Morning arrived like a soft promise. Before the sun had fully climbed over the trees Lyra was already awake, moving with the quiet efficiency of someone born to care for others. She set a kettle to warm, pulled down a broad wooden bowl, and began measuring ingredients as if conducting a small, sacred ritual.
"For pancakes," she murmured, listing them aloud as she worked. "Two cups of flour, a pinch of salt, two eggs, three tablespoons of sugar—no, four—because little ones always want more sweetness. A cup of milk, half a cup of water to loosen the batter, a teaspoon of baking powder, and a spoonful of melted butter."
She sifted the flour until it snowed into the bowl in slow white clouds and cracked the eggs with delicate fingers. The children's delight lived in these small, deliberate acts: she whisked until the mixture shimmered with light, the batter falling back into the bowl like liquid silk.
But Lyra didn't just cook—she shaped elements. A single, controlled finger-flare produced a ribbon of fire that licked beneath the iron pan; she cupped a breath of cold magic with the other hand and drew it across the metal's edge to temper the heat. The pan gleamed hot but even, a seam of precisely balanced energy that would brown the pancakes but keep their centers pillowy. She poured batter with the steady hand of a practiced noble and flipped the rounds with an artful wrist, steam rising in soft curls with each satisfying contact.
She made enough to stack like a small tower—thick, honeyed, and steaming. For syrup, she mixed boiled-cider reduction and a little wildflower honey, and kept a small pot of spiced plum compote on the side, because sometimes a little noble sweetness made the world feel kinder.
When the last pancake slid onto the plate she kissed the edge of the pan and padded to Aizen's room, where she rapped gently on the door.
"Aizen, breakfast," she sang.
He came out with the slow grace of someone who knew the value of rest, hair rumpled and eyes kissing the morning. "Good morning," he said, and then, with a half-smile that warmed her, added, "Smells wonderful."
"Get the children," she asked. "They'll eat their fill and then we leave the village this afternoon."
Aizen walked to the small bedroom where they had stacked the little beds together during the children's games the night before. The sight made him grin—three small bodies curled into one great tangle of limbs, breathing the kind of steady, soft dream-sleep only safety could buy.
He shook them gently. "Good morning, Lina, Theodore, Mikaela," he said in a voice threaded with warmth. "Pancakes. Lyra made pancakes."
The children blinked awake. Mikaela, always the energetic one, bounded up like a coiled spring. Theodore rubbed his eyes and smiled with shy gravity. Lina, the newest and quietest, blinked and then smiled—a shy, slow smile that tugged at Aizen's chest as if it had been there before.
They ran to the dining space to find Lyra setting down a stack of pancakes glistening with butter, syrup steaming at the side. The twins' eyes widened—this was a noble's breakfast, and the idea alone was a kind of wonder. They had eaten crusts at inns and stale rations at road camps; this was something softer, rounder, gilded in warmth.
They ate with gusto. Syrup dribbled down chins and sticky fingers were wiped on the hems of sleeves. Between mouthfuls they chattered about small things: the shape of a cloud, the way a sparrow had bobbed on the fence post, the silly way Aizen had once pretended to be a knight who loved vegetables.
After breakfast they spilled out into the village green with laughter. The twins practiced small, safe spells under Lyra's guidance—Theodore's tentative buffing light and Mikaela's tiny sparks—while Lina darted about with her catlike agility, practising silent steps among the stones and startling a distracted hen into a flurry. The village watched them with indulgent smiles: villagers had welcomed them three months ago as protectors and helpers and now watched them as children again, which was perhaps an even rarer blessing than the rest they had been given.
Two weeks later the time came to leave. The three months had been good; the village had been fair. Aizen stood before the chief's doorway with a stack of papers—permission, thanks, and an understanding carved in ink. Lyra approached the old man with quiet courtesy and handed the chief the folded documents.
"Thank you," he said in his slow voice, reading the neat signatures. "You've protected us. Keep your children close on the road."
"We will," Aizen promised. He tucked the papers inside his coat like a talisman and turned to the children, hugs and light scoldings given with practiced tenderness.
"Everyone packed?" he said, assessing satchels and checks with a careful eye. The children were ready—small ropes, dried fruit, a toy or two. Lina's satchel had a small embroidered ribbon; Mikaela insisted she carry the map.
They set out before dawn, the road curving from thatched edges into a ribbon of wild forest. Their destination: Ravaryn—once called Eravor—the ancient human city that brooded on the horizon like a promise both dangerously bright and necessary. The Dukes still held power there; the old noble houses were thinner than legend recalled, but the city still spoke with gravitas and old debts.
The first day was light; they walked and talked of trivialities: which lake to take a swim in, the oddities of Emperor-era statues, where to find the best river-pear. The children made games of the march. Mikaela tried skipping stones and failed so happily she laughed at the splash. Theodore practiced shaping small mana orbs, and Lina skittered ahead and back, claws barely making the brush tremble.
Then the monsters came.
They did not come as a storm but as a pushing tide—lowland scrapes, thick with coats matted with mud, baring teeth like boulders. Lyra stepped forward, voice sharp, and called for the halt. She drew a ring of frost and thin, angled blades of iced wind flashed underfoot, slowing the brutes. Lina darted through breaks in the monsters' formation and slashed at ribs with fast, clean talons, every move a whisper of practiced agility. Mikaela and Theodore kept rhythm, chanting in a small double-harmony that wrapped Lina in a shimmering buff—speed, reflex, a little extra bite to every claw.
Aizen watched, home in the arc of the fight like a dark prow. When the lead brute sent a bellowing charge, he stepped in and moved as if shadows themselves obeyed his pace—one clean slash, an iron whisper, and the great beast crumpled like harvest straw. The rest scattered. The children erupted into triumphant squeals; Lina leapt and hugged Mikaela as if that very victory had carved a promise into their young bones.
As night braided itself into the sky they made camp. Aizen set the tents with an almost professional economy—three small shelters neatly arranged so the fire's smoke would drift away from them but give a clean ring of warmth. Lyra took a blade and, with a practiced eye, divided the boar she had tracked into roasts and stews. She handed pieces to the twins and Lina, teaching them how to tie a bone with a strip of leather and how to pull a roast away from a rib without tearing. Aizen tended the flame—he milked the coals, coaxing their heart into a steady, contained heat that would not flare and call attention.
They ate under the watchful sky with the comfort of exhaustion settling on everyone's shoulders. The boar tasted of smoke and salt and the effort of bringing something whole to table—an earned meal rather than one received. Conversation drifted from schoolyard fantasies into the future.
"I want to see everything," Mikaela said around a mouthful of meat, eyes shining. "All the coasts, the salt markets, the floating islands! I'll open a guild where everyone can go—no matter if you're a dragon, demon, or human. Our guild will be big and welcoming."
Theodore's eyes were serious. "I want to build a tower," he said. "A library and a Magic Tower—where learning is safe and people don't have to hide their magic. I want to make spells that help farmers and healers."
Lina watched the twin stars in their faces and finally said, in a voice small but certain, "I want to be with you two. I don't know all the big things yet. But I want to never be alone. I want to follow."
Mikaela grabbed Lina's hand. "Then you will. Promise."
Aizen and Lyra exchanged a look that contained a world. Lyra's fingers found his and squeezed, small comfort that spoke louder than speech.
When the night thinned and sleep settled, they took their places under the tent flaps. Mikaela and Theodore curled into the first tent and fell asleep in minutes. Lyra and Lina shared the second, Lina warming against the dragon's careful wings. Aizen took the third, seated at its mouth like a sentinel, watching embers die like slow thoughts.
He watched and thought of the threats that had been carved into the world, of old promises and older debts. He heard the soft, even rhythm of his family's breath and let the moment sit heavy with gratitude.
He did not sleep long.
A shadow slipped between trees like a thought with teeth—the kind of assassin dragons kept for the feathered and the featherless alike, the kind of killer whose footsteps were taught in silence and whose blade tasted moonlight. The assassin bent near Lyra's tent and drew the dagger, aim already practiced for a clean end.
The hand never fell.
There was a soft sound—a cloth's whisper, a hand on the assault's wrist—and then the sharp, impossibly final thing of a throat cut, but without frantic blood or scream. Later, Aizen would not remember any flourish; the memory would remain a tight, hard knot: the assassin's headless body crumpling into ash, the head in Aizen's hands still trying to form a sound. He wrapped cloth around it, pressed a small, cruelly neat paper into the assassin's mouth, and thrust the relic back out like a sealed message.
He stepped out into the night and heaved the head with quiet strength. It arced like a thrown promise and flew—thrown by him as a warning—toward the high road, toward the capital where kings kept their secrets.
The head landed in the hands of a royal rider hurrying home; by dawn it had been carried to a palace tower where a crown of carved bone and wing-metal waited its master.
Zelfhar, Dragon King, took the message from the assassin's mouth and read the simple, black-inked note:
> Dragon King Zelfhar,
Your best blade tried to kill my partner. I killed him for that folly.
— Aizen Arcime, Black Lion
The king's face went bone-white with an old fury. Images rose like smoke: a young Aizen's clan on the mountain, a night of banners and blood, knights carried off with broken pride. The memory that cut deepest was the one no man wanted to remember: the night a Black Lion had laid him low—when an adult Black Lion's strength, sudden and terrible, had bent Zelfhar's blood and pride and left him alive only by fortune.
"Where is he?" the king demanded, voice like a cracked bell. "Where is the Black Lion?"
Knights scrambled. The old wounds bled afresh. Zelfhar tightened the crown on his head as if the metal would give him answers; instead, only a single answer rose in him like a drum: the Black Lion must die.
The drumbeat for war sounded faintly in distant hearts that night. Pain resurfaced. A crown's edge glittered with resolve.
The war was not over. It was beginning again.
---
End of Chapter 82