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The sky above the South Lord's territory didn't just darken; it shattered. As Ignis channeled his entire essence into a bridge of molten gold, a voice boomed from the celestial heights, a sound like tectonic plates grinding together, ancient and frozen.
"STOP, SOLAR KING."
The air crystallized. A shimmering, translucent face manifested in the clouds,the Arbiter of Heavens. "To tear the fabric of the Oubliette is to invite the collapse of the Five Realms. You would risk the universe for a mortal shifter? Desist, or face the Eternal Erasure."
"He is not a shifter," Ignis roared, his human form beginning to flicker with the raw, manic heat of his true self. "He is mine. And your universe is a hollow shell if he is not in it!"
"If you proceed," the Arbiter's voice grew cold, "you will be stripped of your divinity. You will be imprisoned in the Deep Wells for two hundred and ninety nine years. Your power will be shackled, your energy drained to a flicker. You will be a King in name only, rot in the dark, and your 'pet' will be returned to the mud of the mortal world."
"I have broken your rules before," Ignis hissed, his golden eyes narrowing. "And I will break them until your heavens are ash. I agree to the price. Shackle me. Drain me. But I am going in."
Inside the Oubliette, the torture had reached its peak. Kaelan was slumped against the bone cold floor, his vision swimming. The shadows had manifested a final, vicious illusion: Ignis, looking radiant and bored, holding the hand of a "Perfect Kaelan" a sweet, submissive version of himself.
"You were a fun audit, Kaelan," the fake Ignis laughed, walking away into a bright light. "But you're too broken to keep. Stay in the dark."
"Ignis!" Kaelan screamed, his voice breaking. "You scaly, lying, pervert monster! Don't you dare leave me here!"
In his furious desperation, Kaelan did something no prisoner had ever attempted. Instead of fighting the seals, he opened his soul. He began to absorb the energy of the dungeon itself. The cold, jagged magic of the Oubliette poured into his panther spirit. It burned; it felt like swallowing liquid nitrogen, but it turned Kaelan into a psychic flare,a beacon of livid energy that pierced through the void.
With a roar that leveled the surrounding mountains, Ignis finally shifted.
His human skin tore away as his massive dragon form erupted. He was a leviathan of crimson and gold scales, his wingspan wide enough to blot out the sun. He dove into the rift he had burned into reality, a streak of solar fire plummeting into the grey void.
Suddenly, a blue streak intercepted him. Zadkiel, the Second Concubine, had shifted into her Water Dragon form. She was desperate, her livid jealousy turning her suicidal. She lunged at Ignis, her watery coils trying to drag his head down, her claws raking at his golden underbelly to distract him from the beacon.
"MOVE, INSECT," Ignis's draconic voice vibrated through the astral sea.
He didn't even use his claws. He simply flared his heat, a pulse of solar radiation that boiled the moisture from the air. With one casual sweep of his massive tail, he threw Zadkiel across the dimensions, sending her spiraling into the dark like a discarded toy.
He followed the scent of wild mint and bitter defiance. He followed the sound of the most deadly curses ever leveled at a god.
The rescue was a blur of violence and heat. Ignis tore the roof off the Oubliette, his massive talons gentler than silk as he scooped Kaelan's shivering, feverish body from the floor.
He didn't take Kaelan back to the palace. He took him to a hidden, sanctified grove on the edge of the Mortal Realm,the only place the Heavens allowed them for their final twelve hours.
The Arbiter's voice echoed: "Your time begins now, Solar King. In twelve hours, you go to the Wells. The boy goes back to his world, his memory of this place and your true nature sealed so he may survive the trauma."
Kaelan woke up in the grass, the high fever still making his skin flush a deep, painful red. He looked up to see Ignis,human again, but looking pale, his golden eyes dimming as his power was slowly being restricted.
"You... you actually... came," Kaelan whispered, his slit pupils trembling.
"I told you," Ignis murmured, pulling Kaelan into his arms. "I cannot leave you. But I have to go away for a while, Kaelan. And to keep you alive... to keep the Dragon Flu from burning your soul to ash... I have to finish the bond."
For the first time, there was no excitement in Ignis's touch. It was a desperate, possessive necessity. For twelve hours, they stayed in the grove. Ignis mated with him with a rhythmic, soul deep intensity that transcended the physical. He didn't pull out. Not once.
He poured his remaining essence into Kaelan, sealing his seed deep within Kaelan's body. It was a dormant spark, a knot of golden magic that would stay quiet, not growing or consuming, as long as Ignis was imprisoned. It was the only thing keeping Kaelan's panther spirit from collapsing under the weight of the Oubliette's poison.
In the height of the union, as the sun began to set on their final hour, Kaelan's head fell back, his panther ears twitching in a state of sensory overload.
"Ignis..." Kaelan moaned, the sound raw and hauntingly sweet. It was followed immediately by a gasp of bitter habit: "You... monstrous... lizard... don't you... leave me...I haven't kill you yet!"
Ignis held him tight, tears of molten gold stinging his eyes. "I am already there, Kaelan. In your blood. In your soul. Wait for me."
As the clock struck the twelfth hour, a cold, celestial wind swept through the grove. Kaelan's eyes glazed over as the seal on his memory took hold. He fell into a deep sleep, the dragon earring on his ear turning into a simple, mundane piece of gold.
The Arbiter appeared, shackling Ignis in chains of frozen star matter.
"It is done," the God whispered.
Ignis watched as Kaelan was vanished back to his dorm room, safe, alive, and pregnant with a secret that wouldn't wake for three hundred years.
"I will count every second," Ignis growled as he was dragged into the dark.