The drake descended without haste.
It did not roar like the other beasts.
It observed.
Its wings folded slowly as its massive frame lowered to the forest clearing, talons sinking into the earth as if the ground itself feared resisting it. Its scales were darker, layered, scarred by centuries of battle. Heat radiated from its body—not wild flame, but something dense and ancient.
This was not a monster.
This was a calamity given form.
Kaelen felt it instantly.
The pressure.
The weight of existence bending around the creature.
This thing… could burn a continent if it wanted to.
Kaelen exhaled once.
Then—
Time Analysis.
The world fractured.
Not visually—conceptually.
Layers of time peeled back around the drake, revealing not just what it was, but what it had been, and what it was still becoming.
Kaelen's pupils narrowed.
At the center of the drake's chest, beating not just in flesh but in causality, was something that did not belong here.
A heart.
No—
A Dragon Heart.
Not a mutation.
Not a partial awakening.
A true core.
Kaelen's smile faded.
"…So that's it."
His stance shifted—subtle, but absolute.
This dungeon was not ordinary.
The drake inhaled.
The forest screamed.
A column of fire erupted forward, white-hot and compressed, warping the air as it surged toward Kaelen like the judgment of a god.
Kaelen moved.
Gravity snapped upward, hurling him sideways as time accelerated beneath his feet. The flames carved through where he had been, igniting the mountain face behind him into molten slag.
Kaelen countered mid-motion.
Axiomfall flashed.
Time Slash.
The cut vanished into the unseen—
—and missed.
Kaelen's eyes widened a fraction as the drake twisted impossibly, its massive body sliding between moments, avoiding the strike not in space, but in time itself.
Silence.
Then Kaelen laughed softly.
"…You dodged in the space-time continuum."
His lips curved upward.
"Now this is interesting."
The drake lunged.
Not fire.
Impact.
They collided head-on.
Axiomfall met claw.
The shockwave flattened the forest.
Trees were uprooted, the ground cratered outward, and the air detonated as gravity and draconic force slammed together. Kaelen was thrown back—skidding across stone, boots digging trenches—while the drake staggered, blood leaking where the blade had cut through its scales.
It bleeds.
Kaelen straightened.
"Good."
His circuits ignited.
Gravity Circuit — Stage Two.
Chrono Circuit — Stage Two.
The world slowed.
No—obeyed.
Gravity coiled around Kaelen like a crown. Time folded into his movements, each step layered with inevitability. His presence sharpened, pressure radiating outward.
The drake roared.
Dragonic energy surged, its heart blazing visibly beneath its chest as ancient power flooded its veins.
Too late.
Kaelen vanished.
He reappeared above the drake, blade already descending—gravity wrapped around the edge so densely it collapsed space itself.
The drake tried to twist.
Time denied it.
Kaelen struck.
Once.
Twice.
A third time—each blow landing across different moments, converging into a single instant of absolute execution.
Axiomfall pierced the chest.
Gravity detonated inward.
Time sealed the wound shut—
—around the blade.
The drake convulsed.
Kaelen ripped the sword free.
The heart came with it.
The drake collapsed, its massive body crashing into the earth as the fire in its eyes extinguished.
Silence fell.
Kaelen stared at the heart in his hand.
It was still beating.
Still burning.
Time Analysis flared again—and this time, the truth struck him like thunder.
"…Alyth."
An ancient primordial dragon.
Dead—yet not gone.
This heart had waited.
Kaelen closed his fingers around it.
No hesitation.
He pressed it to his chest.
And consumed it.
The world erupted.
Dragonic authority flooded his body, rewriting flesh, bone, blood. His spine arched as power surged through him, scales briefly forming beneath his skin before receding. His heartbeat doubled—then synchronized.
Two sources.
One rhythm.
A domain unfolded instinctively.
Dragon Domain.
The forest bowed.
Bloodline suppression rippled outward, crushing the will of lesser draconic beings—drakes, serpents, reptiles—forcing them into submission across unseen distances.
Kaelen's eyes snapped open.
They were no longer human.
Blue.
Slitted.
Ancient.
His body stabilized, strength densifying beyond mortal limits. He felt it instantly—the durability, the raw physical authority, the depth of power coiled within him.
A true dragon's heart.
And his circuits.
He exhaled slowly.
"…Master level."
Not just in name.
He could feel it—clearly now.
He could contend with a Grand Arc Circuit user.
Kaelen looked toward the dungeon.
The abyssal gate pulsed quietly.
Waiting.
He rolled his shoulders, Axiomfall humming softly at his side.
"Alright," he murmured.
"Now I'm ready."
And he stepped forward—
a dragon walking into the abyss.