Chapter 346: Inheritance in the Dark

Riley was absolutely certain that when this was all over, he would need to have his heart examined. Because the moment the ground vanished beneath his feet, he felt it stutter so violently in his chest that he almost blacked out on the spot.

One second he had been standing on black diamond.

The next, there was nothing.

His stomach dropped in a sharp, sickening plunge as though he had stepped off the edge of a cliff. Instinctively, his arms jerked outward, bracing for impact that never came. His pulse roared in his ears, loud and frantic, and for a humiliating second, he genuinely thought, So this is how I go. In my own crypt.

To be fair, that was the reason why he didn’t notice it right away.

Had he not been scared shitless for his life, he would have been able to make sense of just what the hell was really in front of him.

For at that point, it hadn’t really been looking back at him, and Riley only realized the truth after a sudden development.

Like when two enormous emerald lights flared into existence before him.

Riley froze.

He was no longer certain which way was up or down, but when those eyes focused on him, perspective shattered. He understood immediately, instinctively, just how small he was.

He might be hallucinating, but if he was right then he was likely hovering before a single dragon eye that was so vast it might as well have been an entire wall. The iris gleamed like layered emerald stone, deep and luminous, threaded with veins of ancient light. The pupil narrowed slowly as it studied him, adjusting with deliberate calm.

He realized, with a jolt that stole the air from his lungs, that he was roughly the size of its eye.

Not even the entire head.

Just the eye.

Every muscle in his body tightened as he braced for something catastrophic because even Kael, the dragon lord, wasn’t that big.

Instead, a voice filled his mind.

It wasn’t loud.

But it was immense.

Deep. Aged. Male.

And it resonated through him so profoundly that his body trembled in unconscious recognition.

“It’s been a very, very long time, child. But you made it.”

“?!”

Riley tried to respond, but his thoughts scattered before they could form into anything coherent. He should have asked who this was. He should have demanded answers. He should have at least said something intelligent.

But the moment the voice settled into his consciousness, it brushed against something buried deep inside him, something older than memory. His mind went strangely blank, as if words were slipping through his fingers.

“So now, let us do our part while you sleep a bit.”

“Huh? What?!” Panic finally flared. “Wait—”

He didn’t want to sleep.

He absolutely couldn’t sleep. That was how people ended up going out without a fight.

Not here. Not in an endless void. Not in front of a being whose eyeball alone was probably the size of a small house.

“Sleep,” the voice repeated, gentle but absolute.

“And when you wake, you’ll understand.”

The darkness around him shifted, not aggressively, but soothingly. It wrapped around him like warm water, easing the sharp edges of his panic. His limbs grew heavy. The frantic rhythm of his heart softened. His anger dulled into something distant.

It felt like fighting a lullaby.

Like a child insisting he wasn’t tired while his eyelids betrayed him.

“I can’t…” he tried to argue, but even that thought unraveled before it could solidify.

The emerald eye remained steady, ancient and patient.

His vision blurred.

The vastness around him dimmed.

At first, it was subtle. His fingers curled inward, joints reshaping with faint, almost delicate pops. His limbs shortened, bones compressing and reconfiguring as though guided by unseen hands. His tall, slender frame folded inward, shrinking while something older and truer emerged.

His dark hair dissolved into shadow, replaced by smooth black scales that spread across his skin in overlapping patterns. His spine lengthened even as his overall form diminished, vertebrae shifting fluidly as a small tail unfurled behind him, twitching faintly in sleep.

His shoulders altered next. Bones split and extended with careful precision, membranes stretching between newly formed digits as wings took shape. They were small and soft, still fragile, folding instinctively against his body.

Cloth vanished into the surrounding dark as if it had never existed.

Where once floated a relatively tall, slender ex-mortal, now drifted something much smaller.

A black dragonling.

Tiny claws flexed unconsciously. A faint puff of dark mist escaped his nostrils with each soft breath.

The immense emerald eye regarded the hatchling without blinking.

And the darkness held him gently as he slept.

But just as the final thread of Riley’s consciousness unraveled, just as he drifted fully into the quiet, he thought he heard something else.

A different voice. Softer, warmer, female.

“He’s grown up so well, no?”

The words were not loud, yet they carried through the void with a tenderness that felt achingly familiar. They wrapped around him like a fond smile, like a hand smoothing down unruly hair.

The inky blackness stirred in response.

What Riley had taken for a heavy void began to shift and deepen, and hazy forms slowly emerged from within it. They weren’t fully solid, yet not entirely intangible either. Vast silhouettes of obsidian shadow took shape in the distance, towering and elegant, their outlines blurred as though carved from smoke and night.

Then the eyes opened.

One pair.

Then another.

And another.

Rows upon rows of luminous eyes flared to life across the void, gleaming in shades of emerald, molten gold, and endless black. They didn’t glare or judge. They simply watched, ancient and patient, as if they had been waiting for this moment for a very long time.

From somewhere within that gathering presence, another voice answered. This one was male, steadier, carrying quiet pride.

“Yes, yes he has.”

A low ripple passed through the darkness at those words, not quite laughter and not quite thunder, but something that resonated with approval. The void seemed to breathe with them, expanding and contracting like the chest of a sleeping beast.

Then came the sound.

It began faintly, a slow shift of weight in the dark, followed by the unmistakable stretch of something vast and powerful.

Wings.

One pair unfurled with a soft, resonant sweep.

Then another.

Then several more.

The sound layered over itself, membranes stretching, bones adjusting, the subtle rush of air displaced by enormous forms moving closer. It was not chaotic. It was deliberate. Measured. Controlled.

The hazy dragon figures drew inward in unison, closing the distance between themselves and the small, sleeping hatchling at the center of it all. They didn’t descend aggressively, nor did they crowd him with suffocating presence. Instead, they arranged themselves with quiet precision, wings angling and folding inward until they overlapped in layers of shadow and scale.

A protective cocoon formed around him.

The glow of countless eyes dimmed slightly as the wings settled, creating a living barrier between the tiny black dragon and the endless void beyond. Within that shelter, the darkness softened once more.

And at the heart of it all, cradled by generations who had waited far too long for his return, the smallest black dragon slept without fear, quietly receiving the inheritance that had always been his.

__

“Thyrran, the Iltherans… would they receive my mate’s return well?”

It wasn’t a question the former guardian ever expected to hear from the Dragon Lord of Eryndra. Kael rarely asked for reassurance, and he certainly wouldn’t care to ask about how others might feel.

Yet the question was spoken evenly, almost quietly, as if it had been turning in his mind for some time.

Thyrran considered his response carefully. After all, if there was anyone present who could attempt to answer such a thing, it would be him.

“While I cannot be certain about emotions, nor can I speak for every member of the clan, My Lord,” he said at last, his tone steady, “I can say that the Young Master had always been treasured.”

In a sense, that was a rather reassuring answer.

However, Kael wasn’t particularly speaking about the black dragon clan having fond feelings for his mate, what he was more concerned about was if all of this had anything to do with the glyphs on the wall.

Yes, the actual walls.

Earlier, he had barely registered them beyond their grandeur. The black diamonds, the carved runes, the intricate lines etched into the surface had simply been there, impressive but secondary to the far more pressing matter of his mate stepping beyond a barrier he himself couldn’t cross.

But now that he was standing there and trying his best not to storm in to get or even see Riley, the golden dragon lord couldn’t help but observe everything he could.

Each line flowed into the next with careful precision, forming sequences that couldn’t be mistaken for mere decoration. Dragons in full form were carved in sweeping arcs across the walls, their wings spread wide in battle, their bodies coiled around adversaries rendered in jagged silhouettes. Flames, lightning, ruptured skies, and fractured land were all preserved in the cold permanence of these precious stones.

But what had started as simple respect for his mate’s ancestors slowly turned into intense curiosity. Because unless he was seeing things, the wall was telling a story that contradicted everything they had always been taught.

And while that alone might not have bothered him, since Kael rarely concerned himself with old narratives, he found himself frowning at the conclusion those symbols suggested.

For some reason, they implied that the Great War had never truly been finished.

And sure, there was that, but what the hell was that bean looking thing supposed to imply?

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