Black as obsidian, black as the space between stars, black as the void before creation.
They catch the gold and swallow it, reflecting nothing, absorbing everything.
The head that emerges from shadow is massive beyond comprehension, each scale the size of a palace door, each tooth a blade forged by gods who had forgotten mercy.
A dragon.
Not Father’s dragon.
Nawa had been graceful as poetry, warm as summer rain.
This creature was something else entirely—ancient where Nawa had been eternal, terrible where Nawa had been magnificent, cold where Nawa had been gentle.
“Haru.” The dragon’s voice isn’t speaking my name so much as acknowledging my existence, confirming that I am real and present and witnessed by something that exists outside the normal flow of time. “You hear me.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
What else could I say? Deny reality? Pretend this was just another falling dream? I’d felt a divine presence before—all Imperial blood could sense it, could feel the tether connecting us to the gods’ realm, but this wasn’t a distant awareness of cosmic forces.
This was direct contact.
This was a god speaking to me as a person instead of an ant.
“Good.” The dragon’s eyes narrow, and I realize with creeping horror that it is pleased. “The bloodline endures. The tether, though severed, remains. You must restore it.”
“I—” My throat closes around words. “I don’t know how.”
“Take the throne. Complete the ritual. Bind yourself to the gods as your ancestors did before you.” The dragon’s head lowers, bringing gold eyes level with mine. I can see myselfreflected in them—small, fragile, and supremely insignificant. “The gods’ will must be fulfilled. The balance must be maintained. Magic must flow or all will fall into chaos.”
“My brother—”
“Your brother journeys no longer. Your path is here, now, and written in blood and necessity.” The dragon’s voice holds no sympathy, no recognition that I might not want this, might not be ready for this. “You are the tether’s anchor now. Accept this or watch your world die.”
The weight of the dragon’s words press down on me—not metaphorical weight, but actual crushing pressure that make my ribs creak and my lungs struggle for air that doesn’t even exist in this void.
“I don’t—I’m not ready—I can’t—”
“You will.” The dragon’s certainty is absolute, carved from the same substance as inevitability itself. “There is no other. The Empire must have what you carry in your blood. The gods demand it.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then Mugen falls to others, and her people will be cast in darkness.”
“Others?” I force the word past the pressure. “What others?”
The dragon’s head turns sharply, as if hearing something I couldn’t perceive. Those gold eyes fix on something beyond my vision, beyond the darkness, beyond the dream itself.
When it looks back at me, something changes.
The certainty is still there, but underneath it I hear something new.
Urgency.
Fear.
“The others would have Mugen live in darkness,” it says, the words coming faster now, less thunder and more desperate warning. “They move against you even now—in the seas, in theforests, above the clouds. They do not want balance returned. They seek to tip the scales, to own the scales for themselves. You must not allow this.”
