The Dragon who called me king

The Broken Seal

The tiny piece of parchment in my hands felt heavier than a boulder. I stared at the neat handwriting, my heart hammering against my ribs. "Your father is alive. Trust nobody."

"Where did you get this, Zane?" I whispered, my voice barely a breath in the damp cell.

Zane Porter nervously shifted from foot to foot. He adjusted his leather goggles, his fingers trembling as he looked toward the heavy iron door of our room. "An older student dropped it by our door right before the guards locked down the basement. Kael, if anyone finds out we have that, they will throw us into the deep pits."

“The boy speaks the truth,” the deep voice of Erebos rumbled inside my mind, his presence vibrating against the royal crest on my chest. “The current ruler cannot allow the old bloodline to wake up. But more importantly, I feel a strange magical pulse coming from beneath your bunk bed. Something is trying to break through the stone.”

Before I could reply to the dragon soul, a sharp cracking sound echoed through the tiny cell.

The stone floor directly under my boots split open. A cold wind blasted through the gap, instantly snuffing out the small candle on our table. Total darkness swallowed the room. Then, a pale, bone-white hand burst through the broken floorboards, its iron-hard fingers locking tightly around my ankle.

I gasped as the freezing touch paralyzed my muscles. The skin around my leg felt like it was turning to ice.

"Kael!" Zane yelled in panic. He reached for a heavy copper wrench on his workbench but a second skeletal hand emerged from the dark hole, clawing at the air and widening the rupture.

“Do not panic, boy,” Erebos commanded, his voice sharp and urgent. “This is a puppet made of old bone and dark magic. Channel a fraction of my core heat into your right heel and crush it!”

I focused entirely on the burning mark hidden beneath my shirt. A sudden rush of liquid fire surged down my right leg, making my veins tingle with intense warmth. I raised my heavy boot and slammed it down with everything I had.

A bright flash of violet light exploded from my sole. The skeletal hand shattered into a dozen smoking fragments, releasing my leg instantly. A low, hollow hiss echoed from the deep gap in the floor before whatever was down there slid back into the dark shadows.

I scrambled away, panting heavily as I pressed my back against the cold stone wall.

Zane stared at the smoking hole, his jaw hanging open. "What... what was that magic? I thought you didn't have a dragon bond!"

"It must have been a stray reaction from the blast in the Grand Hall earlier," I lied quickly, rubbing my sore ankle. "My body must have absorbed some leftover energy."

Zane did not look entirely convinced, but he nodded slowly, his face pale. "Whatever it was, we can't stay here. If Commandant Cole finds out a dark construct broke into our room, she will blame us for the damage and execute us. Follow me. I know a secret exit."

We slipped out into the narrow, winding hallways of the basement. The air grew colder the deeper we walked. Zane led me past rows of iron cells, through a heavy kitchen pantry and behind a stack of empty flour sacks. He pushed a loose stone in the wall, revealing a narrow, sloping tunnel that led downward into the dark.

"The old maintenance grid," Zane whispered. "No guards come down here because the air is too stale."

We walked in silence for several minutes. The only sound was the faint scraping of our boots against the rough stone. As we moved deeper, the voice of Erebos rumbled in my mind again, much sharper this time.

“Stop, Kael. We are approaching an unstable zone. I can feel the resonance of a hidden dragon artifact nearby.”

I froze, causing Zane to bump into my back. Through a narrow crack in the right wall, I could hear muffled voices. I leaned my ear against the stone gap, while Zane carefully shielded our small lantern.

I peered through the narrow crack. To my absolute shock, the hidden passage looked directly down into a secret laboratory built beneath the academy's forbidden section. Glowing purple crystals illuminated the room, casting an eerie light on several large glass tubes filled with swirling liquids.

Two figures were standing near the center of the laboratory.

One of them was Headmaster Vance, wearing his spotless white robes. The other was Lyra Voss. She stood tall, her arms crossed, her silver hair shimmering under the purple light.

"Your bond with the sapphire sky-cutter will keep the public satisfied, Lyra," Headmaster Vance said, his voice carrying clearly through the stone crack. "But we must accelerate our plans. The Ashford boy surviving the ceremony was an unexpected variable."

"Kael Ashford is nothing but a weak commoner," Lyra replied, her voice cold. "My father eliminated his family for a reason. He poses no threat to us."

"You underestimate his bloodline," Vance murmured, his voice turning dark. "The ancient black dragon chose him before it was silenced. We must find out if the boy carries the missing key to the lower prison before he realizes what he truly is."

Lyra frowned slightly. "And what of the boy inside the core? The one who looks exactly like him?"

My breath hitched in my throat. I pressed my face closer to the crack, my blood running completely cold.

"He remains asleep for now," Headmaster Vance said, stepping toward a giant iron door at the back of the lab. "But if Kael Ashford ever sets foot in the lower levels, the resonance will wake him. And if that happens, the illusion of this entire kingdom will crumble."

Suddenly, the voice of Erebos roared in my mind with an intensity that made my vision blur. “Kael! Get down! Now!”

Before I could move, the loose stone wall beneath my hands violently disintegrated. A blast of pure, freezing wind shattered the barrier, throwing Zane and me backward onto the hard floor of the hidden laboratory, right at the feet of Lyra and the Headmaster.