The splintering crash of oak on oak echoed across the dirt yard behind St. Jude's Orphanage, immediately followed by the scuffle of worn leather boots.
"Your guard is slanting again, Tae!"
Kd lunged forward through the rising dust, his wooden sword cutting through the humid morning air with a sharp whistle. Sweat dripped down his forehead, his crimson-flecked eyes burning with that relentless competitive drive. Kd never pulled a strike, even when they were just kids sparring in the back alley behind the dorms.
CLACK!
Tae parried the overhead strike just in time, the impact vibrating through his wrists and driving his heels an inch into the packed dirt. White-hot reaction took over. Tae twisted his posture, redirecting Kd's momentum upward before spinning into a sharp counter-strike toward Kd's exposed flank.
Before Tae's wooden blade could connect, a third wooden sword slid into the narrow gap between them with surgical precision.
THWACK!
Joseph stepped into the pocket, catching both of their weapons in a clean double-block. He didn't even sound out of breath. His ocean-blue eyes calmly read their footwork like an open page.
"Kd, you overcommitted on your baseline stride—a counter-strike was ninety-two percent guaranteed," Joseph said softly, shifting his weight to push both Tae and Kd back. "And Tae, you dropped your left shoulder to force the leverage. If Kd had faked the high swing, you'd be flat on your back."
Kd wheezed out a laugh, lowering his stick sword and wiping sweat off his chin with his sleeve. "Man, shut up with the calculations, Joseph! A hit is a hit!"
"Only if it lands," Tae grinned, lowering his own makeshift blade and catching his breath. He tossed his wood sword onto the dirt mound beside the old oak stump. "Besides, Joseph's right. You left your whole side open."
"Oh, so it's two-on-one now?" Kd smirked, throwing a playful jab at Tae's shoulder, which Tae easily ducked. "We've been beating each other up back here since we were barely tall enough to hold these sticks. One of these days, I'm taking both of y'all down in a single round."
"Keep dreaming, Kd," Tae chuckled, looking back at the weathered, peeling paint of the orphanage building.
They weren't brothers by blood, but in every way that mattered, they were inseparable. Dropped off at St. Jude's as forgotten infants, Tae, Kd, and Joseph had grown up under the same creaky roof. They shared thin rations, took the fall for each other's trouble, and spent every free hour pushing one another past their physical limits in the yard. Their bond wasn't random—it was forged through years of sweat, bruises, and absolute trust.
"Sister Patricia's probably going to yell at us if we don't head inside," Joseph noted, leaning his wooden practice blade against the fence posts. "It's way too quiet inside anyway."
Tae paused, his smile fading slightly as he looked toward the dorm entrance. Now that Joseph mentioned it, something felt horribly wrong.
The usual morning chaos of the orphanage—the clattering of breakfast plates, the chatter of the little kids, the smell of warm food—was completely absent. Instead, the air carried an odd, metallic tang that made the hair on the back of Tae's neck stand up.
Beneath the surface of his skin, a strange, quiet hum began to thrum—an untapped, silent force waking up. Tae looked at Kd and Joseph. Judging by the sudden sharp focus in Kd's eyes and the way Joseph's posture locked up, they felt it too.
"You guys smell that?" Kd muttered, his playful tone vanishing instantly as he gripped his wooden sword tighter.
"Static electricity... and sulfur," Joseph murmured, his calm demeanor sharpening into pure focus.
Before Tae could answer, a bloodcurdling scream shattered the stillness, echoing straight from the main dining hall. It was Sister Patricia.
Without a second thought or a word spoken between them, the three moved as a single unit, sprinting up the back steps and bursting through the hallway doors. Years of sparring side-by-side meant they didn't need to coordinate—their instincts were already aligned.
They slid to a halt at the threshold of the dining hall, and the sight inside made Tae's blood run ice-cold.
The dining room was dead silent except for the muffled whimpers of the younger orphans cowering under tables. Suspended in the middle of the room was Sister Patricia, lifted two feet off the floor. Wrapped around her throat was a massive, spectral claw made of swirling, vaporous violet energy.
Manifesting from the shadows was a terrifying, reptilian spirit entity—its scales flickering with a ghostly, luminescent light, its slit-pupil eyes burning with malicious hunger.
"Hey, ugly!" Tae shouted, stepping out in front of Kd and Joseph, his knuckles turning white as his protective rage flared. "Put her down!"
The dragon spirit's massive head swiveled toward the doorway, its form solidifying into terrifying focus. A cold, resonant voice vibrated directly inside their minds:
"Ah... three dormant sparks in one little sanctuary. Three treats are better than one."
"Sister Patricia, go!" Tae yelled, his voice cutting through the panic. "Get all the nuns and take the kids to the classroom! Lock the door! If we don't respond in thirty minutes, evacuate and don't look back!"
"No! We have to find somewhere safe together!" Sister Patricia cried, tears streaming down her pale face as the spectral claw choked her breath.
"We'll be fine!" Tae lied, his voice tight with a terrifying certainty. "Just go! We'll keep it busy!"
Kd and Joseph nodded in fierce agreement. "Yeah, go before it targets you again!"
With a final, desperate burst of strength, Sister Patricia scrambled away the moment the spectral grip loosened slightly, shepherding the weeping children toward the back corridor.
As the doors slammed shut behind them, an oppressive silence settled over the dining hall.
"We're just kids," Joseph whispered, his hands trembling slightly around his wooden blade. "What are we supposed to do against that?"
"He's right, for once," Kd muttered, his usual bravado giving way to an unyielding, lethal focus. "Our wood swords aren't even going to scratch its scales."
Tae could feel that strange, preternatural resonance thrumming deep within his chest again—the exact same connection he had shared with Kd and Joseph all those years in the yard.
"The feeling... I know it," Tae said, locking eyes with his brothers. "We're connected. We fight together, or we die here."
With a roar that shook the foundations of the orphanage, the spirit launched its assault.
Joseph lunged forward first, delivering a blistering kick straight toward the creature's chest, only for his foot to bounce off its scales with a hollow, echoing thud. Kd followed instantly with a fierce haymaker, but met the exact same impenetrable resistance.
"Well, what do you suggest now?" Kd cursed, shaking his stinging hand.
"I've been running through scenarios, and none of them end with us breathing," Joseph retorted sarcastically, ducking beneath a sweeping tail.
"Then we make our own odds!" Tae shouted.
The dragon spirit opened its colossal spectral jaws, gathering a blinding torrent of scorching, white-hot spirit fire. With a massive sweep, its tail caught all three of them dead-on, sending their bodies crashing hard against the dining hall wall.
Blood trickled from a gash on Tae's forehead. Kd lay gasping for air as his vision swam, and Joseph gripped his bruised side in agony.
The spirit drew back its head, preparing its final, obliterating blast.
A unified, desperate thought flashed between the three brothers: If only I could protect them... if only we had the power.
And then, the light broke.
The light, pure and all-consuming, enveloped them.
When the blinding glare finally faded, the dragon spirit recoiled, its ancient eyes widening in genuine panic. Before it stood the three boys, but the fear was gone. Their wounds were sealed, replaced by a violent, surging heat.
Kd burned with a chaotic, volcanic red aura, his eyes flashing like a blood moon.
Tae shimmered with a radiant golden light, reflecting a heavy, untouchable authority.
Joseph was wrapped in a deep, raging, yet dead-calm ocean-blue aura.
Tae looked down at his glowing hands, his voice dropping an octave, ringing with a heavy, unnatural resonance. "What... is this?"
"I don't know," Kd panted, clenching his fists as black-red flames violently sparked across his knuckles. "I didn't even think... I just felt like throwing a punch and my body moved on its own!"
"It's not a technique," Joseph murmured, his eyes tracking the ambient energy swirling off his palms. He dodged a stray spark of heat without even blinking, his mind processing calculations at a terrifying speed. "It's pure instinct. Our bodies just... remember how to channel it."
Realizing the terrifying shift, the dragon spirit let out a furious, rattling screech. "Damn you... you're the ones from the prophecy! I won't let you awaken!"
The entity lashed out, unleashing a devastating torrent of white-hot spirit fire straight down the hall.
"Watch out!" Tae yelled. Without thinking, he threw his hands up in front of him.
A heavy, golden barrier slammed into existence. Instead of breaking, the wall caught the blazing inferno, warped it, and whipped it right back at the dragon with twice the velocity.
"Oh, we're doing this?!" Kd grinned wildly, a reckless, feral fire taking over his expression. He didn't know what spell he was casting; he just saw an opening and swung a heavy haymaker into the open air. A blast of volatile, dark-red flames ripped from his fist like a shockwave, slamming directly into the creature's chest and forcing a deafening shriek of agony out of its jaws.
"My turn," Joseph said coldly. He sliced his hand downward through the air. A blade of razor-sharp blue energy sliced off the floorboards, tearing across the room and slicing deep into the spirit's shoulder.
They weren't reciting ancient incantations or pulling off practiced moves. They were just reacting, letting the raw, overwhelming power of their awakening dictate every chaotic strike.
The spirit staggered back, its massive form flickering under the relentless assault.
"Don't let it recover!" Tae shouted, stepping into the center.
All three of them locked eyes across the room. No words were needed—years of backyard sparring had taught them how to read each other's movements in a fraction of a second. They raised their hands together, pooling every ounce of the strange, roaring energy inside them into one collective point.
"Just push it all out!" Kd roared.
Tae unleashed a blinding beam of pure golden light, Kd poured every ounce of his volatile fire into a swirling vortex, and Joseph anchored it all with a crushing wave of blue kinetic force.
The three energies collided in mid-air, fusing into an overwhelming, multi-colored cataclysm of pure destruction.
With one final, synchronized shout, they let it fly.
The blast swallowed the dragon spirit whole. There was no explosion, just a heavy, deafening silence as the light erased the entity's existence down to the last atom.
When the glow finally faded, the dining hall was dead quiet, charred at the edges, and entirely empty. The three brothers dropped to their knees, chest heaving, the wild energy slowly receding back beneath their skin. They had survived their first real fight—together.
"That was crazy," Tae said, his voice returning to its normal pitch. He stared at the dissipating motes of light where the dragon spirit had been, his golden eyes dimming back to brown. He stumbled to his knees, his body screaming with the sudden depletion of power.
"Crazy doesn't even cover it," Kendaris gasped, wiping black soot from his red-flecked face. The raw power vanished, replaced by a deep, bone-weary exhaustion. His scarlet eyes dimmed. "I feel like I just ran a marathon... and then got hit by a bus."
Joseph: Joseph collapsed, leaning against the cold brick of the orphanage. His blue eyes faded last, his breaths coming in short, panicked bursts. "And we did that... with no training?" he muttered, looking from Tae to Kd with a mix of awe and terror. "We could have died."
The trio looked at each other, the reality of what they'd just done sinking in. They were kids. Orphans. And they had just faced down a demonic dragon spirit, unleashing powers they hadn't known they possessed.
A small sound made them turn. The door to the main orphanage building creaked open. Sister Patricia, her face pale but her eyes wide with relief, stepped out. "Boys? Are you all right?"
They scrambled to their feet, trying to appear nonchalant, as if they hadn't just saved everyone from a cosmic threat.
Tae: "Yeah, we're fine, Sister. Just... a little playground scuffle," Tae said, forcing a weary smile.
Kd: "The dragon... it ran away," Kd added, his lie sounding hollow even to his own ears.
Sister Patricia: "I... I see," she stuttered, her gaze lingering on the scorch marks on the ground and the strange shimmer in the air. She didn't press. Instead, she just hugged them tightly, one after the other. "God works in mysterious ways," she whispered, her voice trembling.
Later that night, long after the other children were asleep, the three boys met in the dimly lit attic. The silence stretched between them, heavy with unspoken questions.
Joseph: "So... what now?" Joseph asked, finally breaking the quiet. "The dragon said something about a Prophecy. What does that even mean?"
Kd: Kd ran a hand through his hair, his red eyes glowing softly in the dark. "It means we're not just some random kids who got powers. It means this is just the beginning. The dragon probably wasn't the only one after us."
Tae: Tae looked out the small attic window at the moon, his golden eyes reflecting the silver light. "Fate... That's a lot to put on three kids in an orphanage. It means we're tied together, whether we like it or not. We have to learn to control this. All of it."
He looked at Joseph then at Kd. "We saved Sister Patricia and everyone else today. But what happens tomorrow? What happens when something bigger comes? We have to be ready. We have to train."
Joseph: "But how?" Joseph asked. "We don't know anything about this stuff."
Tae: "I don't know," Tae said, a new resolve hardening in his voice. "But when I was fighting that thing, when our powers linked... It felt like we were supposed to do that. It felt... right. We'll figure it out. Together."
Kd and Joseph nodded, a silent pact made in the quiet attic. Their childhood of innocence was over. The combined attack that saved them was not the end of their story, but the explosive beginning of a journey that would force them to ascend to their true potential, and uncover the truth behind the powerful—and dangerous—destiny that now bound them as brothers.