Cassian Lee groaned, rolling over his king-sized bed, one arm flung over an expensive silk pillow, the other dangling off the edge of his bed. His head throbbed. His phone was exploding with messages somewhere on the floor. He tried to remember the night but all he got were flashes music that shook the walls, whiskey spilling over his glass, someone saying his name and then

The dance floor.

His shirt was unbuttoned.

A girl in a tight silver dress, her breasts practically bursting from her dress, her lips on his neck- or was that someone else? The way the crowd parted for him when he walked.

Cassian smirked to himself. Yeah… that tracks….. an 8 hour night.

Downstairs, the smell of coffee and the faint sound of Lexie humming pulled him from bed. He slid on the nearest shirt someone’s, maybe his, maybe someone else’s and walked barefoot down the marble steps of his house.

Lexie stood in the middle of the kitchen wearing one of his shirts and nothing else, hair twisted into a messy bun, her glasses perched crookedly on her nose.She looked way too composed for someone who’d been drinking until 3 a.m

“Morning, superstar,” she said pouring another cup.

“Want me to remind you how much of a disaster you were last night, or do you want to keep pretending you don’t remember until you see the videos all over the web.”

Cassian rubbed his temple. “Surprise me, princess”

Lexie leaned against the counter,hazel eyes glinting. “You were on the dance floor, cocky as ever, grinding with that hottie in the silver dress, super curvy. And then you” she mimicked tearing off a jacket “ decided the room needed to see your physique. The whole club when wild”

Cassian’s smirk widened. “Thanks for the highlight reel”

“I’m serious, SonG,” She said trying not to laugh. “What is your dad going to say when he sees the photos and videos?”

He stretched lazily, wincing at the pounding of his head. “He should be proud. The physics are perfect.”

Lexie blinked. “Don’t you mean—?”

“My physique,” he corrected, flashing that grin— the one that melted half the school, teachers included.

“Can you blame me? If you got it, show it.”

He walked towards her and took the cup from her hands, sipped it, then handed it back with a wink before turning towards the stairs.

“School starts in an hour,” She called after him.

“I know Hexie” He said with out looking back.” Just enough time to remind everyone why they talk about me.”

“Or swoon over the posts from last night.” Lexie muttered, before taking another sip of her coffee.

The morning slashed through the curtain like it had a grudge.

Cassian Lee groaned, rolling over his king-sized bed, one arm flung over an expensive silk pillow, the other dangling off the edge of his bed. His head throbbed. His phone was exploding with messages somewhere on the floor. He tried to remember the night but all he got were flashes— music that shook the walls, whiskey spilling over his glass, someone saying his name and then—

the dance floor.

His shirt was unbuttoned.

A girl in a tight silver dress, her breasts practically bursting from her dress, her lips on his neck- or was that someone else? The way the crowd parted for him when he walked.

Cassian smirked to himself. Yeah… that tracks an 8 hour night.

Downstairs, the smell of coffee and the faint sound of Lexie humming pulled him from bed. He slid on the nearest shirt— someone’s, maybe his, maybe someone else’s— and walked barefoot down the marble steps of his house.

Lexie stood in the middle of the kitchen wearing one of his shirts and nothing else, hair twisted into a messy bun, her glasses perched crookedly on her nose.She looked way too composed for someone who’d been drinking until 3 a.m

“Morning, superstar,” she said pouring another cup. “Want me to remind you how much of a disaster you were last night, or do you want to keep pretending you don’t remember until you see the videos all over the web.”

Cassian rubbed his temple. “Surprise me, princess”

Lexie leaned against the counter,hazel eyes glinting. “You were on the dance floor, cocky as ever, grinding with that hottie in the silver dress, super curvy. And then you—” she mimicked tearing off a jacket-- “ decided the room needed to see your physique. The whole club when wild”

Cassian’s smirk widened. “Thanks for the highlight reel”

“I’m serious, SonG,” She said trying not to laugh. “What is your dad going to say when he sees the photos and videos?”

He stretched lazily, wincing at the pounding of his head. “He should be proud. The physics are perfect.”

Lexie blinked. “Don’t you mean—?”

“My physique,” he corrected, flashing that grin— the one that melted half the school, teachers included.

“Can you blame me? If you got it, show it.”

He walked towards her and took the cup from her hands, sipped it, then handed it back with a wink before turning towards the stairs.

“School starts in an hour,” She called after him.

“I know Hexie” He said with out looking back.” Just enough time to remind everyone why they talk about me.”

“Or swoon over the posts from last night.” Lexie muttered, before taking another sip of her coffee.

A sound emitted around me, low, dark terrifying.Not from the brush. Not from the sky. It felt like it crawled out of the stone under my claws and wrapped around my ribs.

“Ellesar, Your Body Will Be Broken Many Times Over And You Won’t Die, But If Your Heart Is Broken Even Once You Will Shift Back Into What You Were Supposed To Be. That Is Your Curse Ellesar. I Pieces One Of The Chosen Of The Stars Has Spoken”.

I couldn’t move right. My legs didn’t work. My eyes stung.

Shapes. Wings. Shadows above me.

Was that? Was that her? The voice from the shell?

“What the hell is that?”

That was the first thing I heard.

What... was what?

“Are you sure this was our egg?”

I blinked. They were talking like I wasn’t here. Like I wasn’t even real.

Her voice sounded sharp now. Not warm. Not soft. Cold and disgusted.

“I thought so. But now that I see it... surely this ugly little freak can’t be ours. Do we have to keep it?”

I felt something twist. I didn’t know what it was just something broke. Right in my chest.Ugly.Freak. The words stuck like thorns. I didn’t understand all of them, but I felt them. I knew what they meant.

“It looks like something that crawled out of a corpse.”

She said that. About me.I opened my mouth. No words came out. Just a small, wet cough. A sound.A mistake. They looked at me like I was some disease they wanted to shake off.Then… they turned. And flew. No words. No name. No goodbye. Gone.

Just like that.

Wind from their wings knocked me sideways. Cold. Hard.I laid there, sticky and shaking, watching the sky swallow them up. My body hurt. My brain hurt worse. Was that it? Was that my beginning?They didn’t say my name.I didn’t have one.Who the hell was I supposed to be?

Then—

“RAAAARGHHHHHHH!”

Something above. Roaring. Screaming. Angry sky-beast.

It rushed over me like death itself.

I screamed. Flattened. Hid my head. Curled up into a ball and prayed I’d disappear.

My heart wouldn’t stop. It felt like it was trying to escape me.

“I don’t... I don’t wanna die yet,” I whispered. “I didn’t even get to be someone, anybody.”

“What you doing, little fella?”

The voice cracked through my fear. I jerked my head up, claws scraping the stone.

A massive yellow snout hovered over me, teeth the size of my body. His eyes were wide, brown, stupidly warm but dangerous all the same.

“My name’s Leo. What’s yours?”

I bared my teeth. Small. Pointy. Pathetic. Still, it was all I had.

“Don’t have one,” I growled.

Leo tilted his head, like he thought I was being shy. “I like you, little guy. Let’s be friends. Where are your parents?”

“They left me.” The words burned coming out. My chest throbbed. “Didn’t even fucking look back.”

Leo’s smile faltered, then softened into something worse. Pity. I hated it. I hissed, tail lashing, and turned my head away. He wasn’t them, but he wasn’t mine either. I didn’t owe him anything.

And then- Something cold and heavy slid into me, not from outside, but from inside. Like a whisper etched into my bones.

Ellesar.

The sound was old. Heavy. Like it had always been there, waiting. I froze. My heart stuttered. The name wasn’t his. It wasn’t hers. It wasn’t his either. It was mine.

Ellesar.

I rolled it in my mind, sharp like stone, bitter like smoke. A name they couldn’t strip from me even when they left.

Leo was still watching me, frowning a little. “Hey, it’s okay, little guy—”

“Don’t call me that.” My voice came out cracked, but stronger than before. My claws dug into the rock. “I’m not your little guy.”

Leo blinked, surprised.

I bared my teeth again. “My name’s Ellesar.”

The whisper echoed through me, and this time I believed it.

Leo sat back, slow, like he was trying not to spook me. “Alright, Ellesar,” he said carefully. “Fair enough.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t thank him. I didn’t trust him. But inside, the ember of that name burned. And it was mine. Leo didn’t leave.

He should’ve. That’s what I thought the second he sat down, his yellow bulk shifting the stones, his breathing steady like he had all the right in the world to be here. Most things leave when I hiss. That’s how it works. That’s what they did. That’s what my parents did.

But he just sat, scratching at the dirt with one claw, like this was normal. Like I was normal. That mattered. More than I wanted to admit.

I turned my head so he wouldn’t see me watching, but I still noticed when he eased down close. Not touching thank the stars and shadows, but near enough that the heat off his scales reached me when the wind cut through. Near enough that when the silence stretched long, his steady breaths filled it.

I told myself it didn’t mean anything. Told myself I didn’t care.
“Don’t get used to it,” I muttered, voice sharper than my claws, darker than night.

He only snorted. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Like it was obvious. Like it was nothing.

My chest felt tight, and I hated it. I edged closer without meaning to, claws digging the dirt, my tail brushing his paw like an accident I refused to own up to.

That’s when his head tilted, brown eyes pinning me like he was dissecting me. “Your face,” he said, slow, thoughtful. “The markings around your eyes. They’re… sharp. Fierce. Like a wolf painted them on for battle.”

I bared my teeth. “They’re just markings.”

He didn’t flinch. Just squinted harder. “And your eyes—” he leaned in a bit, “—they’re different than mine. Not round. Narrow. Almost like they’re cutting through things. Makes you look… stronger….scarier. Like you know something I don’t. Kinda unfair.”

The words clawed at me. Strong. Not wrong. Not ugly. Words they never said. Words I didn’t trust.
“Shut up,” I hissed.Glaring at him

He grinned, not cruel, just curious. “I mean it. You look like someone important. Like people would remember you.”

Important. Not forgotten. My claws tore at the stone. 1Sylthazrak’s laugh stabbed through my skull, the sound of wings beating as they left. Ugly. Wrong. Forgettable. That’s what I was. I waited for him to laugh. To stand. To decide I wasn’t worth it and fly off the way they had. But he didn’t. He stayed.

And because he stayed, things started happening I couldn’t stop. My eyes kept flicking toward him, measuring his breaths, watching the way his chest rose and fell steady as a drumbeat. When a branch cracked in the brush, I flinched first then he flared his wings, head high, protective without asking. He sniffed the air, rumbled low, and shot me a look like, See? Still here.

I snarled back at him, but my body moved closer anyway, pressing into the shadow of his bulk before I even thought about it.

“I don’t owe you anything,” I spat, mostly to hear my own anger and not the trembling under it.

“You don’t,” he said simply. “But you’ve got me.”

No promise. No oath. Just that.

I hated the way my chest unclenched. I hated the way my tail curled, betraying me, hooking itself over his paw like a shackle to keep him there.

It had only been a day. A single cursed day since I cracked out of the shell and they decided I was a mistake. And now here I was, leaning on a stranger because he hadn’t left yet.

Not trust. Not friendship. Not anything soft. Just… leaning.Because if he left too, then I’d have to believe what they said. That I was nothing. That I was wrong. And I wasn’t ready for that. So I leaned. Bitter, desperate, and furious at myself for what I was. But I leaned anyway.

The light shifted again. The sky went that ugly gray that makes shadows stretch like claws. Cold wind ran its teeth over the stones. My stomach ached like it was trying to eat itself. I hadn’t eaten. I didn’t even know what eating was supposed to be yet. I had just came to this world.

Leo noticed. Of course he did. He’d been noticing everything. Useless fool should just leave me. Just like everyone else did.

“You’re shaking,” he said, tilting his head. “You hungry?”

I didn’t answer. My claws dug into the ground. “I’m fine.”

He gave a low snort. “You don’t look fine.”

I bared my teeth. “And what does fine look like?”

Leo blinked. He didn’t even flinch. “Not like you’re about to fall over,” he said softly.

I hated the softness more than I hated his teeth. It got under my scales, into my blood. I hissed and turned away, but the world tilted when I did. The stones wobbled. My claws slipped. Something warm pressed against me. Not hard. Not holding. Just there. Steady.

“Easy,” Leo rumbled. “Easy, Ellesar.”

I wanted to snap at him. I wanted to dig my teeth into his paw and make him back off. But the whisper of my name,my name wrapped around me like smoke and I couldn’t. My body sagged instead, pressing into him like I’d lost a fight.

“You’re just a hatchling,” Leo muttered sadness dripping through his voice. “Too new for all this.”

“I’m not weak,” I spat, my voice cracking anyway. “I’m not some.Some freak.”

He didn’t laugh. He didn’t argue. He just stared out into the gray trees, eyes narrowing.

“I never said you were,” he murmured.

Silence again. Long enough for the cold to seep into my bones. Long enough for my breathing to even out. Then his eyes flicked down at me again. “Those marks on your neck,” he said, slow. “Like claw swipes, but they’re not. Patterns. They catch the light. Like starlight. Like…” He trailed off. “Never seen anything like it.”

I tried to glare but my face felt heavy. “Stop looking at me.”

Leo’s mouth quirked. Not a smile. Not pity. Just… something. “Can’t help it. You stand out.”

I hated that too. Hated how his words scraped at the hole in my chest left by her voice. Ugly little freak. Something that crawled out of a corpse. But his voice didn’t sound like theirs. Not sharp. Not disgusted.

“I’m not even going to staying here long,” I said, even though my tail was already hooked over his talons again. “I’ll go. Soon.”

Leo tilted his head, watching the trees. “You can if you want,” he said easily. “I’m not stopping you.”

But he didn’t move. He didn’t spread his wings. He just stayed, breathing like a heartbeat, warm in the gray. I hated the way my claws stopped trembling. I hated the way my breathing lined up with his without me meaning it to. It was still the same day. I could still taste the shell on my tongue. My parents’ wings had only just vanished into the clouds. The curse still burned in my chest like molten stone. And already I was leaning on someone else’s shadow just to stay upright.

Not trust. Not family. Not yet. Just the thin thread of him not leaving.I closed my eyes and let the whisper slide through me again. Ellesar. Ellesar. Ellesar. Somewhere in the distance, something screamed high and thin like a bird but deeper, older. Leo’s head snapped up. His wings twitched.

“Stay behind me,” he growled.

“I don’t need you to protect me”

The sound came again, closer now. A shadow flickered over the rocks. My heart lurched. The wind shifted, carrying something foul, like blood and metal. Leo flared his wings, crouching low. “It’s alright,” he said, but his voice had changed. Lower. Harder.

I crouched too, claws scraping the stone, my teeth bared. The whisper in my bones curled tighter. Ellesar. I didn’t know what was coming. I didn’t know why I cared if he stayed. All I knew was that if he left too, I’d shatter. And I wasn’t ready to shatter yet.The shadow passed over us again. Closer.

This day wasn’t done with me yet.

The shadow that passed over us wasn’t a bird. It was wrong. Too heavy. Too sharp.Too many sounds. The brush split. And then they came. Wolves. Not the small kind from whispers in the woods. These were massive, hulking things, their fur matted with mud and old blood. Their eyes gleamed like rotten lanterns. One crept forward, lips peeling back from cracked fangs. “Time to eat the fallen star…” it rasped.

Another padded out beside it, ribs jutting, eyes sunk deep. “Come here, pup,” it hissed. “The Ocean wants your pure blood, pup.” Pup, I thought. They meant me. The mistake, the thing that was wrong. A third slunk from the shadows, black foam dripping from its jaws. “No, no, not a pup. An unforgiven shadow. An unforgiven shadow, that’s what it is.”

Their voices weren’t growls. They were words. Wrong words. Tearing at my ears. My claws dug into the stone, but my legs wouldn’t work. My stomach burned with hunger. My chest felt hollow. I couldn’t fight. Not like this.Then he came. Some how I knew his name… because in some twisted way. He was like me.

Malric.

He was larger than the rest, his heavy paws shaking the earth as he stalked into the clearing. He didn’t creep. He didn’t crawl. He marched. Like he owned the place, like he owned me.

Malric.

His fur was a thick, ashy red, wild and tangled. His legs were long but stocky, thick as tree roots. His ears too big, too sharp flicked with every sound, twitching like antennae. But it wasn’t his ears that froze my blood.It was his face.

Four eyes stared back at me. Two brown, wild and glinting. Two red, burning like coals in a pit. His grin split too wide, his canines longer than the others. Too long. Wrong. Everything about him was too much and too wrong.

Madness. It rolled off him like heat.

He leaned close, his hot, rank breath washing over me. “I am Malric,” he snarled

, voice cracking with both power and insanity. “Leader of the Madness of Cyclone. Sent by the Divine Goddess of the Sea, herself. She has commanded me.” His grin widened, splitting like a wound. “She wants the dragon-net’s blood. Your pure blood,unforgiven shadow. Your curse is her’s to claim.”

I couldn’t move. My legs trembled. My belly screamed empty. My claws only scraped stone.I was going to die.

“Ellesar!”

Leo’s roar split the air. His yellow body slammed between me and the wolf, wings flaring so wide the clearing bent with shadow.

“Back. Off.” His teeth snapped together like thunder. The wolves laughed. Laughed like death. A chorus of broken voices.

“Another one! Another fallen star-keeper!” “Rip him open, rip him open too!”

Malric didn’t laugh. He just tilted his head, those four eyes staring at Leo like he was nothing but meat.

“You dare stand in the way of the Goddess’s will?” Malric asked softly like a calm before a storm. “Then you will drown in her name.” his eyes sparkled with madness.

Leo’s tail lashed. His chest swelled with a growl so deep the stones shook under my claws. “Try me.”

The wolves lunged. Teeth. Claws. Snarls. They swarmed him, a storm of fur and blood and madness. Leo’s body moved like fire, snapping jaws, crushing bones, his tail smashing wolves into trees with a crack. His claws ripped red into their hides, his wings buffeting them back, scattering them like insects.

I tried to move. Tried to stand. My body didn’t listen. Hunger tore through me, dragging me back down to the dirt. All I could do was watch. Watch as he fought, as they tore at his scales, as his blood hit the ground in sharp, wet splatters.

“Get up,” I whispered to myself. “Get up. Help him.”

But my legs wouldn’t move. One wolf sank its teeth into his wing. Another clawed at his belly. Malric hung back, laughing that wild, broken laugh that scraped my bones. I hated how much it sounded like home.

“Ellesar, Come and kiss my fangs! Let me Welcome you to the Goddesses Throne!” Malric bayed.

Leo roared. He slammed one wolf down, crushed another under his claw, snapped the neck of the one on his wing. He fought like a god made of rage and light. And still… more came. More still stood up to fight, regardless of their wounds.

I curled tighter, shaking. I wanted to look away but I couldn’t. My chest burned with shame. With fear. With that name that still echoed in me. Ellesar. Ellesar. Ellesar.

“Leo!” I screamed, though my voice was small and cracked. His head whipped toward me for a heartbeat, brown eyes blazing. He bared his teeth, blood dripping down his snout. He looked terrifying

“Stay down!” he roared.

And then he turned back into the storm of wolves, fighting with everything he had.And all I could do was stay down.

Leo fought like fire itself. His wings beat the clearing into chaos, snapping wolves left and right, fangs tearing fur and bone. Blood sprayed. Howls ripped through the night. Still they came clawing, biting, laughing with their broken voices.

And then Malric moved.

The massive red wolf stepped forward, eyes glowing two brown, two red his grin stretching too wide. He didn’t fight with his pack. He just watched, waiting for the moment to strike.

“Rip him!” one wolf shrieked.
“Break the yellow sun!” another howled.
“Feed the sea! Feed the sea!”

Leo slammed another wolf into the dirt, chest heaving, blood matting his golden scales. His eyes snapped to Malric. “Come on then!” he roared. “Stop hiding behind your pack!”

Malric only laughed. His voice was cracked glass, sweet and rotten at once.
“Oh, little sun… you are sadly not mine to kill.” His long canines flashed as he lifted his head to the sky, like he was listening to something only he could hear till he finally spoke. “The Divine Goddess of the Sea has spoken. She wants you, traitorous sun. She has commanded me to break you with her tide. Not today. Not yet. She wants the shadow-dragon-net’s blood first. Pure. Unspoiled.”

He licked his lips, his four eyes glittering with madness. “But your blood, yellow sun… your blood is mine to spill when she says the word.”

Leo’s growl vibrated the air, but Malric’s wolves howled in triumph at his words. They circled tighter, nipping, feinting, testing him.

I couldn’t breathe. My body stayed glued to the ground, too weak, too hollow to move. I wanted to scream, to fight, to do something but all I could do was watch Malric’s towering form stalk closer.

“Ellesar!” Leo barked, snapping me out of my fear. He swung his tail like a club, scattering three wolves at once, and barreled toward me. His claws closed around my fragile body before I even knew what was happening. I yelped, squirming, but he held me firm in his blood covered talons. His wings flared wide, the earth trembling under the force. “Hold on!” he shouted.

Then we were airborne.

Wind ripped at my face, my stomach lurched as the clearing shrank below. Wolves leapt, snapping at his legs, but Leo kicked them away mid-flight, blood raining from fresh gouges in his scales.

“AFTER THEM!” a wolf shrieked, its voice shredded with fury.
“They’ve stolen the shadow!” another howled.

But Malric raised his head, that mad grin never fading. “ENOUGH.”

The wolves froze mid-lunge, their growls choking down into silence. His voice cracked like a whip, every syllable dripping with disgusting command.

“The Divine Goddess of the Sea has spoken through me. The traitorous yellow sun will die by my fangs when she commands it. His fleeing is no shame . It is obedience to her will. The shadow-dragonet is not gone. Not forever. His blood cannot run from the sea no matter how hard he tries.”

The pack snarled, torn between hunger and worship. Some scraped their claws against the stone, frustrated. Others bowed their heads, shivering with pride.

“The sun runs now,” Malric whispered, all four of his eyes gleaming up at us as we vanished into the dark sky, “but when the tide turns, I will break him. The Goddess demands it. And I am her madness. And we are her Cyclone!”

The wolves howled as one rage and triumph in the same breath as Leo carried me higher, his grip tight, his blood hot and sticky against my scales.He didn’t look back.

I did.

Malric’s red-furred shape burned in my mind, still grinning, still watching, as if his gaze had hooked itself into my ribs. The air cut sharp against my face, colder the higher we climbed. Leo’s wings beat like thunder, ragged but steady, blood dripping from his belly and staining the wind behind us.

I curled against his claw, too weak to squirm anymore. My bones rattled with each jolt of his flight. Below, the forest shrank to a dark smear. The howls still carried, rising up like they wanted to drag me back down.

Leo’s chest rumbled against me. “Damn mutts. Always where they don’t belong.”

He sounded tired, but not surprised. Like this wasn’t new.

I tilted my head, throat raw. “You’ve fought them before.”

“Too many times.” His voice was clipped, low, like he didn’t want me to hear the weight in it. “They crawl out of their den by the sea’s edge like roaches. Every time they scatter ‘em, they crawl back nastier. I’m used to it every one here is. Even the other wolf packs.”

I stared at the blood trailing off his scales. “That one… Malric… he said the Divine Goddess of the Sea sent him. What the hell does that mean?”

Leo snorted, almost a laugh but bitter as ash. “Means he’s insane. Him and his pack call themselves the Madness of Cyclone. Bunch of rabid zealots that follow Malric ‘cause he says the Goddess whispers to him. Truth is, it’s not the sea talking to him. It’s just the noise inside his own poor broken head.”

He dipped his wings, catching an updraft, but I felt the tremor in his claws. He was bleeding more than he let on.

“They believe it, though,” he muttered. “Every last one of those mangy bastards. He howls, they bow. He says kill, they kill. He says wait, they wait. He says the Goddess commands it, and they’ll drown themselves in the sea to make it true.”

I sank against his grip, my chest twisting. “Why… why me?”

“Because you’re small. Because you’re new. Because you’ve got something they don’t understand, and madness wants what it can’t have.” His eyes cut down at me, brown and fierce even through exhaustion. “Don’t let Malric’s voice stick in your head, Ellesar. It’s just rot. Just lies he tells himself until he believes them.”

I wanted to believe him. But Malric’s grin was still there, carved into my skull. His voice still crawled under my skin. The Goddess wants your blood. Unforgiven shadow.

Leo angled downward, his breath hitching once, twice. His wings strained harder now, each beat slower, rougher. Finally, he found a clearing carved into the forest and crashed down hard enough to rattle the ground. His claws flexed, loosening me gently onto the dirt.

I stumbled, legs shaking, my stomach gnawing itself hollow.

Leo folded his wings, gritting his teeth against the pain. Blood seeped through the cuts in his scales, dripping onto the grass. He caught me staring and snorted. “Don’t give me that look. I’ve had worse.”

“You’re bleeding everywhere,” I hissed.

“And you’re starving.” He dropped his head low, scanning the clearing. His nostrils flared once, twice, then he lunged. A yelp split the air and he came back with a struggling hare in his jaws, snapped its neck clean, and dropped it at my claws.

“Eat,” he said, like it was law.

I blinked down at the limp body, blood still warm. My stomach twisted with both hunger and fear.Leo lowered himself onto his belly, his chest still heaving, eyes fixed on me. “Eat, Ellesar. You won’t fight. You won’t fly. You won’t survive if you don’t. Trust me on that much.”

I bared my teeth at him out of habit, out of pride. Then the hunger tore through the last of my hesitation.I bent down and ate.Leo’s eyes softened just a little, before he lowered his head into the dirt, finally letting his body rest.

I glared at him, my tiny teeth bared, even as my stomach growled loud enough to give me away. “That wolf… Malric. He knew my name. He wasn’t lying, Leo. He…..he knew me.”

Leo crouched down, shaking his head, his tone too quick, too certain. “Don’t think about him. Malric’s mad. The whole pack is mad. They only follow him ‘cause he whispers about some goddess, some voice from the sea. But it’s not real it’s just the cyclone in his head. Madness.”

I lowered my gaze to the hare again, hunger clawing me apart, but my thoughts were louder.

Leo was wrong.

Because when Malric spoke, I felt it. Like his voice wasn’t coming from the outside, but from the same place inside me where my own name had lived before I even knew it.

Malric was madness, sure. But he was my madness, too. The same blood. The same curse. And that scared me more than starving ever could.

The night suddenly wasn’t cold anymore.
It was mine.

Leo’s breathing was steady in sleep, his golden flank rising and falling like the sun itself hadn’t noticed the blood still dripping from him. I should’ve been tired too. But the words from earlier kept gnawing at me, hollowing me out

“Ellesar… if your heart is broken even once you will shift back into what you were supposed to be… that is your curse.”

Supposed to be. Supposed to be. The night answered where the voice had left off.

The dark pressed close. It wasn’t empty.It was alive. It bent around me like it recognized me. Like it had been waiting for me to breathe it in.

Something gave way inside. My bones didn’t ache they stretched. My claws lengthened, gouging the earth. My wings unfurled, huge, swallowing the clearing whole. The shadows bent around them like reality itself didn’t want to touch me. The temperature dropped sharp enough to sting. The forest dimmed further, drained of color until the air itself felt gray.

And then.A voice. Not mine. Not Leo’s. Not Malric’s. It came from me, my body. Cold, ancient, rot laced with starlight. It crawled under my scales and sat in my marrow.

“Shadow-Giver. Creator. Master. VOID. Emptyness. Nothing”

I lifted my head. The figure that stared back from the shadows was me, but not me tall, wrong, void-black. My scales shimmered with absence, not color, like I was made from the space between stars. No light reflected off me. My eyes…no, my pits swallowed everything. Inside them flickered not memories of mine, but visions worlds cracking apart, gods choking on their own light, children unmade like clay washed away by rain.

Leo jolted awake, golden eyes wide, his wings flaring as he stumbled back. His voice cracked in the cold.
“Ellesar… how…..how did you become that?”

I turned toward him. My voice wasn’t a sound. It was a vibration, a wound in the air itself.

“I am the first of many Leo. I am a Shadow-Giver. No… I am their creator.”

He didn’t move. Didn’t run. His chest heaved, but he didn’t leave. The silence stretched long. I could feel the night coiling inside me, heavy and perfect, like I had finally stepped into the skin I was always meant to wear.

But then light.

The first slice of dawn broke over the ridge. Sunlight touched my wings and the shadow recoiled, hissing. My body convulsed, shrank, folded. The pits of my eyes collapsed back into gold. My scales dulled, small again, too small. My wings curled against my sides like nothing had happened. I blinked. A dragonet. Small. Hungry. Weak.Leo was still staring. The horror on his face hadn’t faded, but neither had his closeness. He whispered, hoarse
“…What are you?”

I didn’t answer. The sun burned the last of the shadows off me. And suddenly, I wasn’t sure myself. The voice was still in me. Not spoken, but etched. And I relished it.

Behind me, Leo gasped. I could hear his scales grind as he shifted back. Not running. Not daring. Watching. His voice trembled but cracked into a grin.
“Ellesar, that was Stars, that was sick. You looked like you swallowed the night. You gotta teach me how to do that.”

His laugh was too high, nervous, but he wasn’t mocking me. He was… impressed. Like a fool staring at a storm thinking he could tame it.

I almost laughed back. Almost. Then everything stopped.

The shadows moved again, not at my will this time. They folded into a shape, tall, wrong. My own reflection but not. The same void-black scales, wings unfurling like scars in the air, pits for eyes where gods wept and stars bled out.

It stepped forward. My own footsteps echoed in its.

Then it spoke. And its voice was similar to mine.
“Father.”

The word curdled in my chest. It bowed its head just slightly, then lifted it again, proud. “I am Scorpio. One of the Chosen of the Stars.”

Leo staggered back. His golden eyes narrowed into slits, his grin collapsing. Scorpio’s gaze cut to him and lingered long, heavy, hateful. Like he knew him. Like Leo had already failed him somehow.

“You must choose, Ellesar,” Scorpio said, his voice like steel dragged through ash. “The path of the Shadow-Giver lies before you. My future…our future depends on your choice. If you falter, if you deny what you are meant to be…”

His gaze burned hotter, sharp as broken bone.
“…then when I hatch on 2Sklythar , I will take my revenge. I will kill you. To prove myself to the stars.”

The night held its breath.

I stared at him this child, this reflection, this thing calling me father. He was me. He wasn’t me. He was the curse made flesh, the prophecy breathing in front of me.

Leo wasn’t so calm. I could hear his breath hitching behind me, his voice shaking though he tried to keep it light.
“Ellesar… Stars above. This is… insane. You gotta tell me how you're a father before me? -little guy. Or big guy now, I guess. Seriously, you looked like you swallowed the whole night sky a few seconds ago.”

I almost smiled, but the air split again.

Scorpio still stood there. He hadn’t vanished with the first breath of dawn. He lingered, the light striking his void-scales until they began to blister and peel.

And then he shifted.

He didn’t walk anymore.He crawled. Long, sinuous limbs dragging behind him like broken chains. His wings shredded down into ribbons of flesh-paper, dangling useless and wet. Bones jutted from his back in jagged curves, too many, too sharp. A skull clacked against his shoulder, half-fused into the meat like jewelry. His eyes were red. His talons had too many claws, his mouth too many teeth.

Leo and I both stepped back. I could feel my stomach twist, but Scorpio only smiled. His grin stretched across his ruined face like madness made flesh.

“Never seen darkness in a raw form?” he rasped, laughter bubbling like rot. “Never seen terror wear a body?”

Leo pressed closer to me, his claws scraping the ground, but he didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

Scorpio’s broken eyes locked on me. “I want my own son, Tentacion, to roam the earth. To spread havoc in my name….and yours of course, Father. But if you,” his voice cracked into a growl, “if you don’t choose the path of a Shadow-Giver… I will make your death so exquisite, so unbearable, that you will cry out to die again in Hell. Even Tophet will feel sorry for you”

The words clamped down on my chest like iron.

Before I could speak, the air throbbed again. A new figure stepped from the void a presence sharper, clearer, wrapped in star-fire instead of shadow.

“Scorpio.”

Sagittarius. I knew the name before it was spoken. His form burned like a constellation, his voice balanced between sorrow and command.

“You cannot intervene in Ellesar’s life,” Sagittarius said. His eyes flicked to me, softer now. “Not yet.”

Scorpio snarled, his shredded wings rattling. “He is mine. His future has everything to do with me. He and I are the same”

“No,” Sagittarius said. “He is his own.”

The air folded. Both of them Scorpio’s madness and Sagittarius’s light slipped back into a void, leaving only silence and the slow creep of dawn.

Leo finally exhaled. “Well,” he muttered, his voice shaky but trying to stay casual. “That was the creepiest, craziest thing I’ve ever seen. No contest.” He nudged me with one paw. “You hungry?”

I didn’t answer.Scorpio’s words weighed on me heavier than hunger.

Tentacion. Shadow-Giver. My death. Tophet.

The power I had touched was still in me, waiting. I could feel it humming under my scales, promising everything and nothing.I didn’t know if I wanted it. But I knew one thing.

The future wasn’t mine alone anymore.

It was quiet for a while after Scorpio and Sagittarius vanished. Too quiet. The kind of quiet where you know something is watching.Then

A bark. No more like a yap.

I looked up to see the tiniest wolf I’d ever laid eyes on, smaller than me even in my hatchling body. His fur was dark and wiry, his ears too big for his skull, and his eyes burned with reckless fire.

“I’ll tear you apart!” he yapped, his voice cracking like thunder that didn’t know how to thunder yet. “And when I do, my stupid litter-mates will see I’m the strongest! I’ll lead the pack one day! I’ll show them!”

Leo let out a booming laugh that echoed across the clearing. He even rolled onto his side, clutching his ribs. “Oh no, Ellesar look out! The tiny terror is here! You better run before he takes your scales off with those baby teeth!”

The pup snarled, his tail stiff. “Don’t mock me, dragon! I’ll gut you, both of you!”

Leo just grinned, but my patience cracked. I leaned down, my eyes locking on the little wolf. My voice came out harsher than I meant, bitter as bile.
“If you want to be leader, pup, then ambition is all that matters. Claw, bite, and fight until you’re on top. That’s what it takes. Nothing else.”

The pup blinked at me then grinned. Wide. Wild.
“Good. Then remember me. My name’s Crow. The wolves will follow me soon, and when they do, I’ll tear your kind apart.”

Before I could answer, the forest erupted. Shapes slid from the shadows wolves, dozens of them. Huge, scarred, snarling. In an instant, Leo and I were surrounded.

“Give our pup back,” one growled, teeth bared.
“He belongs with the us, not with you,” another hissed.

My claws dug into the ground. “We didn’t take him!” I snapped, rage spiking through me. “He came to us!”

The wolves bristled, hackles rising, ready to spring. Leo flared his wings, stepping in front of me, his voice hard.
“Peace. And you’ll have your pup back without a fight.”

“Leo—” I hissed. Fury twisted in my gut. They didn’t deserve peace. They didn’t even deserve Crow. They thought we’d stolen him when we hadn’t, and still they dared surround us like prey. I’ll show them who the prey was.

The wolves snarled louder, edging closer. Crow barked at them, his voice sharp “Remember my name! Crow! I’ll lead you one day, and you’ll wish you listened sooner!”

The wolves grumbled, snapping at him like annoyed parents, but in the end, they pulled him back into their ranks. No blood spilled. Not tonight.

The pack faded into the woods, their howls trailing like ghosts.

The clearing still smelled of wolves after Crow’s pack-mates dragged him away. The forest was restless, the air heavy with the tension of almost-blood.

But these weren’t the madness dogs. No foam at the mouth, no broken laughter, no goddess-whispers twisting their brains. Their eyes were sharp. Their growls steady. Their lines tight. These wolves weren’t crazed. They were disciplined.

They were Snow-Fall’s….

"But who is Snow-fall?” I wondered how I knew the name, Where the name came from. Who was the owner of the name..

Snow-fall.

Every dragon knew the name. Snow-Fall was no frothing beast. He was strong, wise, fierce when needed, and the wolves followed him because he deserved it. Because he earned it. Not through madness, but through might and mind. That was why they hadn’t lunged when I spat. That was why they didn’t spill Leo’s blood even when they had the chance. Because Snow-Fall’s rule wasn’t chaos it was law. And if I had attacked, I wouldn’t have just been fighting wolves. I’d have been declaring war on Snow-Fall himself. Who ever he was. I grumbled.

Leo turned on me once the clearing was ours again. His eyes burned, his tail lashing.
“Do you understand what you almost did?” His voice cut like stone grinding against stone. “These aren’t Cyclone mutts. These are Snow-Fall’s wolves. You almost broke two years of peace between dragons and wolves with one outburst.”

My chest tightened. I bared my teeth anyway, because baring teeth is easier than shame. “They accused us of stealing Crow. They deserved it.”

Leo growled, real anger in it this time. “Accusations can be dealt with. Blood cannot be undone. Do you think Snow-Fall would forgive a hatchling like you who cut down his pack in a frenzy? You’d drag us all into a war no one can win.”

I looked away, my claws biting into the dirt. He was right. I hated that he was right.

But still… I thought of Crow. Small, arrogant, full of ambition. He barked like he already wore a crown of bones. And in a way, I understood him.

Because maybe ambition was all that mattered. Maybe Snow-Fall was wise, maybe the wolves were sane but Crow had the spark. The hunger.

The same hunger that gnawed at me.

And if hunger was enough to climb to the top, then maybe one day Crow would lead them. And when he did… maybe I’d see him again. But I feared I might be something completely different if we did meet up again.

Snow-Fall was the last thing I saw before we left.

He stood at the edge of the trees, white as bone, bigger than the wolves that followed him. His gaze cut through the forest like winter itself. He didn’t move to stop us, didn’t bark, didn’t threaten. He only watched, calm and unshaken, while his pack slunk back under his shadow.

Even as Leo carried me into the sky, even as the forest shrank, I felt Snow-Fall’s eyes on me. Cold. Measuring.

When the wind bit harder, Leo looked at me and froze.

“Ellesar,” he said, voice tight.

“What?” I snapped.

“You shifted.”

I glanced down. He was right. My body wasn’t small anymore. The dragonet shell was gone. I was longer, leaner my wings stretching wider, sharper. Old enough to fly beside him. Not bulky, not solid like Leo, but cut from the same stone. Slimmer. Sharper. I opened my wings and I was suddenly out of Leo's claws and air-born like the air itself welcomed me.

We flew until the forest broke into cliffs and stone. Leo dipped low, circling a place carved into the mountain a ledge wide enough for nests, the scent of dragons thick in the air.

“This is where I go,” he said, landing with a thud. “Safe. Familiar. Kind of like a home”

I followed, wings clumsy but holding. The moment my claws hit rock, the others were there. Dragons. Real ones. Older than me. Bigger than me. Their eyes cut across my face, my neck.

One of them laughed. “What’s with his markings? Looks like he fell into a tar pit.”

Another snorted. “No more like somebody scribbled battle lines on a hatchling. Who’d waste that pattern on a runt?”

Their laughter spread. It cut worse than claws.

Leo’s growl split the noise. “Enough.” His voice snapped like thunder. “Shut your mouths.”

They did. Not out of respect for me, but for him. Still it mattered. A flicker of something hot, not anger this time, sparked in my chest.

But then another stepped forward. Taller than Leo, smug, his grin sharp. He circled me, eyes dragging across my scales. Then he shoved me, hard enough to stumble.

“Pathetic,” he spat. “Scared little freak, hiding under Leo’s wing. Well guess what runt I'm the leader here. What are you gonna do, shadow-boy? Cry?”

The laughter returned, louder.

And something in me snapped.

The shadows bent in daylight. The sun still burned, but I tore a hole in it. My body unraveled into its shape, wings stretching, scales blacker than black, eyes turning into pits of everything that should never be seen.

I didn’t roar. I didn’t warn. I moved.

He was gone before he knew he was prey. My claws tore him apart, My teeth ending his screams, shadows spilling like blood, painting the floor, shredding him into nothing but rags of flesh and silence.

The others froze, horror painting their faces. Even Leo.

The sun burned bright above, but the shadows still clung to me, hissing, whispering. Hungry.

“Don’t fuck with me again bug” I snarled anger exploding off my chest.

“Ellesar!” Leo’s voice cracked, sharp and desperate. His claws slammed into mine, yanking me back, his wings beating hard to shove the other dragons away. “We’re leaving. Now!”

He didn’t wait for me to argue. He leapt into the air, dragging me with him, his wings slamming against the wind as the dragons below screamed in rage.

“They’ll kill you for this,” he hissed, pulling me higher, higher. His eyes burned into mine. “You just murdered one of your own. You just showed them what you were. they'll never accept you now”

I didn’t answer. My chest heaved, my body still buzzing with the dark power that hadn’t wanted to leave.But as the mountain shrank below us, I could feel the weight settle in. Not guilt. Not yet.

Power.

Power heavy enough to crush me, heavy enough to burn me alive. And the shadows whispered my name like a curse and a crown. The wind screamed past us as Leo’s wings hammered the sky. My claws dug into his forearm where he carried me, though I could’ve flown beside him now if I wanted.

“You didn’t have to do that!” he snarled, his voice raw over the rushing air. “You murdered him, Ellesar!”

“He mocked me,” I spat back. The shadows still whispered under my skin, warm and waiting. “He shoved me. Laughed at me. You think I was going to let that stand?”

“That’s not an excuse!” Leo’s eyes blazed, and his tail snapped in fury to keep us steady in the crosswinds. “You proved them right. You showed them you’re dangerous, that you can’t control yourself!”

“I don’t care what they think!” I roared, my voice cutting like broken glass. “They would’ve hated me no matter what I did. At least now they know I’m not weak.”

Leo’s jaw clenched. He didn’t answer right away, wings beating harder, angrier. The silence was worse than the yelling.

Finally he muttered, “You almost brought all of them down on us. You almost made me fight my own kin just to drag you out alive. Is that what you want? To burn every bridge before you’ve even crossed it?”

I turned my head, staring at the horizon. The shadows still hummed in my blood. “It doesn’t matter. There’s always somewhere else we can go. this world is a big one”

Leo let out a long, frustrated sigh. “Yeah. There’s always somewhere else.”

The wind carried us higher. The world below shrank to dots and smears of color. And the words I’d been holding back finally tore free.

“I know,” I said quietly.

Leo glanced at me, his brow furrowed. “Know what?”

“Where we’re going. Who Snow-Fall is. What celestials are. What happened to your parents. All of it.”

His wings stuttered for half a beat before steadying. His voice sharpened. “How could you possibly—”

“The Chosen told me,” I cut him off. My claws bit into my own arms. “Pisces. Scorpio. Sagittarius.Aries. Taurus. Gemini. Cancer.Virgo. Libra. Capricorn. Aquarius Their voices carved it into me before I even understood words. I know their names. I know their faces. I know what I am.”

Leo’s throat worked, his jaw tight. “And what are you, Ellesar?”

I met his gaze, unflinching. “A Shadow-Giver. No matter what I choose, no matter how I fight it, that’s what I’ll become.”

The wind went dead silent between us.

For a long moment, Leo just looked at me. His face was unreadable part pain, part anger, part something I couldn’t name. Finally he exhaled, slow and heavy, and said, “Then fine. Be that. Be whatever the stars or shadows say you’ll be.”

He leaned closer, his eyes locking into mine, fierce and unshaken. “But know this: no matter what you choose Shadow-Giver, dragon, something in between I’ll still be here. Right by you. The whole way.”

I blinked. The words cracked something in me I didn’t want to admit was fragile.

The shadows inside me stirred, restless, but they didn’t bite. For the first time since the shell, I wasn’t sure if they had to.

For a long while, neither of us spoke. The silence pressed heavy. It was almost suffocating

Then Leo muttered, not looking at me, “You’ve grown.”

I almost laughed, bitter and sharp. “No kidding.”

He shot me a glance, but his face softened. “Doesn’t matter what the shadows do to you. You’re still the same Ellesar who tried to bite me when I asked your name.”

I wanted to deny it. Wanted to hiss, to snarl, to tell him I wasn’t that helpless creature anymore. But my throat locked.

Instead, the words tumbled out before I could stop them. “I’ve been leaning on you. Since the beginning. From the moment I hatched. You fought for me. Fed me. Stayed when no one else did. And now… look at me.” I flexed my wings, their shadows cutting across the stone, the patterns on them dancing. “I’m bigger. Older. Changed. And still… I keep looking at you like I did when I was small.”

Leo didn’t laugh. He didn’t mock me. He just watched, quiet, his brown eyes steady.

“You don’t owe me anything,” he said at last.

“I know.” My claws scraped against the stone. “But without you, I wouldn’t be here. Maybe I wouldn’t even want to be.”

The words burned coming out, too soft, too honest. But they were true.

Leo stepped closer, pressing his shoulder against mine. His frame was heavier, broader, but I was taller now. It felt strange. Wrong and right at the same time.

“Ellesar,” he said, low and fierce, “whatever you think you’re cursed to become, whatever shadows claw at you, you’re not doing it alone. Not unless you push me away. Even then you still won't be alone.”

I swallowed hard, the shadows restless in my chest. They whispered “Shadow-Giver, curse, crown, Father TENTACION” They promised power, worlds to break.

But when I closed my eyes, the first thing I saw was Leo’s talons beside me. Warm. Solid. Still here.

For the first time, I admitted it to myself: I needed him.

And maybe… I always had.

The night pressed close, heavy with silence, until the sound came.

It started as a low rumble rolling through the forest far below, then swelled into something raw and jagged. Wolves baying. Dozens, maybe hundreds, their voices rising together in a chorus that made the mountain stone vibrate under my claws.

“The Goddess will take the shadows!” they howled. “The sea will claim what was never meant for the stars!”

The pack’s voices tangled, weaving promises of blood into the night air. Each cry twisted tighter until the sound was less like wolves and more like something sacred and wrong all at once.

Then another voice cut through — stronger, harsher, full of fever.
“Our leader, though young, is chosen! Blessed by the Divine Sea Goddess herself! His fangs will drip with the unforgiven shadow’s blood! He will break the traitorous sun and cast his light into the tide!”

The wolves answered with wild, ragged howls. They bayed until the echoes rolled up the cliffs and rattled through my ribs. Each cry sank claws into my chest, dragging at the part of me that still remembered Malric’s grin and the way his eyes had locked onto me like he already owned my fate.

I felt the shadows stir in me again, restless, eager. For a moment, I thought about answering their howls — about letting the dark pour out of me and drown them before they could reach me.

Leo shifted closer, his shoulder pressing against mine. His voice was steady, but low, like he didn’t want the wolves to hear.
“Ellesar. You don’t need to lose sleep over them. Malric’s pack won’t come this far. The Madness of Cyclone knows better than to climb these mountains. Not with dragons nesting here. Even Malric’s kind aren’t stupid enough to test that.”

I wanted to believe him. But the howls didn’t sound like madness anymore. They sounded like certainty. Like faith.

I closed my eyes, feeling the words of the baying pack digging deep, rooting themselves inside me: unforgiven shadow… traitorous sun… blood.

Leo’s warmth was still at my side, his voice a steady anchor against the storm outside. But the truth hung heavy in me. No matter how high we climbed, no matter how far we flew, the pack’s words followed.

They weren’t just hunting me. They were waiting. And the shadows in my chest whispered back.

The dream came on sudden, heavy. One moment I was curled in the cold cave beside Leo’s steady breathing, the next the stone beneath me cracked into black water and the air filled with howls.

Malric stood there. Not the grinning shadow of memory, but whole and sharp, red-furred, his four eyes alive with fire. His teeth glistened, dripping nothing, yet already stained with the blood of futures not yet spilled.

“Ellesar,” he said, voice a growl wrapped in prayer, “the Goddess wants a word.”

I snarled at him, my claws digging into the dream-water that somehow held my weight. “I don’t need your goddess. Or you.”

Malric tilted his head, grin widening, too calm. “Oh, but you do. We are the same, you and I. I hear her because my madness is open to her voice. You are shadows you hear everything. Do you think she would let you go without claiming you, Unforgiven One?”

“I’m nothing like you,” I spat.

He barked a laugh, wild and raw, but it had an edge of pity to it. “Say that again when you’ve drowned your first world. Say that when your shadows tear your kin apart. She will come, Ellesar. She always comes. And when she does… you’ll listen.”

The water rippled. A shape rose from it. First a cresting wave, then a long neck, then an entire dragon made of sea-foam and current. Her body shifted like rivers in a storm, scales turning to tide, claws to spray, eyes to whirlpools. Her voice filled the whole place like thunder moving through the ocean floor.

“I am everywhere,” she said. “In water, in air, in the blood of wolves and the marrow of dragons. I have been watching you, Shadow-Giver. As you know all things because of darkness, I know all things because of life.”

Her presence crushed me down to my bones. Malric bowed low, trembling like a fanatic.

“You wonder about choice,” she continued, her voice rolling through me. “If you deny your nature, dragons will wither. Their light will die. Wolves will inherit this world, my firstborn, my hunters. The sky will belong to them.”

My chest knotted. “And if I accept it? If I become the Shadow-Giver?”

She lifted her head, and behind her another form rose — slim and terrible. Aquarius. One of the Chosen of the Stars. Water poured from the cracks of her skin, flowing endlessly like rivers spilling into nothing. Her eyes were too deep, filled with visions.

“She is my daughter,” the Goddess said. “As a parting gift, I gave her my sight. The futures are no longer mine to share. They belong to her.”

Aquarius raised a claw and touched my brow. The world split open.

I saw a 3celestial figure tearing our planet apart, rending the mountains like parchment. I saw dragons screaming, fleeing into the void, their wings carrying them across endless black until they found a new home. A new world. I saw them grow stronger there, harder, their fire brighter than before. Survivors. Conquerors.

And then I saw wolves left behind, kneeling at the shore, their bodies dissolving into tide.

The vision broke. I staggered, gasping. “And the wolves?” I asked.

The Goddess’s smile was like a riptide pulling me under. “They are mine. They return to me. They belong to me.Always.”

Her voice softened, though it still crushed me. “You wonder my name. I have none. Names are for those who are not eternal. I simply am and will be.”

She leaned closer, her eyes vast and endless. “Remember this, Ellesar if you choose silence, dragons die. If you choose shadow, dragons live. The wolves are already mine.”

And then she was gone. The water cracked into air, the sea-dream shattering like glass.

I woke in the cave with a start, the shadows hissing under my skin. Leo stirred beside me, blinking blearily.

“You okay?” he muttered, half-asleep.

I didn’t answer. My throat felt full of salt. My heart felt like it was still underwater because the Goddess’s voice still echoed in me. And her absence of a name was louder than anything I’d ever heard.

I woke Leo up and told Leo everything. About the dream, the water-dragon who had no name, the visions Aquarius forced into me. I told him the wolves weren’t just howling anymore they were being shaped, sharpened by something greater.

Leo didn’t laugh. He didn’t scoff. His jaw stayed tight, his wings tucked close like he was bracing for a storm. “Then it’s worse than I thought,” he muttered. “If she’s real… if she’s in their ears…Wait……. why the hell is a dragon helping wolves?? and if so then Malric won’t stop coming for you.”

The words had barely left him when the howling reached us. Not distant this time. Right outside. The Madness of Cyclone was on the mountain.

They poured into the mouth of the cave, dripping in blood. Their fur clumped, their jaws slick. They reeked of iron and rot. One dragged a dragon scale the size of my head in his teeth and spat it onto the stone.

“We tore the little scaled lizards on the big rock hill,” one of them bragged, his eyes rolling white. “The Divine Sea Goddess should be proud! We bled them for her!”

Another howled, “All for her tide! All for her voice!”

And then Malric came.

He stepped through his pack, towering, his ashy-red fur matted, his four eyes burning in the dark. He looked straight at me. Not at Leo. Not at the corpses his pack carried. At me.

“Shadow,” he purred, “will you choose the path of the Shadow-Giver here and now?”

The shadows in my blood stirred, but I snarled back, voice rough and sharp, “No. I won’t.”

Malric’s grin widened, then broke into something feral. He lunged.

Pain. White-hot and tearing. His fangs sank deep into me, ripping through scale and flesh. My body folded, my breath vanished. I felt the cave tilt away from me, Leo’s roar splitting the air, and then—

Darkness. And then. I rose.

Not the same. Not whole. Some of my patterns peeled away, vanishing into shadow. My scales dulled, patches of gray spreading where white once gleamed. My eyes less sharp now, wider. The shadows wrapped me like skin. I breathed once and the air chilled.

The wolves snarled, but I was already moving. My claws shredded through them, one after another, their blood black in the torchlight. They yelped, thrashed, broke under my wings. The shadows guided my strikes, tearing them apart with hunger.

“Enough!” Malric barked, voice cracking. “Leave!”

The pack hesitated, torn between fury and fear, then slipped into the dark, leaving only Malric, Leo, and me in the cave.

Malric’s laugh broke the silence. Low. Purring. “She is proud,” he said, almost tender. “The ocean deity is proud of you. You chose. You are what you were meant to be. A Shadow-Giver. The first. The creator.”

He turned, his four eyes gleaming, and padded toward the exit. “Ellesar,” he called, his voice rolling like thunder, “Shadow-Giver. Father of shadows.”

The words coiled in me like poison.

I struck. My claws ripped into him, driving him to the ground. Blood foamed at his mouth, his body thrashing, snapping against the stone. I pressed harder, ready to tear him apart

But he laughed.

Foam poured from his jaws, his legs kicking wild, his body contorting in ways that broke reason. Then, with a final shudder, he stood.

His four eyes burned. His grin was wider than before.

“Did you really think you could kill madness?”

My breath caught. Even Leo stepped back.

Malric shook himself, blood flying from his fur, then turned, his steps steady, his laugh echoing against the cave walls. He left us there, the shadows still heavy in my veins.And the word madness lingered like a brand across my skull.

The cave stank of blood and shadow. My chest still burned from Malric’s fangs, my claws still trembled with the urge to rip him apart again, again, until he stopped laughing.

But he was gone.

Leo and I stood in the silence he left behind. Neither of us moved, our breath clouding in the cold air. My body still hummed with that warped new strength, patterns stripped from me, scales grayed, eyes wider and deeper than they’d ever been. I didn’t feel like myself. I didn’t know if I was myself anymore.

Then we heard them.

The wolves outside had not gone far. Their voices rose, baying to the moon in one long ragged howl, carried in unison like a hymn.

“Praise the Divine Sea Goddess!” they cried. “She brought him back! She raised him stronger! Our leader defeated the lizards! He tore the scaled freaks asunder!”

The sound shook the mountain, a fevered roar of worship. I could picture them circling in the snow, muzzles red, eyes bright with madness, blood still clinging to their fur as they howled their thanks to the sea.

“The Goddess blessed Malric! She saved him from death! Madness cannot die! Praise our leader! Praise the Sea Goddess!”

The pack’s chant rose and fell, until at last the howling turned sharp, joyous, their words scattering into laughter and snarls. Then, slowly, their voices drifted farther down the slope, thinning against the wind.

Until only silence remained.

I realized my claws were dug into the cave floor. My tail lashed without me meaning it too. My breath came in ragged bursts, not from fear no, not fear but from something heavier. A pressure in my ribs, a weight in my throat, like I had swallowed stone.

Leo moved first. His talons scraped as he shifted closer, the fire still in his eyes but tempered now with something else worried, maybe anger, maybe both.

“They think they won tonight,” he muttered, low. His voice was gravel against the cave walls. “They’ll be back. They always come back.”

I turned my head, staring at him through the dim. “He called me Shadow-Giver. Said I was the first. The creator of them.” My voice cracked at the edges, brittle, dangerous. “What if he’s right? What if all of them are right?”

Leo met my eyes and didn’t look away. “Then we figure it out. Together. You don’t get to drown in their madness, Ellesar. Not while I’m here.”

The silence pressed heavy again, but this time it wasn’t empty. Outside, the mountain lay dark and waiting, the air sharp with the ghosts of the wolves’ howls. Inside, it was just me and Leo, our breaths mingling, the shadows crawling restless under my skin.

And for the first time, I realized how deep I’d leaned on him. From the moment I’d hatched, from the first time I snarled at him and he didn’t leave. Weeks had passed like storms, and already I was taller than him, older in my body than my days should allow. But through all of it, he had been the one anchor.

I hated needing him.I hated it, but I clung to it.Because the wolves weren’t wrong about one thing: Madness doesn’t die. It just waits.And now, like the shadows, it was waiting for me.

The wolves’ howls had faded, but their echoes still lived in the stone. The cave was too quiet now, the silence gnawing at me more than their snarls ever had. I sat against the wall, shadows crawling under my scales, and tried not to think about Malric’s grin, about the way his body thrashed and rose again.

Leo didn’t leave me alone. He sat close, his flank warm against mine, his breath steady, even though his eyes still burned from the fight.

“You scare me sometimes,” he admitted after a long silence. His voice was low, rough around the edges. “But I like you, Ellesar. More than I thought I would. You’re sharp and broken and furious at everything, but you’re alive. And you make me want to stay alive too.”

I turned toward him, unsure if I should snarl or laugh. His words twisted inside me, heavy and warm.

“You could’ve left,” I muttered. “From the start. You should’ve.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, fierce and simple, like it was law. “Not tomorrow. Not next year. Not until my life ends. That’s a promise.”

His eyes locked into mine, steady, brown, too honest. I looked away first, because it was too much, because I didn’t know how to carry words like that without breaking.

We fell into silence again, but it was different this time. Softer. The shadows inside me didn’t stir quite so loud.

I leaned against him, not all the way, not enough to admit it, but enough that the warmth of him pressed into my shoulder. I let my eyes close, just for a moment. That night, I almost believed him.

The morning came cold and sharp.I woke to stone and wind. My body still hummed with the weight of shadow, my dreams still wet with salt and visions of water.

But Leo was gone.

The cave was empty, his warmth already fading from the stone where he’d lain. No scent, no sound of his wings outside, no claw marks fresh enough to follow. Just absence.

The shadows whispered in me, louder than ever.He said he wouldn’t leave. He swore it.And yet the silence was the only answer I had.The cave was too quiet. Too empty. Leo’s scent had faded from the stone, his warmth long gone. I stared at the place he’d slept, claws digging into the ground until the stone cracked under me.

I hated myself.

I hated that I’d leaned on him, that I’d let his words sink into me, that I’d let myself believe just for a moment that someone would stay. I knew better. Everyone leaves. They always do. Parents, kin, dragons, wolves… and now him.The one animal I thought I could trust had left me.

Pieces’ words slithered back into my head If your heart is broken even once, you will shift back into what you were supposed to be.

And I felt it then. The break. Not a clean cut, but a jagged shattering inside my chest. Anger and sorrow twisted together, hot and suffocating, until it was too much to hold The shadows stirred. They didn’t crawl this time. They erupted.

My body split apart in silence. My scales dulled, patches of white collapsing into gray as if the color itself bled out of me. My markings vanished, stripped away by darkness until my skin was carved in absence. My eyes widened, no longer sharp and narrow but pits, endless and fathomless, glowing like dying stars. My wings unfurled and the cave recoiled the shadows bent around them like the world itself was afraid. The air grew thin, the light died, and the temperature dropped until the stone beneath me froze to frost.

I wasn’t Ellesar anymore. I wasn’t what I’d been. And then I heard him. The steady sound of claws on stone, padding closer. Malric. His four eyes glowed in the dark, lips peeled back in a grin that didn’t belong to any sane thing.

“You feel it now, don’t you?” His voice purred like rot seeping into the marrow. “The break. The power. This is what you were meant to be. Welcome to your new life, Shadow-Giver.”

I lifted my head, the shadows screaming in my chest. My voice came out layered, as if the void itself spoke through me.

“I’m no Shadow-Giver,” I snarled. “I’m what Shadow-Givers fear. I am the first and the last. I am…” My wings stretched, blackness tearing at the edges of the cave. “…The Void. I am death itself.”

Malric froze, then threw back his head and laughed, loud and wild. “Yes! Yes! The Goddess was right! You are her crown! You are the curse given form!” He bowed low, pressing his muzzle to the stone like he was praying. “Ellesar the Void, creator of Shadow-Givers. The father of them all.”

Something twisted in my chest, heavier than power. A pulling. A creation. I looked down and saw shadows pooling at my talons, solidifying, condensing into a shape. Small. Fragile.

An egg.

Its surface shimmered black, threaded with faint red veins pulsing like a heartbeat. And inside, I knew without needing to be told, was Scorpio. My firstborn. My creation. My son.

The shadows had given me an heir.

Malric’s grin widened, his tongue lolling, madness dripping from every syllable. “The ocean deity will be proud. You’ve chosen. You’ve created. Shadow-Giver no longer. you are the seed of a new age!”

But I didn’t need him.

I spread my wings, the cave trembling with the sound,. The cave collapsed into blackness and the last thing I saw before darkness swallowed me was the egg pulsing in the dark. And in my heart, I knew the truth. Inside that egg was Scorpio my first full Shadow-Giver. My son. My legacy. And the world would never be the same.

The egg trembled in the dark, the shell pulsing with veins of red light as if it had a heartbeat. I stood over it, shadows coiling off my wings, waiting for what I already knew was inside. My creation. My firstborn.

A crack split the air. The shell fractured, thin shards of shadow hissing into the cave air as they fell. And then a claw pushed through small, black as the void, dripping smoke. The egg shuddered, cracked again, until the creature inside tore its way free.

He crawled onto the stone, limbs too thin, too sharp, scales shimmering with absence rather than color. His eyes opened pits of endless black, flashes of red sparking in their depths. His wings unfolded like torn banners, shadows dripping off them as if reality couldn’t cling to his edges.

Scorpio. My son. My creation.

I lowered my head, close enough that my breath swept across his trembling body. He stared up at me without fear, only hunger, only devotion. The connection burned in my chest like chains pulling tight.

“Hello,” I whispered, voice thick with something I didn’t want to name. “Hello, my son.”

He hissed back small, broken, but sharp enough to slice silence. The sound wrapped around me like a promise, and somehow I felt fear.

I left him there.abandoned waiting for something that wouldn't return. Shadows curled over his body as I spread my wings. He would grow in the dark. He would become what I could not shape with words.

The night tore open as I took to the sky.

The mountain wind cut against me, but I flew faster, higher, until the world stretched wide below. That’s when I saw him.

Snow-Fall. The wolf-leader of the sane pack, the one the others called wise, the one dragons whispered about like a thorn lodged too deep. He stood on a ridge, his fur silvered in moonlight, his eyes sharp and calculating as he barked orders to his kin.

I didn’t think. I folded my wings and plummeted, slamming into him with claws and teeth. His body broke beneath me, bones snapping, blood splattering the rock. The wolves howled in panic, their voices cracking the sky.

“Snow-Fall!” they screamed. “The dragon killed him! Our leader is dead!Who will lead us into the future?!”

Their howls turned into wails, baying to their fallen leader, grief and rage. But then Snow-Fall’s body split open.Not flesh. Not blood. Light.

From the ruin of him poured shapes of dragons, their scales glowing so bright the night recoiled. Their wings shimmered like crystal, their voices ringing like bells struck in the deep. They weren’t made of shadow or fire or fury. They were made of Light itself. When they spoke, their words weren’t just heard. They pressed into my bones.

“Since you chose the path of shadow, light now exists. For one cannot live without the other.”

Their faces were soft, unbearably so, their eyes kind where mine had only known rage it discussed me looking at these creatures. The wolves dropped low, their snarls breaking into chants, voices trembling with awe

“Light-Bringers! Light-Bringers!”

The new dragons of light lifted their wings and the world brightened, the snow reflecting them until the mountains gleamed.

I tried to roar at them, to cut them with shadow, but my claws hesitated. Their glow burned me, searing my scales where the beams touched. I hissed, stumbling back, the shadows peeling away under their radiance. I could not strike them. To harm them was to unravel myself.

And still they smiled. Still they spoke gently, as though they were not my enemies but my counterparts.

The wolves barked in worship. The Light-Bringers’ glow rose higher, surrounding me until I felt small, caged, cornered.

I turned, my wings tearing at the air, fleeing into the night. Their glow clung to me like fire, burning where the shadows curled. For the first time since becoming the Void, I felt pain. Not from teeth. Not from betrayal. From light.

And the wolves’ voices carried after me, screaming their praise into the night

“Light-Bringers! The Light-Bringers have come! We are saved from the shadows! The Light-Bringers are here.”

Final Part

I flew back before the night died, before the sky could purge the stain of the Light-Bringers. The moon was a pale coin above the ridge and the wind tasted of salt and burned fur. My wings cut the air like knives; every beat carried me faster toward the cave where I left the egg and my child.

The mouth of the cave yawned like an open wound.

He was waiting. Not the fragile thing that had slipped from shell and smoke no. Scorpio stood whole, risen too quick, all jagged absence and impossible angles. He filled the cave like a shadow made solid scales that drank light, wings that folded reality back from their tips, pits in place of eyes that burned with red fire. He was my shape and not my shape at all.

For a stunned second I only heard the blood in my ears. Then he turned and looked at me, and the name I had whispered in the dark my voice still raw seemed to settle into the stone.

“Father,” he rasped. The word was a blade.

He moved like hunger. Before thought, before warning, he was on me teeth and claws and cold, empty strength. Pain lanced through me, bright and unbearable. His fangs tore my side, claws opened me, and the cave spun into black.

I died.

The fall wasn’t clean. There was a ripping, a pouring out of something I hadn’t known how to hold. For a heartbeat the world closed then the dark inside me answered with more darkness. I rose. I rode the void like a wave and came back through it stronger, wider, a body rebuilt from absence. Where white had clung, gray took root. The markings that made me dragon peeled away; my eyes widened into pits where no stars reflected. The cave gasped around me.

Scorpio blinked, calm as a thing that had expected this all along.

He leaned close enough that his hot, cold breath steamed against my ear. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, voice soft as a guillotine. “I must prove myself to the stars. My place is not beside yours forever. For it never was.”

Rage detonated in me hot, animal, immediate. I hauled myself on reflex, claws rending into him in a single motion, flinging him against the stone. He yelped, surprised, then delighted. He liked the game.

“I will kill him,” I snarled, the words tasting like iron. “I will find Tentacion and I will kill him for this— for you betraying me.”

Scorpio’s laugh was broken glass. He straightened, shaking starlight and shadow from his shoulders like a man dusting his coat.

“Kill him if you can find him,” he said, slow and mocking. “If you can find him. He will not walk where you think to look. He will not be a mark you can trace. He will be the proof I promised the stars. And when you cannot find him, you will know what it is to be hunted by the thing you birthed.”

He stepped back to the edge of the shadows, and for a moment his form thinned, becoming less a son and more the idea of one the proof of something new and terrible. The fissures of light from the cave’s mouth licked at his flanks and he smiled with all the arrogance of creation.

“Do not speak to me of killing him yet,” he said. “The hunt is long. The stars will wait. The wolves will learn. You will yield or you will follow. Either way, the world moves.”

He was fading melting into the void he belonged to slipping between stone and night like smoke through fingers. One last thing he did before the dark took him: he curled, half-smile razor-sharp.

“If you find him, father,” Scorpio whispered as his outline thinned, “then come. I will be waiting with Tophet. I will watch what you do when the hunter cannot find his prey.”

The cave swallowed his final words.

I stood there in the hollow he left, shoulders trembling with a new kind of cold. The shadows around me were not comfort. They were a burden that thrummed with possibility and with emptiness. My heart a thing I’d broken and mended felt raw, like a bone gnawed open. Grief and fury braided together until I could not tell one from the other.

I had made him. I had left behind a scion of the void and he had chosen to become a thing that would not answer to me. He had dared the stars and the ocean and called them mine. He had dared the world to take from him the place he wanted, and he had stepped beyond me.

I listened for a while to the raw hush, to the echo of his last sentence. Then I turned my face to the black and felt something burn behind my bones: distrust, like acid. The truth of it settled with lead weight hope was a weapon that cut both ways. You leaned on someone and you opened the wrong seam.

I would not trust again. Not anyone. Not the howl that promised salvation, not the claw that swore it would not leave. I would wait. I would lash out at the dark and the light both, until the end trembled.

And somewhere beyond the horizon, a name pulsed in me like a flare Leo. I would find him. I would find the one who stayed, who promised, who left, and I would make him pay. But not now. Not yet.

First I would wait. Wait for the world to crack. Wait until I could tear through the hiding places and smoke out what had been hidden from me. Wait until tentacles of shadow reached everywhere, until the stars themselves trembled. Then I would go for what I truly wanted.

I spread my wings and left the cave. The night took me up like an accusation. The stars watched without blinking. The world kept turning, small and fragile and full of things I no longer trusted. Pieces had been right. My heart was broken.

And so I waited.

Waited for this world to burn. Waited for the stars to fall. Waited for the day I would find Leo again the one who made me believe, the one who swore he would never leave.

When that day came, I would make him pay for every lie.

And until then, I would be what I was.
Not a Shadow-Giver.
Not a dragon.
The Void.

She learned quickly how to lower her lashes, how to lace her voice with honey, how to sit still in silken gowns while the world swallowed her fire. She smiled, because he told her to smile. She softened her laugh, because he told her it was too sharp. He whispered that he was chiseling her into perfection, like a sculptor with marble.

But marble doesn’t bleed.
And she did.

The cuts went unseen. Little fractures, cracks under her skin. Something ancient and starving slipped through those cracks. Something that had been waiting, patient as rot beneath floorboards.

One night, she stopped pretending.

Her body folded in on itself, joints bending the wrong way, bones blooming like black flowers out of her back. Her skin peeled off in strips, curling and flaking like burning paper. What replaced it wasn’t flesh at all but shadow given mass writhing, twitching, impossible to trace with your eyes because the edges kept… moving. Like every time you blinked, it had changed shape.

Her face was the worst. You could still almost see her in it, the faint outline of lips, eyes, a nose but they slid around, as if her features had grown tired of staying in one place. Her mouth opened too wide, and inside wasn’t teeth or tongue, but an echoing pit that dripped with a sound you felt in your bones. A low gnawing hum, like a hive of insects chewing through wood.

You couldn’t look at her for too long without your brain trying to look away. Not because you wanted to, but because you couldn’t hold the shape of her in your thoughts. She was a mistake your mind refused to keep, like staring too long into a word until it stops being a word at all.

He had wanted her soft.He had wanted her small.He had wanted her gentle.

Instead, she became the thing that waits at the bottom of every dream, the image your subconscious hides behind locked doors.

And when he saw what she had become, when his eyes finally processed the shape of her, he screamed.Not because she was monstrous.But because, somehow, in some obscene, impossible way… she was still smiling.

They whispered about her in hushed tones called her a flame, a monster, something never meant to be human at all. And from her story came the old saying: “Never try to tame a flame.” For once, a man had tried to cage a fire that was never made to bow, and he learned too late that flames exist only to burn, to rise, to remain untamed.