Chapter 98: A true dragon.

The question hung in the air like a blade waiting to fall.

“Do you remember me?”

The Blue Dragon’s reaction was all the answer Kai needed.

Its massive body, which had been trembling from Fanny’s earlier strike, began to shake even harder.

The golden eyes that had been wide with fear narrowed as the dragon’s gaze locked onto the black mask, and then slowly traveled to the three lifeless dragon corpses lying in a row behind the man.

The Red Dragon. The Green Dragon. The Wind Dragon.

All dead.

All laid out like trophies.

And standing before them, calm and unbothered, was the very man who had killed them.

The Blue Dragon’s jaws parted, and for the first time since its revival, it spoke actual words, formed through the guttural vibrations of its throat and shaped by the ancient magic that allowed higher-level monsters to communicate in the common tongue.

“I… remember you.”

Its voice was deep and cracked, like stone grinding against stone.

Each word seemed to cost the creature enormous effort, not because of any physical injury, but because the act of speaking to the being that had ended its life required it to swallow every ounce of pride it had left.

“You are the one who killed us. All of us.”

The dragon’s gaze shifted again to the bodies of its brethren. A flicker of something passed through its golden eyes. Not grief, exactly.

Dragons were not sentimental creatures. But there was recognition there, and a deep, bone-level understanding that it was only alive right now because the man in front of it had allowed it.

“I remember… the fire. The plaza. The screams of humans below us. And then… you appeared.”

Its pupils shrank.

“You tore through us like we were nothing.”

Kai said nothing. He simply stood there, hands in his pockets, letting the dragon speak.

The Blue Dragon lowered its massive head slightly, its chin nearly touching the cold stone floor.

It was the posture of a creature that had been thoroughly broken and was trying to understand why it had been given a second chance.

“I can see them,” the dragon continued, its eyes drifting to the three corpses once more. “The others. They are still dead. And yet I am here. Breathing. Alive.”

It looked back at Kai.

“Why me?”

The question carried genuine confusion.

There was no arrogance in it.

Just the bewildered uncertainty of a being that could not fathom why it had been chosen over its peers.

“Of the four of us, I was the weakest. I was the last to join the battle. When I felt your power, I…” The dragon paused, and something that might have been shame crept into its voice.

“I hesitated. The others charged at you with everything they had. The Red Dragon attacked first. The Wind Dragon tried to flee last. But I… I froze.”

Its claws scraped against the stone floor, leaving deep grooves.

“I was a coward. I sensed the gap between us before the others did, and my body refused to move. By the time I finally attacked, it was already too late. You had already broken them.”

Kai tilted his head slightly.

“And that is exactly why I chose you.”

The Blue Dragon blinked. Its massive eyelids came down slowly and rose again, the confusion in its gaze deepening.

“What?”

Kai took a single step forward, and the dragon flinched. It could not help it. The instinctive fear was too deeply embedded.

“The Red Dragon charged headfirst into a fight it could not win. Brave, but stupid. The Wind Dragon tried to run when it realized the gap. Cowardly in a different way. And the Green Dragon simply raged until it died, refusing to accept reality even as its body was being torn apart.”

He stopped directly in front of the dragon’s snout and looked into those golden eyes.

“But you? You sensed the difference in power before any of them did. Your rage was cut short because your mind processed the situation faster than your instincts. That is not cowardice. Some would call that awareness. And awareness is far more valuable to me than blind bravery.”

The dragon stared at him for a long time. Its breathing had slowed, and the trembling in its limbs was fading, replaced by something else entirely.

“I did not revive you to give you a second life out of mercy,” Kai continued, his tone flat and direct.

“I revived you because you are useful to me. The other three will be broken down for materials. Their scales, bones, blood, and organs will be handed to Teriam for forging. They will serve me in death.”

He paused to let that sink in.

“But you will serve me in life. As part of my legion. As a monster under my command.”

The Blue Dragon exhaled slowly. The warm air from its nostrils washed over Kai, but he did not so much as blink.

“There is more to it than that,” Kai said, his voice dropping just slightly. “I know what dragons are in this world. I know what they were, and I know what they have become.”

The dragon’s eyes widened at those words.

“You are not free creatures. You never were, at least not in this era. The royal families of the human kingdoms hold your kind in chains, do they not?”

A visible shudder ran through the Blue Dragon’s body.

It was the shudder of a creature hearing its deepest wound spoken aloud by someone who should not have known about it.

“How do you…”

“It does not matter how I know. What matters is whether or not I am wrong.”

The dragon was silent for several seconds. Then, slowly, it spoke again, and this time, its voice carried the weight of something ancient and bitter.

“You are not wrong.”

The Blue Dragon shifted its massive body, settling into a more stable position on the chamber floor. The movement was slow and deliberate, as though the act of telling this story required it to brace itself.

“Centuries ago, the ancestors of the royal families discovered a binding spell. A ritual of blood and oath that could chain a dragon’s will to a bloodline. Once cast, the dragon’s loyalty was no longer its own. It was forced, woven into the very fabric of its soul. And worse still, that forced loyalty was passed down through generations.”

Its claws tightened against the stone.

“Every dragon born after the binding inherited the chains of its parents. We served because we had no choice. We fought their wars, guarded their cities, and obeyed their commands, all while believing that this was simply what we were meant to do.”

The bitterness in the dragon’s voice was palpable now.

It was the kind of resentment that did not fade with time. It only deepened.

“The spell was absolute. There was no way to break it. No amount of willpower, no ritual, no prayer could undo what had been done to our bloodline. We were slaves wearing the masks of guardians.”

Kai listened without interruption. Behind him, Fanny stood completely still, her pale blue eyes locked on the Blue Dragon with an intensity that bordered on painful. Her hands were clenched at her sides, and her tail had gone rigid.

This was not new information to her. She knew the history of her kind better than anyone alive. But hearing it spoken aloud by one of its victims was something else entirely.

“But something changed,” the Blue Dragon said, its gaze flickering toward Fanny. “When those four of us were sent toward the Jaun lands by the Duke, we flew over this dungeon. And we felt it.”

The dragon’s voice dropped to a near whisper.

“Her aura. The aura of a True Dragon.”

Fanny’s breath hitched, but she did not speak.

“The moment her presence washed over us, the spell shattered. Not weakened. Not suppressed. Shattered. Like chains made of glass meeting a hammer. For the first time in our entire existence, our minds were our own.”

The dragon’s golden eyes bore into Fanny with something that was not quite reverence and not quite gratitude, but something in between. Something fragile and desperate.

“The True Dragons were the first of our kind. The originals. The bloodline from which all other dragons descended. Their aura is the one thing the binding spell was never designed to withstand, because by the time the spell was created, the True Dragons were believed to be extinct.”

The Blue Dragon turned its gaze back to Kai.

“And they nearly were. The royal families saw to that. When they realized the True Dragons could undo their control, they hunted them down. Every last one. An entire bloodline was massacred in a single generation. Their blood was spilled, their nests were burned, and their names were erased from history.”

Silence filled the chamber.

“But they missed one,” Kai said quietly.

The dragon nodded its massive head.

“They missed one.”

Both of them looked at Fanny.

The True Dragon stood there, clutching her teddy bear against her chest with both arms.

Her pale blue eyes were glistening, and her lower lip trembled just slightly.

She looked nothing like the fearsome creature that had backhanded a Calamity-class dragon across the room minutes ago.

She looked like a girl who had just been reminded of why she was the last of her kind.

“She was banished before the massacre,” the Blue Dragon continued, its tone softening just a fraction. “I do not know the full details. Only fragments passed down through the binding. But the stories say she devoured her own brother because he would not play with her. Her mother, the Dragon Queen, cursed her and cast her out.”

Fanny’s grip on the teddy bear tightened until her knuckles turned white.

“Because she was gone, she was not there when the royal families came. She was not there when they slaughtered the rest. She survived by accident, through a punishment that turned out to be salvation.”

The chamber fell silent again.

Kai let the silence hold for a moment. Then he spoke, and his voice carried the same calm authority it always did, cutting through the heaviness like a blade through fog.

“Then you understand the situation.”

The Blue Dragon looked at him.

“The True Dragons are gone. The binding spell has been shattered for you, but it still holds over every other dragon in this world. Every drake, every wyrm, every winged beast that serves a royal family is still a slave. And they do not even know it.”

Kai turned his back to the dragon and began walking slowly across the chamber, his footsteps echoing in the quiet.

“I do not care about the honor of dragons. I do not care about your history of glory or your fallen empire either. Those things are dead, and the dead do not interest me unless I can make use of them.”

He stopped and looked over his shoulder.

“But a living dragon under my command, one that is free from the binding and loyal of its own will? That interests me greatly.”

The Blue Dragon stared at him.

“What are you proposing?”

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