Evangeline quickly shook her head, the sharp movent scattering the lingering drops on her eyelashes.
She drew a deep, ragged breath through her nose, her jaw clenching with a sudden, fierce determination as she decided to wipe off all negative thoughts from her mind. She had no right to drag the ghosts of the past into the clean, bright space her son had just built for them.
She reached up with the hem of her apron, pressing the rough fabric firmly against her eyes until the skin stung, forcing the weakness back down into the dark corners of her mory where it belonged.
’Today’s a good day...’ she thought, stabilizing her breathing. ’I shouldn’t ruin it by thinking about they... idiot.’
The ghost had no power here unless she gave it to him, and she refused to let his shadow dim the brightness of her children’s laughter.
Her fingers curled inward against her palms, her knuckles turning a stark, bloodless white as she clenched her fists against the side of her apron.
"Besides..." she muttered, her voice dropping into a hard, unforgiving register that cut through the remaining warmth of the kitchen like a iron blade. She stared down at the stone counter, her breath coming in a short, sharp hiss behind her teeth. "...he abandoned us."
The finality of the word settled the matter. Marcus had made his choice years ago, trading the heavy, quiet struggles of this family for a path that took him far beyond their reach, leaving them to drown in his absence.
He didn’t deserve a place in their thoughts tonight, and he certainly didn’t deserve a share of the pride that Noah had wrestled out of the dirt all on his own.
With a decisive nod, she released her fists, reached for the wooden ladle on the rack, and began the work of preparing their ager feast, her face setting into an expression of quiet, maternal resolve.
A day later, the atmosphere in the small house had settled back into a quiet, dostic rhythm, though the underlying tension of Noah’s secret reality remained as sharp as ever.
Inside his small bedroom, the morning sun cut through the gri of the single window pane, casting a long, dusty beam of amber light across the mattress.
Noah closed the book in his hands, the heavy leather cover coming together with a dull, echoing thud that signaled the end of hours of monotonous labor.
With a weary, impatient flick of his wrist, he flung the volu to the side of his bed, watching it skid across the blanket and land squarely on top of a disorganized stack of other books that had accumulated on the floorboards over the last forty-eight hours.
The mont the book settled onto the pile, the air directly in front of his face seed to ripple, the natural light fracturing into a clean, geotric pattern.
A notification appeared before him.
[Daily Quest completed: Read 10 books (10/10)]
[Reward Granted: 20 EXP]
Noah leaned back against his thin pillow, letting his shoulders sink into the mattress as his eyes scanned the glowing lines.
He didn’t smile; his expression remained flat, analytical, and slightly tired as he watched the blue light reflect in his pupils.
This was the third ti he was completing this quest since his isolation began, each grueling session of reading text after text earning him a total of sixty EXP.
He shifted his head to the side, his gaze tracking past the glowing blue notification to rest on the ssy pile of books stacked beside his bedfra.
They were the sa books he got from the academy library before he was suspended, and he had been reading them over and over again just to complete his daily quests.
He was sure there was no question relating to those books that he wouldn’t be able to answer now.
’I really need to get a new set of books to read.’ he thought.
Then suddenly, his shadow, cast against the rumpled blankets by the amber afternoon sun, began to distort.
It wobbled violently, the edges of the dark silhouette rippling like ink poured into agitated water.
A split second later, a creature burst upward from the center of the dark pool, breaking the surface of the shadow with a silent, fluid grace.
It was a dragon, its body entirely composed of a darkness so profound it seed to absorb the stray sunbeams in the room, accented by a pair of sharp, gleaming golden horns that caught the light like polished tal.
It took flight instantly, hovering in the tight space between the bed and the ceiling.
Noah’s eyes widened in absolute shock, his pupils contracting as his entire body went rigid against the mattress.
He scrambled backward slightly, his spine pressing hard against the wooden headboard as he stared at the airborne creature.
"Kael?" he muttered, his voice catching in his throat, barely a whisper of disbelief.
The na slipped out before he could even process the sheer magnitude of what he was looking at.
The creature hovering before him was almost unrecognizable from the entity he had interacted with just twenty-four hours prior.
Kael was now three tis bigger than he was yesterday.
The rapid, unnatural acceleration of his physical form defied every known law of beast maturation that Noah had ever read about in his academy textbooks.
Instead of looking like a small, harmless pup that could easily curl up and hide inside a coat pocket, the dragon now possessed the formidable size of a full-grown adult dog.
The sheer physical presence he commanded in the small bedroom was entirely different, his weight and mass displacing the air in a way that made the small room feel instantly crowded.
Noah’s gaze swept over the creature’s anatomy, his analytical mind tracking the staggering enhancents in his physiological structure.
The dragon’s black scales were even more beautiful than before, boasting a pristine, diamond-hard luster that seed to shift between a deep charcoal and a midnight blue as he moved through the sunbeams.
Each individual scale was perfectly aligned, overlapping with a seamless, armored precision that looked completely impenetrable.
The golden horns protruding from the crown of his head were also slightly bigger, their tips tapering into deadly, needle-sharp points, the tallic sheen of the gold contrasting brilliantly against the darkness of his hide.
They curved backward with a regal, predatory sweep, giving his skull a far more mature, intimidating silhouette.
But the most notable transformation—the change that drew Noah’s eyes and held them captive—were his wings.
They were significantly larger now, the leathery, translucent mbranes stretching between powerful, articulated joints that looked capable of slicing through air currents with effortless power.
As Kael hovered, he allowed the wings to spread marvelously at his sides, their impressive span nearly reaching from one side of the narrow bed to the other.
The wings looked majestic, carrying an ancient, Draconic weight that felt entirely out of place within the cramped, plaster-walled confines of a lower-district ho.
Kael flapped his newly enlarged wings with a distinctly smug smirk playing across his features, the motion creating a localized, cool breeze that caused the loose papers on Noah’s desk to flutter quietly.
"Of course it’s , Master," the dragon said, his voice echoing directly inside Noah’s mind with a clean, telepathic resonance that felt sharper and more distinct than before.
He tilted his head, his golden eyes flashing with a playful, arrogant amusent as he looked down at his summoner. "Who else would it be?"
Noah sat up completely, swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress as he continued to take in the sheer scale of the change.
He reached out a hand, his fingers hovering just an inch away from the pristine, black scales of the dragon’s chest, feeling the intense, hidden heat vibrating beneath the armored hide.
"You’ve grown..." Noah said, his voice trailing off as he shook his head in lingering disbelief, his eyes mapping the thick muscles of the creature’s forelimbs. "...bigger. A lot bigger."
Kael nodded his head up and down in a sharp, exaggerated motion, a low, rumbling sound of satisfaction vibrating in his throat.
"Yes, hehe," the dragon chuckled telepathically, the ntal sound carrying a rolling, self-satisfied warmth that perfectly matched his smug expression.
He tucked his massive wings slightly closer to his flanks, though he remained hovering a few inches above the floorboards, his long, prehensile tail flicking lazily behind him like a whip.
He lowered his snout slightly, his golden eyes locking onto Noah’s face with an expression that practically scread for validation.
"I told you, Master," Kael said, puffing out his chest. "I really did have a good feeling about those beast cores. My instincts are never wrong when it cos to what my body needs."
Noah went quiet, his hand dropping back down to rest against his knee as the implications of the dragon’s words began to click together in his mind.
’So beast cores really are the food for dragons.’ He thought.
As he looked at the magnificent dragon hovering in his bedroom, he couldn’t help but wonder how much more Kael would have grown if he had started feeding him beast cores from the very start.
If a single, ager handful of cores harvested from the forest could trigger a three-fold explosion in mass and power over the course of a single night, what would a steady, unregulated diet of high-tier cores do?
If he had been fueling this creature with the essence of elite monsters from the day he first summoned him from the shadows, Kael might not be the size of an adult dog right now—he might already be large enough to ride, his wings capable of blotting out the sun!
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