2025-12-15 20:35:50Asta’s neck hurt from looking up, his mouth was still open but he didn’t care.
Rivers of fire floated above him like liquid stars. Shelves taller than the imperial palace stretched into darkness. Students flew between them on wings of flame, on boots of flame, on nothing but raw power and laughter.
Books the size of doors glided past on glowing rails. Somewhere far away a phoenix made of pure light screeched, and the sound turned into golden musical notes that rained down like petals.
Asta finally found his voice. It came out a squeak.
“How… How is something like this in an underground cave?”
Old Man Kael folded his arms, looking annoyingly proud.
“This isn’t a cave, boy. This is the Grand Crimson Library, built two thousand years ago inside a hollowed-out heart-crystal geode the size of a mountain.”
“The First Flame Emperor and the Nine Dragon Sovereigns themselves carved the walls with living starfire and bound the whole thing with Aetherial Voidstone. It can’t collapse. It can’t burn. It can’t even be found unless you already know the way.”
Asta spun in a slow circle, his eyes huge.
“So… the academy knows about this place?”
Kael snorted.
“Of course they know. Who do you think keeps the words fresh every century?”
“Then why have they never told us? Why isn’t this in the brochures? ‘Come study at Crimson Flame Academy,free flying included!’”
Kael gave him a flat look.
“Because the official story is that the lower levels are ‘structurally unstable’ and might collapse on students’ heads if we let first-years down here.”
He rolled his eyes so hard Asta worried for his health.
“Truth is, they’re terrified of what would happen if a thousand hormone-filled teenagers with god-level flames had unlimited access to forbidden knowledge. Last time they tried an open policy, someone summoned a minor void prince in the cafeteria. It took three archmages and a very angry lunch lady to put it back.”
Asta barked a laugh before he could stop himself.
“You’re kidding.”
“Wish I was.”
Kael jerked his chin toward a cluster of floating tables near the center.
“Sit. Don’t touch anything that glows red. I’ll be back once I find the volumes on sealed primordial dragons. There are… a few.”
He shuffled off as he muttered about
“Organized chaos” and “kids these days.”
Asta wandered toward the tables, his head still tilted back, trying to take it all in. He was so busy staring at a boy doing barrel rolls on crimson flame wings that he walked straight into someone.
Books exploded everywhere.
“Oh,crap,sorry!”
Asta dropped to his knees, scrambling to gather scrolls and heavy tomes before they rolled into a nearby fire-river.
“I didn’t see you, I was looking at the ceiling and…”
A soft laugh stopped him.
“It’s okay. I’m the one who wasn’t watching where I was going… again.”
Asta looked up.
Red hair with gold streaks, tied in a messy ponytail. Emerald eyes. A small, shy smile. Freckles across her nose like someone had sprinkled cinnamon on cream.
He knew that face.
“Flora…?”
“Hey, Asta.”
She crouched to help, stacking books with quick, practiced movements.
“Guess we’re making a habit of bumping into each other.”
“Yeah.”
He grinned despite himself.
“Third time’s the charm, right?”
One of the books he picked up had a black leather cover embossed with a coiled dragon. The title was in old runes, but he could read it clearly enough: Draconomicon Arcanum – Volume VII.
He turned it over in his hands.
“You read about dragons?”
Flora’s cheeks went pink, but her smile got wider.
“You could say I’m kind of a dragon nerd. I’ve read every public volume twice and bribed three librarians for the restricted ones.”
Asta’s eyebrows shot up.
“Wait. So you actually know dragons?”
She laughed, soft and warm.
“More than is probably healthy.”
He glanced around,no sign of Kael yet. He gestured to the nearest floating bench.
“Can you… tell me? Everything you know? I mean,if you have time.”
Flora hesitated, then shrugged.
“I owe you for earlier. Those two idiots would’ve…”
She shook her head.
“Yeah. I have time.”
They sat. The bench hovered two feet off the ground and wobbled gently, like a boat on calm water.
Flora tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and started talking, her voice low but excited.
“Okay, so in the known realms there are twenty greater dragon bloodlines still active. You’ve got your standard elemental ones,Fire, Ice, Storm, Earth, Light, Shadow. Then the rare ones: Void, Time, Dream, Blood, and Soul. Each bloodline has sub-branches.”
“For example, Crimson Inferno dragons are pure destruction, while Phoenix-kin dragons focus on rebirth and healing. Storm dragons love riddles and collect sky-islands. Void dragons…”
She lowered her voice.
“They say if a void dragon looks at you too long, pieces of your shadow just… disappear.”
Asta was leaning forward, totally hooked.
“Then there are the ancient ones.”
She continued, her eyes shining.
“The Primordial Nine. They’re not bloodlines,they’re individuals. Each one is basically a walking apocalypse. The empire’s founding myth says the First Emperor only won because the Nine were asleep. If even one wakes up angry, countries vanish.”
She counted on her fingers.
“There’s Aurion the Golden Dawn, father of light dragons.”
“Nyxara the Star-Eater, queen of void.”
“Glacira, the Eternal Winter.”
“Terravox, who sings earthquakes.”
“Tempestus, lord of all storms.”
“Hemoria the Blood Moon.”
“Somnus, who rules dreams and nightmares.”
“And Oblivion, the dragon that erases names from history itself.”
Asta swallowed hard.
“And the ninth?”
Flora’s voice dropped to almost a whisper.
“The ninth one… the records are torn out of every book. Even the forbidden ones. People only call it ‘the Ash-Bringer’ or ‘the End-Flame.’ They say its fire doesn’t burn flesh,it burns possibility. Entire futures. They say when it roared the first time, three kingdoms were never born.”
She leaned closer, her eyes bright with excitement and fear.
“Some scholars think the ninth dragon isn’t asleep. They think it was sealed inside a human bloodline so it could never wake up fully. A living cage. And if that seal ever…”
Cough! Cough!
A loud, fake cough came from behind them.
Flora jumped so hard she nearly fell off the bench.
Old Man Kael stood there, three ancient books under one arm, giving her the most dramatic disapproving-grandpa stare in history.
“Young lady, some of us are trying to do research, not gossip about bedtime monsters.”
Flora went bright red.
“S-sorry, Head Labourer Kael! I was just…I have to go!”
She scooped her books and flashed Asta a quick smile.
“See you around, Asta. Stay safe.”
And she was gone, red ponytail bouncing as she darted between floating shelves.
Kael dropped into the seat with a grunt and slammed the biggest book onto the table. Dust exploded outward in a gray cloud that made Asta cough.
The cover was black dragon-scale leather, title burned deep with real fire:
The Ledger of the Nine Primordial Beasts
Kael opened it carefully. Pages crackled like dry leaves. He flipped past beautiful illuminated paintings of dragons,gold, white, violet, each more terrifying than the last.
Then he stopped.
The next page was torn out. Not cut,ripped. Jagged edges, like someone had been in a hurry or angry.
Kael’s finger traced the empty space where the chapter should have been.
“Well, that’s inconvenient.”
He muttered.
Asta leaned over.
“What’s missing?”
The old man’s voice was quiet, almost reverent.
“The chapter that would tell us e
xactly which of the Nine is inside you, boy.”
He looked up, his eyes sharp as broken glass.
“Someone went through a lot of trouble to make sure no one ever finds out.”
He closed the book slowly.
“Someone tore out the only record of the dragon sealed inside the Xavier heir…but who?”
Previous Chapter
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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