Dust and mortar rained down from the vaulted ceiling.

Samson dropped his oil rag, reaching instinctively for the nearest steel broadsword on the rack.

Outside, shrieks of terror shattered the evening quiet, followed by the terrifying, crackling roar of black fire.

Samson sprinted out of the armory, bursting into the central courtyard. The sight made his blood run cold.

The sky above Castle Oakhaven was torn open. A swirling, violet-black rift hung above the main keep, bleeding unnatural darkness into the clouds. Down from the rift poured figures clad in jagged, shadow-woven armor—dark wizards of the Abyss, accompanied by skeletal horrors and gargantuan, three-headed beasts of shadow.

The castle ward was a slaughterhouse.

Noble mages, caught off guard in their dining robes, were firing frantic volleys of fireballs and lightning, but the dark invaders moved with terrifying speed. Black tendrils of magic pierced through wards, snapping barrier shields like glass.

"Fall back to the Inner Keep!" a voice screamed.

Samson turned to see Sir Ronald, his fine plate armor scorched black, desperately parrying the strikes of a towering dark sorcerer whose face was a featureless mask of bone. With a flick of the sorcerer’s hand, a lance of black lightning struck Ronald square in the chest. The knight’s cry was cut short as he disintegrated into a heap of smoldering ash.

Samson froze. Panic screamed at him to run, to hide in the deep cellars below the stables.

Then he heard a familiar, terrified shriek.

Across the burning courtyard, Julian was pinned beneath a fallen stone pillar. His fine velvet cloak was charred, his face pale with terror. Spinning above him was a dark wizard, hands dripping with a sphere of pitch-black, necrotic flame.

"Please!" Julian begged, his voice high and shrill, tears cutting tracks through the soot on his cheeks. "My father is Duke Vance! I have gold! I have mana! Take whatever you want!"

The dark wizard did not speak. He lowered his hands, preparing to unleash the lethal sphere.

Samson didn't think. He didn't process the utter foolishness of what he was doing. His legs moved on instinct, propelled by the raw, stubborn refusal to let anyone die helpless in the dirt.

He covered the thirty yards across the mud in seconds. With a hoarse battle cry, Samson vaulted over the collapsed pillar, driving his steel broadsword with all his weight straight into the dark wizard's back.

The steel bit deep, piercing the sorcerer's spine.

The wizard shrieked, a sound like tearing parchment, and turned into a cloud of black ash. But as the dark spell dissolved, the lingering kinetic force of the necrotic energy erupted outward.

The blast caught Samson full in the chest.

He was thrown twenty feet backward, crashing violently against the base of the courtyard fountain. His armor shattered. The skin across his torso blackened and split under the searing heat of necrotic rot. He could feel his ribs crushed, his lungs filling with blood, his heart slowing to a weak, agonizing flutter.

Beside him, Julian scrambled out from under the pillar, cast one terrified glance at Samson’s broken body, and fled toward the inner gates without looking back.

Samson lay in the rising pool of cold rain and his own blood. His vision began to narrow, darkness creeping in from the edges.

So this is it, he thought bitterly. No house. No name. Dying on the stones of a noble's yard, killed by a spell I could never even cast.

The necrotic rot spread toward his heart, freezing his blood, snuffing out the last ember of his mortality. His heart gave one last, agonizing thump.

Then, deep within the marrow of his bones—far deeper than any mana vein the court mages had ever tested—something snapped.

It was not mana. It was not the cold, ambient magic of the world.

It was a roaring, subterranean inferno.

A sound echoed in Samson's mind—a sound that did not belong to the world of men. It was the deafening, reverberating roar of an ancient entity, sleeping since the dawn of creation, finally awakened by the taste of its vessel's blood.

YOU ARE OF THE BLOOD THAT COMMANDS THE SKIES, a voice thundered inside his skull, vibrating through his very soul. YOU DO NOT BEND. YOU DO NOT KNEEL. AWAKEN, DRAGON.

A blinding, crimson light erupted from Samson’s chest.

The necrotic rot covering his skin did not just heal—it was violently burned away. His shattered ribs snapped back into place with audible cracks. His heart restarted, beating not with the weak rhythm of a human, but with the heavy, rhythmic thud of a furnace.

The crimson light surged outward in a shockwave of pure, unadulterated draconic pressure.

The dark wizards invading the courtyard instantly froze. The skeletal beasts dropped to their knees, their dark magic dissolving in mid-air, overwhelmed by an ancient, predatory authority that predated the stars.

Samson stood up.

He didn't feel the rain anymore. He didn't feel the cold. Golden, slit-pupiled eyes burned beneath his brow, glowing like twin suns in the storm. Intricate, crimson scales flickered across his forearms and chest before melting beneath his skin, filling his veins with molten gold.

High above the clouds, beyond the dark rift of the abyssal invaders, a massive shadow shifted.

A creature of legend—a dragon whose wings spanned the horizon, scales gleaming like polished ruby—pierced the thunderheads. It did not attack. It swooped low over Castle Oakhaven, dipping its massive head toward the small, glowing figure standing in the center of the ruined courtyard.

It let out a cry of absolute submission and reverence.

Samson looked up at the dark wizards hovering above him, his voice echoing with the layered, terrifying weight of a thousand ancient storms.

"My turn," Samson said.