The air tastes like charged metal, I fight the primitive urge to crawl backward as the twin leviathans swing those impossible gazes across our line. When their eyes burning embers in a night-black skull, molten gold in a sapphire mask skim over me, every voice inside goes mute. The voices the greedy whispers that drives my ambition also for once say nothing as if even they know my limits.
I risk a sideways glance. The others kneel just as rigidly, each caught in that same silent gravity. Zaria's lips move in a soundless mantra; sweat beads on her copper skin and freezes before sliding off. Lucian's shoulders, normally squared with calculated poise, hunch inward as if he can make himself smaller. Rye clutches the edge of her robe, knuckles bone-white, hair plastered to her forehead with nervous perspiration. Imara alone looks radiant eyes blazing with some devotional ecstasy, broad smile trembling with awe. Dominic, arm strapped to his chest, is coated in such a film of sweat that the marble beneath him darkens in a perfect outline. Niko's mouth hangs open like a door unlatched in a storm, and Vihaan, usually a statue of smug indifference, quivers so badly his fingers tap at the floor in tiny, frantic movements unconsciously.
My own pulse drums so loudly it drowns every other sound almost my own thoughts, the faint hiss of scales sliding over one another, even Evanaora's quiet laugh of anticipation somewhere behind me. Each heartbeat slams against my ribs, a hammer forging something too bright and hot inside my chest. Less than a year ago no fuck that, less than a month I would of swore on my life dragons were bedtime myths, extinct expect for our books and history. Now two stand close enough that I could touch them. I'm kneeling before living contradictions, and every nerve is delirious with fear and thrilled disbelief.
Saphiel's head tilts, facets of blue catching pale sun shining in from above. Her eyes, ancient and bright as newborn stars, focus on Dominic first, then glide to Imara. Both of them visibly sag under that scrutiny Dominic wilting, Imara nearly bursting with joy. Then those eyes lock onto me, and the world falls away. Her neck arcs, joints clicking softly, and with a whisper of displaced air she wheels her entire body to face me directly. I am nothing no, less than nothing before that enormity. Still, some stupid, stubborn piece of me refuses to topple. My spine stays erect even as my muscles scream.
Kharon's rumble vibrates the marble low, appreciative, or maybe warning. Saphiel answers with a chime like crystal struck by silver. The resonance thrums straight through my body the noise so foreign and powerful it makes my vision flicker. Then she lowers slowly, inexorably until her snout hovers inches above my skull. The heat of her breath is paradoxically cool. My robe stirs, hair plastered back. I can see individual scales now, each one a perfect hexagon, polished to gemlike clarity yet faintly dusted in what looks like frost. They refract the rising sun into prismatic shards that dance over my cheeks.
She touches me.
The contact is impossibly gentle barely any pressure at all to be honest, more sensation than weight yet it detonates behind my eyes. Then Kharon, the onyx colossus, leans in and also places his snout on me.
The world implodes, rebuilding itself in slow-motion shards of color and sound. Two consciousness older, weightier, and alien slide against my own. It is not gentle, not curious. It is a blade cutting through who I am.
Then the world turns inside-out.
I tumble backward through time as if yanked down a winding stair. Saphiel's light guides, illuminating each landing. Kharon's gravity pushes, making sure I do not hesitate.
I watch myself be born n the small, cluttered bedroom of our townhouse overlooking the canal district of Lont. My mother's laugh bubbles through pain, my father's calloused thumb strokes my cheek. Their faces are sweat-shined, exhausted, devoted.
A summer of kite races, of Father's forge hammering rhythm into the afternoon, of Mother's songs drifting through jasmine vines every happiness I buried under years of rage unfurls in perfect clarity. I'm six, hiding behind the water barrels, squealing as Father pretends not to find me. I'm seven, perched on Mother's lap while she teaches me letters by candlelight. A year later, I sit between them at the solstice festival, fireworks blooming over the canal.
My chest cracks with a sweetness so piercing it hurts.
The raid.
I'm eight. Night reeks of wet iron. Torches glare across brick walls. Inquisitors in their black robes hoods up tabards shove neighbors aside. An Elite in mirrored armor floats above the cobbles like a vengeful comet. They had come for the traitors. My parents.
Doors splinter. Mother pulls me behind her, whispering that everything will be all right, but terror thickens her voice. Father rushes forward, hands raised, pleading. A gauntlet crackles with binding light; Father collapses, shackled in sigil-chains. Mother screams my name when the Elite lifts her by the throat.
I can't make it stop. Saphiel shows me every glittering detail the cold star of panic in Mother's eyes, the tremor in Father's lip as he tries to smile at me one last time. Kharon presses harder, watching the scene with curiosity as he listens to the verdict read aloud, to smell the acrid bite of seared flesh as the inquisitorial brand scorches my parents' palms: Traitors harboring an enemy Elite is punishable by death decreed by his Majesty.
They watch as I slip away unnoticed by the inquisitors who had thrown me onto the chair in the corner of the living room and slip out a back window before I can be taken too.
The we stand in the public square at amongst the jeering crowd. Nooses creak. I didn't know then that necks crack so loudly.
Time lurches.
I'm nine. Alleys replace bedrooms. Storm drains replace dining rooms. Rats squeal where laughter once rang. Hunger gnaws so fiercely that the memory of Mother's honey cakes tastes like a lie. At ten, I kneel beside a snoring drunk, knife shaking in my thin fist. They force my fingers to close around the hilt again, lets me feel the blade sink into flesh, the heat of blood spraying across my cheeks. I see myself clutch the stolen blanket, running until my lungs are knives.
They watch the fights in the slums, they watch me steal, lie and harm everyone I ever meet in the outskirts. Then Laura slim, bright-eyed Laura whose last name I never bothered to learn. She offers me half her bread, a place on her rooftop, she was kind. I take everything with a smile, then slip away after I find her stash of money and jewels. I can feel the dragons disappointment as if this memory alone has made them think less of me. I dont care.
We jump. Cain's estate. The training, my marks of power. Cecilia my rampage. The king and his promise. The dragon soaks in my hatred. They watch me kill again the boy with the transformation mark, they traveling the monster, they see her past when I see it. They watch as I cross the mountains all the way to the moment to now where I kneel in front of them.
I'm ready for release, for mercy or oblivion but they are not finished. A talon of thought hooks my spine and yanks me sideways, tearing free of the timeline we occupy.
We plummet into a life that never occurred.
My parents are not executed. They never harbor an enemy. So I grow in a tidy riverside house surrounded by loving parents and a younger sibling. Mother bakes honey-loaves; Father teaches me to whittle. The Empire's banners flutter benignly above festivals. I go to school at a local academy no slums, no blood under my fingernails every night. I never become an Elite in this lifetime. I stay in Lont and marry some girl from school and grow up to follow in fathers foot steps. I have kids and then grandkids and all in all it was a good life. Peaceful.
Then another jerk of their iron will, and a second life flickers:
I became an Empire-loyal Inquisitor who roots out graft and corruption as If I want the corruption. I marry at twenty-two. We have a child. I teach my daughter to read crimes in the flicker of a liar's eyes. I retire, honored, a loyal fanatic in history scrolls. This one makes me sick.
Each possibility glimmers, then darkens. I feel tears slip free I hadn't noticed my eyes were wet until a droplet falls to nonexistent ground. The dragon forces me through dozens more variations: poor but happy; rich but lonely; a healer traveling plague wards; an archivist who never fights; a martyr hanged for speaking truth. Each version of myself more alien than the last.
I sob quiet at first, then ragged. I mourn strangers who share my bones. I mourn a thousand unborn Ayatos.
But they have one more thing to watch. They drag me from the branching paths of Ayatos I could of been and thrust me back onto my current path then they yank me violently downwards into my future.
I stand, clad in black onyx armor traced with violet the design is unmistakably Imperial, perfect and beautiful. A crown rests upon my head. Rows of Inquisitors kneel before me, heads bowed. Behind them spread legions of Elites, all saluting. My flag woven with the a wolf white and silver fly's proudly in the winds.
Then we are marching.
Villages burn. The sky above them bleeds crimson and midnight from clashing marks of power. Cottages crumble into molten slag beneath plumes of fire. Children, mothers, elderly all prostrate themselves as I pass. Some keening worship, some screaming in fear. They all call me something different. I'm Reaper,Child of Light,Half-Mortal. I accept every title as though born to them, smiling gently.
The voices inside me those serpents of greed and vengeance now speak through every soldier, every peasant. They cheer. They praise. And I understand with a nauseous inevitability: They will get what they want. The dragon shows me the endgame of my hungers the perfect tyrant, the righteous butcher.
The vision collapses around me like shattering hull plates. Suddenly I'm kneeling again in chill dawn air, throat raw from a scream I never released. My cheeks are wet. My chest heaves, the brand under my sternum burning so fiercely I expect flesh to part and spill light.
Kharon's snout remains inches from mine. His ember-ringed pupils dilate like a judge's gavel slamming down.
I choke on a sob, then a laugh a brittle, despairing sound. "Is that what I become?" I whisper my fear of the dragons outweighed by the fear of myself. "Am I destined for that slaughter?"
The dragon's silence weighs heavier than any answer. No promise of salvation, no condemnation only the knowledge of what could be.
Saphiel's mind brushes mine again, a cool balm against the smoldering wound. Paths change with steps, her chiming essence pulses. But every step costs blood, one way or another. Sometimes the hardest choices and wills are required.
Kharon's snorts "As my sister says. We pass you young Ayato Daath we will watch you with interest we greatly look forward to waves you make!"
I drag in air, shivering. The tears have dried, leaving salt tracks on my skin. I've lived a thousand different lives in seconds, murdered and been murdered by possibilities.