Spike’s mouth was full of Tiamat’s blood, rising until it overflowed, dripping down his throat and choking him. In the haze of pain, his mind wandered back to the very first monts of his consciousness—the chaos he had caused for the servants, for Percieval, the fire he had once unleashed on the statue of the First Dragonborn.
"I... didn’t even know the na of our hero... What a fool I was,"
He thought, letting his eyes rest as his senses drowned in crimson. The screams of a hundred siblings, burned to ash, and the dying cries of the Seventh Batch faded into a suffocating haze. The summit had beco a graveyard, the hiss of embers carried away by the mountain wind.
As the first swallow of Tiamat’s blood hit Spike’s stomach, his world fractured. It wasn’t just heat—it was a supernova in his veins.
"AAAGGHHH—!"
His spine arched violently, fingers clawing into the ceremonial silks over his chest, as a soul shattering scream tore from his throat. The frozen cliffs reverberated with the sound.
"AAAAAAAHHH!!"
Behind him, Drakovitch tightened his grip on the hilt of his black sword. Deep in his heart, he had hoped, truly hoped, that this one white-blooded child would not burn.
But before the blurring, thick gray fog of charred flesh swallowed the summit, Spike’s silhouette vanished from sight. In that final mont, the King saw it.
A crack... spreading across the boy’s back.
Drakovitch bit down on his lip until it bled. His long white hair flowed in the bitter mountain wind, a wind heavy with the sll of his burned children. His hollow silver eyes twitched.
"Another failure."
His voice was barely more than a whisper.
"The first thousand... gone. The zero-point-one percent was too generous a lie."
A sharp pain stabbed through his chest. He clenched a fist over his heart, pressing against the Golden Scar pulsing beneath his armor—the mark of his arrival in this world.
"I must hurry... before this curse consus . I cannot allow these failures to add more suffering to my life..."
But then the wind shifted and with it ca voices from a life he had tried to bury. A mory that shattered his heart more completely than any defeat. He saw it again—the look on his father’s face when the true dical report ca. It wasn’t Maddy who was infertile. It was him.
And he rembered the sharp, resounding—
SMACK!
His mother’s frantic, raging scream echoed through his mind:
"This is not how our family acts! You put that girl in the worst position just to cover your own failure? You never understood how heavy it is for a woman to face the impossibility of bearing a child yet you dared to let her believe she was the one who was broken?!"
But to him, his mother’s slap was nothing compared to the ice in his father’s eyes.
"You disappoint ! You are a disgrace to this family and the ancestors who built it! You were ant to be the Quality Child—our pride. But a quality child like you is useless if you cannot produce quantity..."
His father’s cold voice continued.
"An heir without an army of successors is a dead end. I’ve had enough of your excuses. We are giving the company to your brother."
The mory cut into him deeper than any blade. Drakovitch felt a hot, unfamiliar moisture track down his cheek. For the first ti since he had stepped into this world of dragons and blood, the King cried.
"I gave them quantity. I sowed a thousand seeds. I did what you wanted. I built the numbers.. But why?"
The fog swirled around him, montarily revealing the carnage he had overseen. He looked down and saw a young girl lying at his feet. She hadn’t turned to ash yet. Her body was broken, her arms shattered by the stampede, but her eyes were open—wide, glazed, and searching.
She reached out a trembling, freezing hand toward the hem of his cloak. A final, silent plea for a father, not a king.
Drakovitch froze. He t her dead gaze, seeing the tears that had frozen onto her lashes in the mountain chill. He had pushed himself to be a monster because he believed this world demanded it.
"I just wanted to be a father... a normal one. But how could I? This new life made a king—a king who is the last of his bloodline, a king whose kingdom depends on him... What should I prioritize first? My own desire to be a father... or my duty as a king?"
Drakovitch’s shoulders shook as fresh tears fell. If he had been a "normal" father, he knew he could have been the best. But reborn as a king... he had to save the kingdom. He had to obey the laws of this harsh, unforgiving world.
"I had to do this... I had to put my children through the Dragonrite. I had to obey the dragon’s way... even if it ant killing my own children."
His voice broke, ragged and raw.
"Whatever god brought here... whatever you are... you granted the wish I begged for. You restored my ability to create life... but you didn’t give the ti to love them."
His hand, usually steady enough to draw blood from a Primordial, trembled as he reached for the freezing fingers of his daughter. In that mont, he no longer looked like a king. He looked like a man who had lost everything—twice.
Gently, he placed his fingers over her cold hand, a fragile spark of human warmth.
"I’m sorry... I’m so sorry, my little ones. Your father had to produce quantity... and in your world, in your short lives, quantity was the only way to create quality."
As he let himself beco human—not a father, not a king—his tears flowed freely down his face. And within that true emotion... he first felt that sothing was amiss. Tiamat was still neither disappearing nor speaking to him.
Drakovitch’s brows slowly tightened. The silence lingered far longer than it should have.
"Strange..."
Then his confusion was answered with a violent sound—
KRK—KRAAACK!
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