The day soon turned to night, and a single restless soul continued walking through the dark corridors of the fire clan castle.
Max could not sleep at all after what had happened. His mind refused to settle, dragging him through the sa thoughts again and again, while the silence around him only made every question feel heavier.
Earlier that day, the fire dragons had transford. Their bloodlines had risen in purity, reaching the sa terrifying level as the ice dragons. The news of Agnia’s pregnancy remained hidden, buried beneath strict silence, but nobody could ignore the fact that Max was sohow responsible for this impossible change.
Whispers began to spread among the wind and thunder dragons. At first, they were only quiet murmurs passed between small groups, but soon those murmurs grew heavier, turning into unrest, impatience, and demands for their family heads to speak with the king.
They wanted that sa power.
They craved to beco stronger, to restore the ancient glory their ancestors once possessed hundreds of thousands of years ago. Because of that, they began to move in secret, quietly questioning both the fire and ice camps for any clues they could gather.
So ca with respectful words, others with desperation hidden behind stiff smiles, but all of them carried the sa hunger in their eyes.
Every dragon clan carried pride in their blood, and after watching two bloodlines rise while theirs remained stagnant, that pride had begun to twist into sothing far more dangerous.
Even Agnia felt that sothing inside her had changed. After she finally recovered, even though she could not sit down that day, she spent the rest of her ti standing beside Rosalia’s bed, looking at her with confusion and complicated emotions clouding her eyes. Her body felt different.
Her blood felt different. Even the flas sleeping inside her seed to breathe with a new rhythm, as if sothing ancient had awakened beneath her skin. Max had only told Agnia alone that she was pregnant with his child, and that this pregnancy was the reason her transformation had happened.
She did not know how to feel about it.
She knew she could not be the mother of Max’s first child, but a small, ugly part of her had still hoped.
She hoped that Rosalia’s pregnancy would sohow be delayed, that fate would twist just enough to let her give Max his firstborn instead. It was a disgusting greed for his attention, one that burned quietly inside her heart, but even then, she did not wish harm upon another pregnant woman, especially not Rosalia.
Rosalia was no longer just another woman beside Max. In a strange and unavoidable way, she had beco sothing close to a sister, because both of them would now have to share the sa fate, the sa man, and the sa dangerous future.
But none of that explained why Agnia’s flas had mutated into blue fire, a color far removed from ordinary fire magic.
Max spent the entire night in the old library of the fire clan’s ancestral lands, a place only he was now allowed to access since he ruled this territory.
The room had been sealed away for years, perhaps decades, and the mont he stepped inside, the sll of old paper, dry leather, dust, and stale air clung to him like a second skin.
"Blue fire... dragon clans..." he muttered, moving from one book to another.
His fingers traced over brittle pages while his eyes scanned every line with growing frustration, searching for even the smallest useful fragnt of information. The old oil lamp crackled beside him, its weak fla trembling as it pushed back the darkness just enough to reveal the closest shelves.
Beyond that narrow circle of light, the rest of the library remained swallowed in shadow. The silence was eerie, but not peaceful. Every tiny sound seed too sharp in that dead place, from the creak of old wood beneath his boots to the faint scrape of paper under his fingers.
The air was damp and stale, trapped inside the room by the complete lack of ventilation. Every breath felt heavy, carrying the taste of age, neglect, and forgotten knowledge. Max wanted to leave as quickly as possible, but he forced himself to endure it and keep reading.
He furrowed his brows as he lifted his gaze from the ancient book and looked toward the endless rows of shelves.
"I need to know how to evolve my abilities. No wonder Oswald was so strong back then. His crimson wind could fight as an equal, and now Agnia has reached the sa level as well. I wonder if Rosalia will soon show signs of evolution... The only one left with basic abilities will be . But if I can obtain abilities on their level, my magic will beco so powerful that I won’t need to care about the other empires at all. I must grow stronger. Strong enough to face the world alone. Only then can I truly enjoy life..."
Max spoke to himself in the dim library, his voice low and rough from exhaustion, but the hunger beneath it was impossible to hide. His body ached for more power. His blood almost seed to pulse with that need, demanding the next step, the next evolution, the next height he had not yet reached.
He did not even try to deny it anymore. Bloodline evolution was like a drug. Once he tasted it, once he saw how far it could push soone beyond their natural limits, he needed more.
"What is this?"
Eventually, after one restless night turned into day, and that day bled back into night again, Max stumbled upon an old book hidden between the thicker ancient records.
It was thin, strangely light in his hand, and far too colorful to belong in a place like this.
Compared to the cracked leather tos and dust-covered scrolls around it, this thing looked more like a children’s book than so mythical scripture left behind by the fire clan.
Its cover was faded, its corners softened by age, yet the painted colors still stubbornly remained, showing seven small dragons circling a round world beneath a sun and moon so childish that Max nearly snorted at the sight.
He was about to put it away, already expecting it to be useless, but then sothing on the cover drew his attention.
Behind the seven painted dragons, there had once been another figure, much taller than the rest, standing like a shadow over all of them. But that part of the illustration had been burned away.
Not torn, not faded, but burned black until only the faint outline of a towering shape remained. Soone had gone out of their way to erase it from the picture, and for so reason, that bothered Max more than the childish drawings themselves.
"A tale of the seven dragons..."
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