Capítulo 745: Proposal
Strax watched rcedes with silent intensity as she began to take the small dragon in her arms. He said nothing as she carefully held it, as if he feared that the slightest action might break the mont, or worse, hurt the hatchling.
“Take her outside,” Strax said finally, his deep, somber voice breaking the silence. “She needs fresh air, freedom. This is no longer her place.”
rcedes looked up at him, the little dragon now nestled in her arms, nestled like a rare jewel.
“Why?” she asked, her voice heavy with doubt. “You… are going to stay here, alone?”
Strax didn’t answer imdiately. He kept his eyes fixed on the small creature, which seed so fragile compared to the grandeur of that icy nest. Then, with a low sigh, he finally spoke:
“I have sothing to take care of.”
His tone was firm, but there was a nuance of sothing rcedes couldn’t quite place—perhaps a decision he’d made long ago, or a weight he was finally ready to carry.
“I’ll see you two again. When the ti is right,” Strax added, his expression undeniably calm. “Now, go.”
rcedes hesitated for a second, looking at the little dragon, still asleep in her arms, oblivious to everything happening. She glanced back at Strax, waiting for more explanations, but he offered none. There was a rare serenity in his eyes now, sothing she didn’t recognize, but which sohow made her trust him.
“Okay…,” she murmured, her voice low, before turning slowly, giving one last look at the ice nest.
The dragon looked so serene, sleeping with the gentleness of a freezing breeze, which made rcedes feel a little safer. She knew the creature’s fate was now in her hands—and that the responsibility of caring for it had fallen upon her in a way she hadn’t anticipated.
rcedes walked toward the exit, the nest behind her now growing ever more distant. Strax, on the other hand, stood there, motionless as an ice mountain, watching her leave without a hint of hesitation.
“When you return, we’ll find her different,” Strax said, to no one in particular, more to the environnt around him. The dragon, now in a deep sleep, couldn’t hear him. But Strax, with imnse calm, knew what was coming next. The energy he had infused into her wouldn’t dissipate easily. She was stronger now, more capable of growing on her own.
But he also had sothing to resolve. And the weight of a millennium of responsibility called to him again.
The distance between him and rcedes increased with each of her steps, but Strax remained there, fixed as always, while the icy wind whispered through the ice blades. He knew what was coming next. He knew what he needed to do. The silence of the tomb enveloped everything around him.
Strax didn’t move. He didn’t look away. He stood there, in the center of that nest, like an ancient shadow, watching the darkness, waiting for events to unfold as they were destined to.
The silence of the nest was absolute—so absolute that rcedes, already distant, didn’t notice when sothing changed in the air.
Strax remained motionless for long seconds, perhaps minutes, simply sensing the surroundings. His chest rose and fell slowly, as if finally breathing the icy air without haste.
Until…
He smiled.
A small smile. Deadly. Ancient.
And he turned his face toward the wind circulating through the chamber, as if staring at soone invisible.
“Let’s talk.” The wind did not answer.
It rely blew among the runes, causing so of them to shimr as if awakening—but no voice echoed, no spirit manifested, no power revealed itself.
Strax tilted his head, almost amused.
“Don’t play hard to get,” he said, with the calm of soone who had already made an irreversible decision. “You’re going to die anyway. Better talk first, right?”
Silence lingered for a mont…
…until the temperature plumted.
The ice seed to harden, the air turned to sharp blades, and the entire nest glead with a deep blue—not the soft blue of the egg, but an ancient, heavy blue, full of authority and resentnt.
A voice echoed, not as sound, but as pressure.
“We have nothing to talk about.”
It was feminine.
Imposing.
Cold as a never-ending winter.
The erging presence had no physical form… not yet. But its existence perated every stone, every layer of ice, every splash of frozen energy in that ancestral tomb.
Strax didn’t back down.
He took a step forward.
And she smiled more broadly—a smile that revealed teeth, power, and a deep understanding of what was about to happen.
“Ah, but we do.”
The wind shook the runes. Her voice hardened even more, trying to keep her distance.
“I am just a remnant of what I once was, just go away so I can rest in eternity.”
Strax raised an eyebrow, the air around him beginning to warm despite the extre cold. “You bring a daughter into the world, and you want to leave? What an irresponsible mother.”
Silence.
But not an empty silence.
An angry silence.
Strax continued, approaching the center of the nest as if walking towards a throne that had been abandoned generations ago.
“I have sothing important to tell you.”
The air froze in response.
Her presence finally began to manifest—not in body, but in the form of bright eyes erging from the ice walls, like multiple reflections watching him. Eyes that belonged to an Empress.
Eyes that had once ruled an entire lineage of ice dragons.
Eyes that, for the first ti in centuries, showed… fear.
Strax stopped in the center of the nest.
He raised his chin.
And said calmly, “Why don’t you revive?”
The air pressure beca so dense that, for a mont, any living creature would have been crushed just trying to breathe inside that chamber. The silence following what Strax said seed almost solid—almost a block of ice forming between them.
The Ice Dragon Empress’s eyes, scattered across the walls like distorted reflections, widened in pure disbelief.
“You’re crazy.”
Her voice vibrated from all sides, as if echoing inside Strax’s skull. “Sothing dead like can’t co back to life. My soul was shattered, my essence… torn apart. I’m just a fragnt trapped in this tomb. You speak like a fool.”
Strax wasn’t offended.
He laughed.
A low, warm laugh—completely out of place in that frozen environnt. The kind of laugh that seed to belong to soone who wasn’t speculating… but stating an uncomfortable truth.
“Mad?” He crossed his arms, tilting his head slightly. “Sure. Maybe. But madness doesn’t prevent results.”
Her eyes glistened, narrowing.
Strax continued, with a dark humor that only a veteran dragon could possess:
“I’ve revived three dragons.”
The ice cracked as if the entire nest had held its breath.
Three.
She didn’t answer.
Then Strax added, deliberately, savoring her reaction:
“And two of them were primordial.”
The entire air trembled.
The ice walls suffered instantaneous micro-cracks, as if the re ntion of it was too absurd to exist in the physical world.
“That’s impossible…” the Empress murmured, her voice losing so of its imperial bearing. “No being can restore the soul of a primordial being to a body. Not even a primordial being can do it! These are absolute laws!”
Strax grinned sharply.
“Indeed,” he said casually. “I thought so too. Until I tried.”
He took a step forward, and the ice beneath his feet lted instantly, forming steam that spiraled like serpents of heat.
“You are facing soone who does not accept absolute laws.”
Her eyes spread even further across the walls, dozens, hundreds of them, as if she were trying to observe Strax from every angle at once.
“But… why?” Her voice finally faltered. “Why would you do sothing so… stupid? So dangerous?”
The shadow of a softer smile crossed Strax’s face.
“Because I love my kind.” He spoke smiling. This was a truth he had discovered a few months ago, since he began transforming his wives into dragons, since he had begun to be a real dragon himself.
He truly loved being a Dragon, even more so an Absolute Dragon as he currently was. Despite not being at the pinnacle of his strength, he could live a peaceful life because he was a Dragon.
He raised a hand, letting golden flas dance on his fingers, fire so hot it evaporated ice without even touching it.
“I will absorb your spirit and create a homunculus with an Artificial Dragon heart, then… I will place your spirit inside and revive you.” He spoke like an absolute being.
The Empress’s eyes trembled. “You… you can’t promise that.”
Strax replied instantly, with the confidence of soone who had done the impossible before:
“I can.”
And then he leaned forward slightly, his voice becoming lower, more intimate, more dangerous: “I can bring you back, as long as you are mine.”
The Empress looked at him, “What do you an, mine?”
“You will be mine. Body, Soul, Loyalty… Everything my greed demands of you,” he said.
“You speak like a demon,” she said nervously.
Strax smiled, and bared his teeth, releasing his aura, “I am a DEMONIC DRAGON.”
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