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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Chapter 596
The forest at this hour was its own thing.Not the daytime forest, not the layered light and the visible depth of it. The night forest, the closed-down version, the one that operates on different senses because the visual ones have been mostly removed. The specific sounds of it. The specific smell, the cold version of the forest smell, the one that comes when the temperature drops and the damp rises from the ground and the trees breathe their different night-breath.Asta moved through it with Flora on his left and Mira on his right.They moved in the specific way of people who need to be quiet and know how to be quiet,not the slow, overcautious movement of people trying to be quiet, the practiced movement of people for whom quiet was a thing they had learned to do properly. The camp behind them was still. Nothing had shifted. Nothing had called out.The trees thickened.And then, in the small clearing that the thick trees made between themselves,the specific organic clearing of a for
Chapter 595
The space that was not quite dark and not quite light but had its own specific quality of illumination, the source of which was the dragon himself, the vast, scaled presence that occupied the far end of it the way certain things occupy far ends, with a completeness that made the far end feel closer than it was.The Emperor Dragon was looking at him.Not the patient look. Not the measured look of their usual conversations, the look of something that has been waiting, that has been in the specific frustration of a thing that cannot move on its own and has been waiting for the thing that can to become available again."You're awake.” The dragon said."What happened." Asta said."What happened." The dragon said. "Is that a man put his hand on your throat and spoke seven words of the Dimming Incantation into you, and your body received those words and acted on them because that is what bodies do when the Dimming Incantation is applied correctly, which it was." He looked at Asta with t
Chapter 594
Not running to get there, simply there, the arrival so fast that the between had not been visible, the specific movement of something that had been given its full expression and the full expression was this.His hand found Asta's throat.Not the grip that Asta had used on Eren,something more deliberate than that, more positioned, the hand of someone who knows exactly where they are putting it and why. The specific placement of fingers that has been practiced until the practice has become automatic.And then his lips moved.Low,barely above breath, the volume of something that was not meant for anyone standing at a distance, only for Asta at the distance of the grip. The words were not language in the conversational sense, they were the older version, the incantation version, the words built for function rather than meaning. Ancient and rhythmic, the cadence of them specific, the specific cadence of a technique that required the words in a specific order at a specific pace.They took
Chapter 593
He stopped. "When I made contact with Loki directly, when I tried to reinforce Jabber's resistance and give him the leverage to push back…" He looked at his hands again. "Loki looked at me. That is all. He looked at me. And he told Jabber,in the voice that things use when they speak inside someone's consciousness, the voice that is felt rather than heard, he told Jabber to remove me."The clearing was quiet."And Jabber.” Eren said, his voice going lower."Threw me out. Not because he wanted to. Because when Loki said it with the full weight of what Loki is, the full ancient weight of a god-class dragon speaking to the vessel it has possessed,the vessel does not have the capacity to disobey. Not at this stage of the possession. Not yet."He looked at Asta."I'm sorry." He said.Asta stood there.He looked at Eren for a long moment. At the expression on his face, the genuine, specific sorrow of someone who has tried and has not arrived at the outcome the trying was for and is stan
Chapter 592
The pallor of it. The eyes, not red, not wet, not any of the conventional expressions of grief, just hollow, the specific hollow of someone who has had something taken from the inside rather than the outside, the particular empty quality of a space that was occupied recently and is not occupied now.He was looking at Eren.Eren was looking back at him.The Elf Chief's expression had the quality of someone who has been waiting for this arrival and has been carrying the weight of the waiting in the knowledge that the arrival was going to be this. The specific expression of someone who knows that something that happened was partly a consequence of their involvement and is standing in the presence of the person who has paid the most for the consequence.Asta looked at him.And then his hand came up.Fast, the specific speed of something that had been building in him the whole walk back and had arrived at the expression of itself without the mediation of decision, the body acting on what
Chapter 591
He looked at Jabber's name the same way everyone looked at Jabber's name when they said it now, with the specific quality of a word that used to mean one thing and currently means something else and the transition between the two meanings had not been clean.Flora looked at him.Something moved in her face.Something that knew, the way certain parts of a person know things before the knowing has been delivered properly, that what came next was not something she was going to want to receive.………………….Cassian told them.He did not build to it, he did not arrange the telling for effect or find the gentle approach. He looked at Flora and Elara and Sera and Garrett and he told them what had happened in the forest the same way you tell people things when the things do not have a version that is easy to deliver and you have decided that the slow version is not more kind than the direct version, only slower.He told them about Jabber.About the clearing and the crater and the smoke and Jabber
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