The opulence of the bedroom felt like a gilded cage. Caelum sat on the edge of the bed, the silk sheets cool against his skin, but his mind was a storm of fire and static. The memories of the "real" Caelum Dragon were not merely images; they were visceral stains on his soul. He felt the phantom weight of a wine goblet in his hand, the sneer on his lips as he looked down at those he deemed inferior, and the sickening, hollow bravado of a boy who knew he was a disappointment but chose to burn the world down rather than admit it.
He was the youngest of five. The fifth heir. The "spare" that nobody wanted.
His father, Duke Alaric Dragon, had maintained two wives—a common practice among the high nobility to ensure the bloodline's survival against the ever-encroaching Void. The first Duchess, a woman of cold steel and ancient pedigree, had borne three children: the eldest twins who were already legends in the military, carving through Void Monsters at the border rifts, and a third who was a prodigy at the Royal Academy.
Caelum's own mother, the second wife, had given birth to twins as well. But while his sister was a beacon of mana, Caelum was the anomaly. A genetic dead end. In a family that traced its lineage back to the extinct Great Dragons—creatures of primal fire and world-shaking strength—Caelum was a flickering candle in a hurricane. He possessed the physical beauty of the Dragons—the silver hair, the sharp, aristocratic features—but the internal fire was missing.
His talent was C-Rank. In a commoner, it would be a blessing. In the son of a Duke, it was a joke told in the shadows of the capital's taverns. He was a Dragon who couldn't breathe fire, a predator without teeth.
The memory of his most recent "bout of idiocy" flashed before his eyes—a drunken, impulsive decision to kidnap a girl simply because her brother had more talent than him. He hadn't been caught by some heroic intervention, but by his own father's guards, who had looked at him with more disgust than alarm. He wasn't a criminal to them; he was a nuisance. A stain on the Dragon name that needed to be scrubbed.
Caelum knew he couldn't stay in this bed. If he waited for the Duke to acknowledge him, he would wait until his execution date. He knew the future. He knew that the boy he had wronged was the protagonist of this world, and that in the novel, his life ended in a rain-slicked alleyway because he was too weak to defend himself.
Under the cover of a moonless night, Caelum moved. He didn't take gold or jewels; he took a set of dark, reinforced leather traveling gear and a jagged dagger that felt heavy with history. He navigated the estate with the ghost-memories of a boy who knew every secret passage used for sneaking out to illicit parties.
He reached the high-altitude stables at the rear of the mountain estate. The air here was thin and bitingly cold, smelling of ozone and predator musk. In the furthest stall stood his only true inheritance: a Storm-Eater Eagle, an evolved beast with a wingspan of thirty feet and feathers that shimmered like tempered steel. The creature screeched low in its throat, its golden eyes fixing on Caelum with a mix of recognition and predatory boredom.
"Easy, Astra," Caelum murmured, reaching out.
The bird felt the change in him. The old Caelum used a whip and fear; this Caelum moved with the quiet, desperate focus of a man who had already died once. He mounted the beast, and with a single, powerful buffet of wings, they took flight. The Dragon Estate shrank beneath them, a fortress of white stone and arrogance, as they soared toward the Whispering Peaks.
He knew from the novel that his "C-Rank" talent was a lie—or rather, a symptom. His mana veins weren't weak; they were calcified, blocked by an elemental imbalance that the healers of this world were too traditional to diagnose. To fix it, he needed to plunge his body into a mana-rich environment and force a breakthrough that would either kill him or rewrite his potential.
Back in the heart of the estate, the Duke's study remained bathed in the soft, flickering glow of enchanted candles.
Alaric Dragon stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, staring out at the dark horizon where the faint purple glow of the distant Void Rifts pulsed like a dying heart. He was a mountain of a man, his presence so heavy it seemed to warp the air around him. The Dragon lineage ran thick in his veins—inhuman strength, a perception that could track a hawk in a blizzard, and a fire affinity that made his very breath run hot.
He had conquered battlefields. He had stared down Void Lords. But his youngest son was a riddle he had no interest in solving. To Alaric, power was the only currency that mattered, and Caelum was bankrupt.
A soft knock echoed. The door creaked open to reveal Finch, the High Butler. Finch was an old man with eyes like polished flint, the only person in the estate who had served Alaric since they were both squires.
"Patriarch," Finch said, bowing low.
"Speak," Alaric rumbled, not turning around.
"The youngest has left the Dragon estate, Patriarch. He took the Storm-Eater and headed North-East. Shall I dispatch the Shadow-Guards to bring him back? He is... in a fragile state after the 'accident' on the balcony."
Alaric's golden eyes narrowed, reflecting in the glass of the window. He thought of the boy he had seen earlier—the boy who hadn't flinched, who hadn't begged, and who had looked at him with eyes that seemed decades older than seventeen.
The Caelum he knew was a coward who would run to the city to hide in a wine cellar. But North-East? That was the direction of the Peaks. A place of jagged stone, lethal mana storms, and monsters that even experienced knights avoided.
"No," Alaric said, his voice deep and final. "Leave him be."
Finch tilted his head slightly, surprised. "He is unarmed, Patriarch. And his mana sensitivity... if he encounters a rift-beast in the Peaks, he will not survive the hour."
"He'll return," Alaric said, though there was no warmth in the prediction. "Caelum has always been a parasite. He will find the cold too bitter and the hunger too real, and he will crawl back to the warmth of this house within the week.