The dragon's body was still warm.
Not with heat, but with something deeper—residual will, ancient fury, a presence that refused to vanish even in death. Its blood poured slowly from the wounds Siegfried had torn open from within, pooling across the frozen ground in thick, dark streams.
The snow hissed where it touched the blood.
Ice cracked.
Steam rose, heavy and metallic, filling the valley with a scent that was neither decay nor life. It smelled like endings.
Siegfried stood motionless before the corpse.
His hands trembled.
Not from cold.
Not from fear.
From what he had done.
He had slain a creature older than kingdoms. A being that had shaped this land simply by existing. The silence that followed was not peace—it was absence.
And absence demanded something in return.
The voice came quietly.
Not spoken.
Remembered.
Blood binds what steel cannot.
Siegfried frowned.
He did not know where the words came from. Perhaps from the stories whispered by dying men. Perhaps from the dragon itself. Or perhaps from something older still—something buried in the bones of the world.
He looked down at his body.
His armor was cracked. His skin burned with frostbite and exhaustion. Every breath scraped his lungs raw. If another monster appeared now, he would die.
Slowly.
Pathetically.
Siegfried clenched his jaw.
"No," he muttered. "Not like this."
He stepped closer to the corpse.
The dragon's blood flowed thicker near the chest, where the heart had finally been pierced. It shimmered strangely—dark crimson threaded with veins of deep blue, as if night itself had been dissolved into it.
Power.
Raw. Untamed.
Dangerous.
Every instinct screamed at him to step back.
Siegfried ignored it.
He removed his armor piece by piece, letting the frozen metal fall into the snow with dull thuds. He stripped away his torn clothes until only scarred skin remained, marked by old battles and fresh wounds.
The cold bit into him immediately.
But he did not stop.
He placed one hand into the blood.
Agony exploded through his nerves.
It was not heat.
It was invasion.
The blood reacted violently to his touch, surging, crawling up his arm like a living thing. Visions slammed into his mind—flashes of endless winters, of mountains breaking, of gods watching from afar and deciding not to intervene.
Siegfried gritted his teeth and stepped forward.
Then another step.
Then he submerged himself completely.
The blood swallowed him.
Sound vanished.
The world collapsed inward.
Pain became absolute.
It felt as though his skin were being peeled away, rewritten layer by layer. The blood did not coat him—it entered him, forcing itself into every wound, every vein, every fracture in his body.
He screamed.
The scream never reached the air.
The dragon's blood judged him.
It tested his resolve, his rage, his arrogance. It showed him fragments of the dragon's memories—not clearly, not kindly. Chains. Isolation. Gods who feared what they could not kill and chose instead to bury it beneath eternity.
Siegfried's muscles spasmed.
Bones creaked.
Something inside him began to change.
The blood hardened.
It fused to his skin, seeping into his flesh, binding itself to him as if it had been waiting for this moment. Scales began to form—not visible yet, not fully—but present, latent, buried beneath the surface.
The pain shifted.
It was no longer destruction.
It was forging.
Siegfried's heartbeat slowed, then deepened. Each pulse echoed like a hammer strike against an anvil. His body grew heavier, denser, as if the world itself had increased its expectations of him.
He sank to his knees within the pool of blood.
His vision blurred.
This is how legends break, a thought whispered.
Or how they are born.
Time lost meaning.
Minutes. Hours. Perhaps days.
Eventually, the blood stilled.
It no longer moved.
It no longer resisted him.
When Siegfried finally rose, the pool had frozen solid around him, trapping his legs in a dark, glassy crimson ice.
He pulled free with a low grunt, shards breaking away from his skin.
He stood.
The cold no longer bothered him.
He looked down at his body.
At first glance, nothing seemed different. No glowing sigils. No divine aura. No visible scales.
But when he clenched his fist, the air resisted.
When he breathed, the frost recoiled slightly, as if uncertain.
He picked up his sword.
The blade rang differently when he touched it.
Deeper.
Siegfried turned back toward the dragon's corpse.
For a moment, he thought he saw the massive chest rise.
Once.
Then stillness returned.
"Rest," he said quietly. He did not know why.
The Kingdom of Ice remained silent.
But it was no longer hostile.
It was watchful.
Far away, beyond the frozen realms, something ancient shifted.
A god paused mid-thought.
A prophecy frayed slightly at its edges.
And somewhere, in a place where past and future tangled, a serpent that should have been dead stirred in its sleep.
Siegfried did not know any of this.
He only knew one thing.
He had bathed in the blood of a dragon.
And the world would never look at him the same way again.