"Ahhhh"
Auryn eyes snapped open and he knew imdiately he wasn’t in Ashen Grove anymore.
The sky looked unreal. It was neither day nor night. Purple-violet light threaded through cosmic darkness like veins carrying sothing divine and dying.
Stars burned too bright with edges too sharp, and looking at them hurt in a way that wasn’t physical but ntally draining.
Above all the absurdness was a void, eclipsing sothing massive and swallowing light that tried to escape its pull. Sothing that shouldn’t exist but did anyway and yet reality didn’t dare question it.
Mountains rose below him, ancient black stone carved with patterns that might have been dragon scales or script from a language that predated language.
He stood on nothing yet felt solid ground beneath his feet. Gravity was a suggestion here and ti didn’t pass. It all just existed as one eternal mont stretching in all directions.
Where—?
Grief hit him before the thought finished but it wasn’t his own. Soone else’s, radiating like heat from a dying star and pressing against his chest until breathing beca a conscious effort.
It wasn’t the rage he felt from early but regret that made his skin crawl. He looked around but saw nothing.
But the presence felt closer than it should, everywhere and nowhere, mourning made tangible. Regret soaking into his very bones.
Then a form erged. It didn’t arrive but beca, like he’d always been there and Auryn’s eyes just finally learned how to see him.
It was a dragon and humanoid at once, its form shifting like the distinction stopped mattering.
It’s black scales caught purple light and bled it darker. Eyes were hollow but not empty, containing voids of their own.
When he moved, reality bent slightly to accommodate sothing too large for the space it occupied.
The grief intensified. Auryn’s knees wanted to buckle but didn’t, couldn’t. This wasn’t a place where weakness showed physically.
"You consud ." The voice wasn’t sound but reverberated inside Auryn’s skull, his chest, the space between his thoughts.
"Now we speak," it repeated.
Auryn tried to respond but his mouth moved without producing words.
The phantom didn’t seem to need an answer.
"I thought you were him. I felt him in you. His blood runs in your veins, doesn’t it? Or is it just his essence, his creation."
Auryn stared blankly. He couldn’t understand what the creature was rambling about.
Its form changed again. It beca more draconic but only its head was present.
"You may address as Crixus, Ignaris’s brother. His first failure."
Ignaris’s brother was the one buried there. The owner of the marrow I just consud?
Auryn’s eyes widened in shock.
His vision remained on the phantom. Words still heavy in his throat, refusing to erge.
What happened to you, he thought.
"Territoriality. That’s what it’s called."
Crixus answered, words flowing like water over stone worn smooth by millennia. Yet unseen regret gripped at Auryn’s heart.
"A soft word for the ugly truth. More land ant more power, which ant more need. I couldn’t stop nor wanted to. Hunger beca who I was instead of what I felt."
Crixus’s mories bled through the space between them, not shown but suddenly known with violent clarity.
It weighed too heavy on Auryn as he watched cities burn, not from malice but from drive that couldn’t be satisfied. A hunger for conquest and expansion.
Crixus’s mind fracturing under the weight of territories too vast, instincts too primal and needs that were all consuming.
Auryn’s head throbbed as the information flooded faster than his mind could process.
His brain trying to hold up the oppressive mories was the most hectic thing he had faced since he transmigrated.
"My brother tried." Crixus’ words were tainted with self loathing and yet love for his brother.
"But I was too far gone. I lived only for hunger, A void, just—"
The form flickered and fully ford as dragon wings spread massive and broken.
"It was in this very land where the incarnate of rage lost himself completely. Where he who consud got consud."
Purple light pulsed brighter as the void above pulled harder at the space.
Crixus’s voice got lower, almost tender and Auryn heard and felt the soberness of soone else bleed through in his head. It finally made sense.
"He wept, Ignaris wept at my demise leaving a gift where only curse should have found root "
The pieces connected but they already felt slippery, like trying to hold water in cupped hands.
"I beca what takes and never returns." Crixus’s voice dropped lower, resonating into Auryn.
"The void. The silence after fla. Territory without purpose. Power without self."
He leaned closer and his presence beca overwhelming.
"You consud . Now I shall sleep in you."
Auryn’s chest tightened as sothing flowed into him—not physical, not visible, and inevitability beneath conscious awareness.
Essence bleeding from phantom into living flesh like a shadow.
"Balance what I could not." The words felt heavy and important, slipping away even as they were spoken.
"Consu without being consud. Take without becoming void. Purpose must guide power. Not power seeking purpose."
The final words resounded in Auryn’s mind but he couldn’t hope to understand what they ant.
"What does that—" Auryn finally found his voice.
"What are you giving ?" he asked.
At this point Crixus was already fading, His ethereal form dissolving into purple threads that wove back into the darkness.
"Rember this when rage calls your na," the insistently cryptic voice spoke one final ti.
"Wait..." Auryn who finally found his voice scread but it was too late.
All that was left was Auryn and the impossible skies and mountains that were mories of sothing long dead.
The void above pulled harder as reality cracked like a glacier. Purple light flared so bright it burned and then...
"No"
Auryn jerked awake. His eyes t the first light of dawn. Cold air replaced the oppressive nothing of that place.
Real air filled his lungs that finally rembered how to breathe on their own again.
He lay on his back in Ashen Grove with the sky overhead the correct color and the sun rising like it was supposed to.
Six hours had passed. It had to be, the night was still young when he lost consciousness and now it was dawn just when he woke up.
His body felt different, heavier and denser, like he’d gained weight that wasn’t necessarily mass.
He tried to rember the trance and the encounter. What did Crixus look like exactly? What precisely did he say?
The emotions were still vivid. The crushing grief and regret mixed with rage. The warning of the dangers of power still heavy, the sensation of sothing transferred and yet was never there.
But the words? Form? These details already slipped like dream fragnts in morning light.
"No—" He sat up fast and tried to grasp them, hold them. Like butterflies slipping away.
"I just...it was seconds ago"
The only thing that was left was impressions and emotions.
Crixus existed and ignaris wept. That’s all his mind would hold. There was also the warning of power’s corruption.
I’m rely a drake, seems my soul can’t retain what it experienced.
He felt frustrated but realized there wasn’t much he could do about it now. It was only more motivation to get stronger quickly but the rage, grief and regret he felt from Crixus still hovered in his mind.
He had to get stronger but be smarter than the mad dragon.
Auryn stood slowly, his hands grabbed at the Ash-covered floors picking himself up quickly.
Imdiately he was on his feet. He knew he wasn’t the Auryn of six hours ago anymore. Power surged inside him.
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