The air in the coral prison smelled of forgotten years and sealed fate.
Lysander's fingers twitched at his sides, the parasite writhing beneath his skin like a caged beast. The man floating before him—this older, wearier version of himself—studied him with mercury eyes that held the weight of centuries.
"You took your time," the prisoner said, his voice echoing as if spoken through water.
The mute boy—no, not a boy at all, Lysander realized, but something far older—pressed a webbed hand to the small of Lysander's back and pushed.
The coral door sealed shut behind him.
I. The Reflection
The prisoner drifted closer, his tattered robes swirling in an unfelt current. Up close, the differences became clearer—the streaks of white in his hair, the network of black veins crawling up his neck, the way his left hand twisted unnaturally, as if frozen mid-transformation.
"You don't remember," the prisoner murmured. "Of course you don't."
Lysander's dagger was in his hand before he could think, the Valyrian steel humming against his palm.
The prisoner laughed—a sound like breaking ice. "Still so quick to violence. Some things never change."
"Who are you?" Lysander demanded.
The prisoner's mercury eyes darkened. "The first failure."
A pulse of pain lanced through Lysander's skull as the parasite forced a memory into his mind:
A laboratory deep beneath Valyria, where dragon eggs floated in vats of blood
A council of silver-haired figures, their faces blurred but their voices clear—"The God beneath must be fed, or the Doom comes early."
A betrayal—this prisoner, standing before the altar of the Dreaming God, refusing to sacrifice the hatchling in his arms
The memory shattered like glass.
"They called me Aelar," the prisoner said. "The first dragonlord to bond a shadowkin. The first to realize what it truly was."
Lysander's breath came short. "And what is it?"
Aelar's gaze dropped to the parasite coiled around Lysander's neck. "A leash."
II. The Leash and the God
The prison walls breathed around them, pulsing with the same rhythm as the tattoo on Lysander's chest.
"The Dreaming God is not a god," Aelar said, drifting to the far wall where strange glyphs had been carved—not Valyrian, but older. "It is a prisoner, just like me. Just like you."
He pressed his palm to the largest glyph, and the coral peeled back, revealing a window into the cavern beyond.
The Dreaming God was unraveling.
Its tentacles lashed wildly as the shadowkin hatchlings swarmed it, their small forms burrowing into its flesh like parasites. The priests lay in pieces, their chitin masks shattered. And Nyessa—
Lysander's throat tightened.
The captain's corpse hung limp from a stalactite, her golden eyes gone, her viper crushed in her own fist.
"They used us," Aelar whispered. "The dragonlords. They made pacts with things they didn't understand. The shadowkin were meant to be weapons—to bind the Dreaming God, to control it. But the god is older than Valyria. Older than man."
He turned back to Lysander. "And now it is waking."
The parasite shrieked in Lysander's mind, its pain echoing his own.
"Why me?" Lysander ground out. "Why now?"
Aelar's smile was bitter. "Because you are the only one who ever escaped it."
III. The Unbinding
The prison shook.
Chunks of coral rained from the ceiling as the Dreaming God's rage reverberated through the island. The mute boy—Hah'dra, the last priest of the deep—pressed his forehead against the door, his voice a whisper in Lysander's mind:
"Break the leash."
Aelar reached out, his twisted hand hovering over Lysander's chest. "The Maw was never meant to contain the shadowkin. It was meant to transfer it."
Lysander recoiled. "To who?"
Aelar's mercury eyes flickered. "To me."
The parasite thrashed, its claws digging deeper into Lysander's flesh as if sensing the threat. The System's warnings flooded his vision in crimson:
"CRITICAL SYMBIOSIS FAILURE"
"PARASITE REJECTION IMMINENT"
"SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 8.3%"
Aelar didn't wait for permission.
He slammed his twisted hand against the Maw.
IV. The Choice
Pain.
Not the sharp sting of a blade, but the slow, inexorable agony of something rooted deep being torn free. The parasite's tendrils ripped from Lysander's veins, each one taking blood, memory, and breath with it.
Aelar screamed, his back arching as the shadowkin flowed into him, its inky form merging with his blackened veins. His mercury eyes darkened, the silver leaching away into void-black.
The prison splintered.
Hah'dra yanked Lysander back as the coral walls ruptured, seawater blasting inward. The last thing Lysander saw before the flood took him was Aelar—no longer a prisoner, but a vessel—standing tall as the shadowkin consumed him whole.
Then—
Darkness.
And a voice that was not a voice:
"FLEE, LITTLE DRAGON. THE GOD REMEMBERS YOU NOW."