(3rd person PoV)
Nephelont woke up between Ais and Eucleia, with both wrapping him in their arms.
In a fit of panic, he turned to gravel dust and got out of there.
There were several consequences for Nephelont's action. The most important two are the direct ones.
The first consequence relates to Ais. Feeling the sudden emptiness the lack of Nephelont left, Ais woke up.
The second consequence was that Eucleia, even while asleep, felt the lack of Nephelont and teleported on top of his back, mumbling something about not leaving her behind to do something fun behind her back.
'...' Nephelont's mind was blank, empty, no thoughts formed. Even then, something told him to look out the window and declare his challenge to the sun. He was about to until he discovered that it was not morning yet.
"My sun" Ais said, arms open, an indirect invitation to come back to bed. Nephelont accepted the invitation, diving into Ais's hug. He basked in the cathartic effect his mother's hugs have on him.
'I'll be mommy's only sun, one day.' Nephelont resolved himself again.
(After breakfast that same morning)
Nephelont was energetic as always. He ate his meal cheerfully, ran with crumbs on his face to chase a certain big bird, then got caught and cleaned by Ais, a totally usual morning.
"He either doesn't mind it, or he completely forgot about the incident" Hestia was worried sick after hearing about what happened in the dungeon.
"Hey! Little guy!" Henryk came back when he heard about what happened. He didn't want to leave Nephelont feeling neglected by his uncle. In fact, Henryk deemed it okay for everyone to be present for a few days, leaving the black dragon under watch by the weaker members among Henryk's children. If anything happened, the horrors could simply teleport them there instantly. That meant that both Albert and Lionheart were also here today.
"You don't think it's a traumatic response, do you?" Lionheart spilled his worries over his grandson's situation.
"I hope not" Bell and Carillon said in unison.
(Somewhere around the Hearth manor)
Not hearing a response, Henryk mentally called for one of the horrors to bring Ouros to him.
"Help me find Nephelont" Henryk said to Ouros, who started sniffing around. They quickly reached the end of the trail outside, where it disappeared into the air.
'He seems to have flown up' Ouros looked up for a bit, trying to catch him flying around. 'He's far away'
'Little Lia's with him, isn't she?' Henryk asked rhetorically.
(Afternoon)
Eucleia was feeling the rush of the wind brushing past her face as Nephelont and Ais held her by the hand and flew around. This went on for a while before they returned home.
"Hey there, little guy" Henryk popped out of nowhere and held Nephelont by the head. "We need to talk" With a demonic smile, he dragged a crying Nephelont to the depths of the manor, to the training grounds. In a rare turn of events, Eucleia did not follow Nephelont and prayed for his safe return instead. She had the gut feeling that something harsh would befall him, something she would not be able to help him with.
(In the training grounds)
"Well, little guy, we will talk about this" Henryk said as his body visibly stiffened before fur-like hair grew all over his arms from the elbows down and some covered his cheeks, hiding a small amount of skin, the latter turning somewhat grayish. His ears were now completely covered in fur, and a new pair of ears grew atop his head. His hands and feet, now bared as he took off his boots, changed so that his fingers and toes became hooked, sharp claws. Last but not least, Nephelont finally understood why all of Henryk's attire has some form of flapping cloth at the back. It was to cover an unused tail hole, evident by a tail sprouting out of that area.
Henryk could be seen to have thinned after the transformation was done, as if some of his body's bulk moved to form the new appendages.
"Cool!" Nephelont's eyes turned to little stars as he admired Henryk's ability to transform. He quickly wilted when he began to realize what Henryk was about to do. "Can we..." Nephelont twiddled his fingers as his gaze slowly fell to the ground. "not do this?"
"Sorry, Nephelont, but you need this. You have an uncontrolled power source. I want you to be able to control it instead of letting it control you" Henryk gauged Nephelont's reaction. "Don't you want the same? Also, I think that Lia would think that you look cool if you could transform as you see fit. Let's be honest, dragons are cool creatures" Henryk jabbed a finger into Nephelont's side, directly looking at his slitted eyes. 'He already does what I want him to be able to do, but he only does it subconsciously, and marginally at that'
"You think so? Would I look cool, too?" Nephelont said while looking away, a small hint of his desire to be cool seeping through.
"That depends on you, little guy!" Henryk started laughing. "You can be cool if you want to be!"
"Teach me then! Nephelont wants to be a cool demi-human dragon!" An emotion buried so deeply in the back of Nephelont's mind resurfaced. It was an emotion he did not remember feeling before, yet it felt so familiar to him, a feeling that came along with a sense of fulfillment he did not know he needed or why he needed to feel it.
"We will start by spending most of your time as a full-on dragon" Henryk witnessed the extreme red of Bell once and is witnessing the extreme white of Nephelont now. If pure white existed, it would feel ashamed of how white Nephelont turned at this moment.
Nephelont shook his head and looked at the promise of being a cool demi-human dragon. He did as he was told, promptly going berserk. He had to be knocked unconscious by Henryk.
"Poor thing, you'd spend some time acclimating to this new form and its desires" Henryk patted Nephelont's head as he talked, avoiding the many horns around it. "Once you spent enough time like this, you might even learn to fly so much faster than Ais"
Henryk scoffed at the thought. Even with all the limit breaking Bell did, Ais still out sped him once she was on the same level. No one was faster than Ais beside Aria and Aeolus, not until now. Nephelont could leverage the flying speed of his dragon form and the wind to assist him. Combining the two might push him well past Ais's speed, but Aria was a totally different monster, with Aeolus being in a league of her own.
"In due time, little Nephelont" Henryk picked up what was essentially a raging, but unconscious, dragon child. He told everyone that he would take Nephelont somewhere outside and train him to control this form before bringing him back to Orario. 'That hopeless gecko doesn't need me to be present, and both Lionheart and Albert have the time to spend watching over it for the time being'
Eucleia left a written letter informing everyone that she, as usual, will follow Nephelont where he went.
That was how the manor was left looking lifeless for a long time.