2025-12-15 20:32:51The grand hall felt like it was shrinking around Asta.
Every laugh, whisper and fingers pointed at him felt like a needle stabbing straight into his chest.
Elara stood there, her arm now looped through Lucien Pyre’s, her perfect smile turned sharp and cruel. Lucien kept his hand on her waist like she belonged to him now.
Asta couldn’t move. His feet felt glued to the marble floor.
“Elara… what are you saying?”
His voice came out small and broken.
Elara rolled her eyes, like he was a child who didn’t understand simple words.
“Asta, be serious. You have no flame. Zero flame, meaning you have nothing to offer me.”
She flicked her hair.
“Do you really think the Veyron family will let their only daughter marry a boy who can’t even light a candle? A boy who will never be clan head? A boy who is… useless?”
The word useless echoed in the hall.
Someone behind Asta laughed out loud.
“Useless Xavier! Haha!”
Another voice joined in.
“Guess the great Fire Lord’s bloodline ends with a dud!”
More laughter. Louder and Crueler.
A group of girls near the front covered their mouths, pretending to be sad, but their eyes were shining with joy.
One of them spoke loud enough for everyone to hear.
“I feel bad for Elara. She wasted years on that trash.”
Another girl giggled.
“At least now she can be with a real man. Lucien is Class S. Asta is… Class Nothing.”
Asta’s hands shook at his sides. Tears burned in his eyes, but he refused to let them fall.
He looked at Elara, searching for the girl who used to sneak into his room at night, who used to hold his hand under the table, who promised they would be together forever.
That girl was gone.
Now she looked at him like he was dirt under her shoe.
Lucien leaned down and kissed Elara’s cheek, slow and showy, right in front of Asta.
“Don’t worry, babe,” he said loud enough for the whole hall to hear. “I’ll keep you warm tonight. No need for dead flames.”
The crowd roared with laughter.
Someone started chanting.
“Use-less! Use-less! Use-less!”
More voices joined in. The chant grew louder and louder.
Asta’s knees felt weak.
He remembered every moment with Elara.
The first time she kissed him under the cherry blossom tree.
The night she whispered, “When you become clan head, I’ll be right by your side.”
The promise ring he was planning to give her tomorrow.
All of it… lies.
Asta’s voice cracked when he finally spoke.
“So… all this time… you were just waiting to see if I would be strong enough?”
Elara didn’t even blink.
“Yes,” she said coldly. “Love is nice, Asta. But power is better.”
She turned away, pressing herself closer to Lucien.
Lucien smirked over his shoulder.
“Run along now, little flameless boy. The adults are talking.”
Asta stood there, alone in the middle of the laughing crowd.
His heart felt like someone had ripped it out and stepped on it.
He turned slowly and walked.
Every step felt heavy.
The students parted like he was a disease.
Some spat on the floor as he passed.
Some made fake crying noises.
“Poor baby Asta… no fire… boo-hoo…”
He kept walking, eyes on the floor, tears finally falling.
He didn’t see Cassian standing at the side of the stage.
Cassian watched him with cold, satisfied eyes.
A tiny, dark smile on his lips.
Asta pushed through the big doors and ran.
He ran past the gardens, past the training fields, all the way to the back of the academy where no one ever went.
He collapsed against an old tree, breathing hard, tears running down his face.
“Why…?” he whispered to no one. “Why me…?”
He punched the tree with his fist.
Once. Twice. Three times.
His knuckles bled, but he didn’t care.
“I was supposed to be the strongest… I was supposed to protect everyone… I was supposed to make Father proud…How are my going to find the man in the black clorck?”
He slid down the tree and sat on the ground, hugging his knees.
The sun was setting. The sky turned blood red.
A shadow fell over him.
Asta looked up, his eyes red and wet.
Cassian stood there with his hands in his pockets, looking down at him.
Cassian’s voice was quiet, but it cut like a knife.
“Feeling sorry for yourself?”
Asta wiped his eyes fast.
“Leave me alone, Cassian.”
Cassian didn’t move.
“You know what the funny part is?”
He crouched down so they were eye to eye.
“Everyone always said you would be the strongest. The real son of the strongest Flame mage.The true heir. And look at you now.”
He laughed, soft and cruel.
“No flame nor power. You have nothing.”
Asta looked away.
Cassian leaned closer.
“From today, I am the head of the Xavier clan. Not you. Me.”
He stood up.
“And tomorrow… I’ll make sure the whole kingdom knows who the real Xavier is.”
He turned and walked away, his footsteps slow and proud.
Asta stayed under the tree as the sky turned dark.
Night came, a cold wind blew, he didn’t move a muscle.
Hours passed.
Then… something strange happened, he had a strange burning in his heart as he crouched to the side of his heart.
‘I can't believe a heart break and humiliation can cause so much pain.’
He muttered to himself as his vision became blurry and he lay and passed out
A deep, ancient voice whispered inside his head, like thunder from far away. He then found himself in a world that seems to be another realm, he got up and walked around and then stumbled on a big gate with a hands print as a key hold. As he gazed at the gate, a big lizard-like red eye immediately snapped open.
Asta stumbled backwards,
keeping his distance from the gate.
The eye then drew near and nearer to the gate and Asta's eyes widened as he saw the creature that had those eyes.
“You…you are a dra…dragon.”
“Child, let me out…let me out of here!!”
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Latest Chapter
Chapter 744: THE COUNCIL IN CHAOS
The grand council chamber of the capital had not held this many raised voices at once since the founding accords were signed, and even that occasion, according to the older histories, had been a more orderly affair.Every major clan leader sat, or rather did not sit, in the ring of high-backed chairs arranged around the chamber's central floor, the seats themselves largely abandoned in favor of standing, pacing, gesturing, the specific physical restlessness of powerful people who had run out of ways to project calm.Cassian sat near the chamber's east arch, one of the few still in his chair, watching the room with the stillness of a man conserving his energy for whatever came after the shouting."Simultaneous."A clan leader near the center of the floor said it for perhaps the fourth time, his hands spread as if the word itself needed to be held up for the room's inspection."Every royal castle. Every nation. At the same hour. That is not opportunism. That is coordination.""Coordinat
Chapter 743
One syllable, low, carrying an alien weight in its consonants that recalled the incantation from minutes before, ancient and heavy, a sound shaped by a mouth that had never grown up speaking anything currently living, and every torch along the walls dimmed by a fraction as it passed through the air, as though the room itself had flinched.……..Dero's response came instantly.She raised one hand, fingers spread, and the air in front of her tore open.Not open. Tore. The way fabric gives way when tension finally exceeds what the weave can hold, a jagged, swirling wound of grey flame spreading outward from a single point, widening, stabilizing, until it stood taller than any of them and wider than the doorway it framed, a portal that showed nothing of what waited on the other side of it so much as it showed the absence of a side at all, a grey churn that hurt slightly to look at directly.The heat coming off it was different from Loki's, colder somehow despite the flame, a heat that pull
Chapter 742:DEPARTURE THROUGH THE RIFT
The Grand Master rose to his feet, still working the last tremor of the incantation out of his shoulders, the new fullness of his restored power settling into him in visible increments, a straightening of the spine, a steadiness returning to hands that had shaken faintly only minutes before.He gestured toward the three of them with one open hand, the specific gesture of a man presenting something he had personally cultivated."Descendants."He said."Of your former, loyal minions."Loki's eyes moved across the three faces again, slower this time, the assessment deepening into something closer to recognition, the specific quality of a man searching a new face for the ghost of an old one and finding it there waiting for him.He stopped on Kyx first.Her posture. The set of her jaw. Something in the shape of her eyes that belonged, apparently, to someone else entirely, someone who had stood in this same room a very long time ago and had likely knelt in the same place she was standing no
Chapter 741
The Grand Master stood completely still.His eyes were fixed forward, and whatever he was feeling as the incantation built was not visible on his face because he had decided it was not going to be visible on his face, the specific composed stillness of someone who had been through a great many things and had developed considerable capacity for absorbing them quietly.……..Kyx had been watching the entire thing with the focused attention of someone trying to understand something and finding that understanding kept arriving partially, that each piece led to the edge of the next piece rather than to a complete picture."What is he doing?" She said.Gull was already in motion, the specific small, self-satisfied motion of a man who had been waiting for someone to ask exactly that question and had spent the intervening time preparing an answer that was perhaps slightly more elaborate than the situation strictly required."What we're looking at." He said, lowering his voice to the specific
Chapter 740:THE ANCIENT PACT AND POWER SHARING
"It's good to be back." Loki said.He said it the way he said most things, with the smooth, unhurried quality of someone who had decided long ago that rushing words was a waste of the specific pleasure that a well-placed sentence could produce when given adequate time to land.His eyes moved across the Grand Master's face in the specific reading way of someone who was cataloguing something, not assessing threat, something closer to taking stock, the inventory of someone who had been away and was checking what remained while they were gone."Grand Master." He continued. "It seems you are almost there too."The Grand Master inclined his head slightly."The preparations are nearly complete.” He said. "Everything is moving according to plan." A pause, and something in the pause carried the specific weight of someone arriving at a part of a conversation they had been building toward. "But there is something we still need. Something that is, not yet within our reach."Loki's eyes mov
Chapter 739
"I am just telling you as a friend, Web. As someone who cares about your continued existence and the condition of your general wellbeing going forward.""Shut up." Web hissed."I'm genuinely trying to help…""Gull.""...look out for you…""I will remove your ability to speak and the method I use will not be subtle…"Kyx looked at both of them."Shut up.” She said.She said it at the same volume as the rest of the conversation, but with the specific flat quality that made volume irrelevant. Both of them went silent with the specific simultaneous stoppage of two people who had received a clear signal and had the collective sense to act on it.…….Loki and Dero had drawn apart.Not completely,his hands were still loosely holding hers, and she was still close enough that when he spoke again it was for her rather than for the room."I've missed you."He said. Low, private, in the smooth serpentine register that his voice had settled into since the moment of awakening. "Mi amor."Dero's
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