~ALARIC'S POV
I stepped into the hidden stairway in my chamber, with my blindfold being a constant companion and a shroud shielding my empty eyes from the world.
The air down here was thick with damp earth and something older, as if it was waiting for me.
My fingers trailed along the cool stone walls as I descended, the only sound that could be heard was the soft scrape of my boots against the worn steps. Each footfall echoed too loudly, as though the passage itself were listening.
Four centuries of blindness had sharpened my other senses, and I navigated the stairway with a familiarity that should have been comforting.
It wasn't.
My shoulders relaxed, my breathing falling into rhythm with the descent. As I walked, memories came rushing into my head like a dark tapestry, threads of battle, blood, and ancient magic weaving together.
They came unbidden.
The battle-scarred landscape.
The stench of smoke and death.
And the glimmer of a lone egg which was abandoned amid the carnage.
Five thousand years ago, I had stumbled upon a relic of a dying breed. I had claimed it, cradled it to my chest and nurtured it with my blood, sealing our fates together. The bond forged that day still pulsed between us like a living thing that refused to fade.
My hand rose instinctively to the scar on my chest, a reminder of the pact I had made... and in response, a familiar pulse echoed through my mind—Khaos's heartbeat answering my own.
My thoughts drifted to Khaos, my dragon, my companion, my burden. I hadn't seen it in decades, not since it had grown too aggressive, and unpredictable.
The last time I'd laid eyes on Khaos...
It had been majestic then with radiant white scales like freshly fallen snow gleaming in the torchlight. Eyes once fierce and brilliant had been clouded by a milky gaze that mirrored my own blindness.
I had memorized every curve of the dragon's face, every scale, every ridge, every subtle shift in posture. As I stood there, lost in memory, the sounds of the dungeon bled in groans, growls, and the scrape of shackles against stone.
Khaos's distress pressed against my chest heavily, and I could feel its frustration, its pain, its anger like echoes of my own emotions reverberating through the bond.
The closer I drew to the cell, the louder the sounds became. I paused before the door, my hand tightening around the handle.
Would the dragon recognize me?
Would Khaos still answer my touch... my voice?
I inhaled slowly, steadying myself, before pushing the door open.
I stepped forward and the dungeon swallowed me whole.
The bond between us hummed in my chest.
Then I felt it - a surge of heat detonating in the air violently, and despite my darkness, my Instinct took over as a wave of silver flame tore toward me, close enough that my skin screamed before my mind caught up.
I twisted sharply to the side, boots skidding against stone as the fire scorched past me just mere inches away from my skin. The flame crashed into the stone wall behind me, sending shards of rock flying everywhere like a shrapnel.
I hit the wall hard, breath ripping from my lungs, as the dragon roars intensified, and I could feel the fury, frustrations and pain behind those sounds.
"Khaos."
The roar faltered, before falling apart entirely. The massive body collapsed back against the stone-floor with a thunderous weight, a low rumbling huff escaping it's chest which served as a warning, and a reminder of power restrained.
I reached out blindly, my hand pressing against warm scales as I felt the steady thrum of its heart beneath my palm.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, my voice barely audible over the sound of khaos breathing. "I'm sorry for this world of darkness we've been forced into. I know it's not what we wanted, not what we deserved."
Khaos whimpered, low and pitiful, a sound that mirrored my own inner turmoil. I felt the dragon's discomfort, its struggle against the darkness that mirrored my own, its body trembling with restrained fury and sorrow.
"We'll get through this, Khaos," I said softly, brushing a thumb along the ridge of its snout. "Together. We'll find a way out of this darkness. I promise."
The dragon's breathing slowed, as the tension around us eased, and I knew it had accepted my words, and had accepted me.
Then, a sharp crack of bone echoed through the room.
The massive form beneath my hand began to shift, heat curling inward, magic twisting and folding upon itself. I remained still, letting the transformation complete as the bond in my chest hummed faintly with familiarity.
"Master."
The voice was soft and delicate, almost impossibly so. Just as I had remembered decades ago.
I sank onto the stone bench beside her as she curled close with her head resting against my thighs. My fingers threaded through her hair instinctively, memories clawing their way back to the surface with relentless precision.
The demon council.
Their cold, merciless verdicts.
The punishment of blindness until I acquired what had been promised to me.
Anger simmered beneath my calm, smoldering at the thought of the powerful witches and sorcerers I had called centuries ago, each one of them offering fragments of truth, each of their answers wrapped in riddles that made no sense, and each of their promises were followed by more questions.
But, one of the memory had cut deepest, because it was etched into my mind like a burn. A crone, rumored to see beyond the veil had held my hand in her vice-like grip.
I remembered how she reeked of incense and centuries year old decay of secrets. Her voice, both ancient and ageless whispered into my mind.
"Your blindness is a payment, Alaric," she had said, certainty dripping from every word.
"A price for your defiance. The council decreed that you will regain your sight only when you acquire what you are promised, a female which was tied to your fate. When she enters your world, everything will seal into place as fate has intended."
I had known my blindness was payment, a price I had paid for defying the council. But what I didn't understand was why my eyesight needed to be restored only when I acquire what I had been promised. It felt like two different stories being merged together with plot holes.
My blindness was supposed to be my punishment for retaining my memories during my godly tribulation. And that should be all there is to it.
So why did the council involved what I was promised?
Dove.
A mortal.
The thought still gnawed at me.
My fingers tightened in Khaos's hair.
How could a fragile human unlock what centuries of power, blood, and sacrifice had failed to restore?
Khaos shifted beneath my touch, her warm and steady breaths grounding me, as her presence anchored my thoughts where my doubts had threatened to splinter.
"How will she unlock our sight?" I whispered into the darkness, with the question sounding foreign to my ears, and laced with uncertainty.
Silence answered.
I straightened, with my hand still resting on Khaos's back, before I felt her shift beneath me.
"Whatever they did to you," she murmured softly, "it left a wound. And wounds don't close just because you want them to."
I leaned forward, resting my forehead against her temple, feeling the steady pulse beneath my skin.
"Then tell me," I whispered into the darkness, control fraying just enough to let the question breathe. "How does a mortal undo this?"
Khaos was quiet for a long moment.
Not distant.
Uneasy.
"I don't like this," she said at last. "Things don't move like this unless something's already been disturbed."
I hummed.
"We wait," I said quietly, the words settling like a vow. "For Lenora. And the fate she brings."
"Yes," she replied with certainty.
The bond between Khaos and I began to strain with a low, grinding tension that crept along my spine and settled deep behind my eyes. I stiffened, breath catching as a sharp sudden pressure bloomed in my skull.
The scar on my chest burned faintly, with heat seeping into my bone, into blood, into places that had learned to endure punishment in silence. I clenched my jaw while riding it out, refusing to give the sensation more than it deserved.
Khaos shifted uneasily beneath my hand.
"Master," she murmured, uncertainty threading her voice. "The bond... it's reacting."
Something was pulling, not at my body, but at the space where sight should have been. A slow pressure, as though unseen fingers were testing the edges of a sealed wound.
Then the darkness behind my blindfold throbbed twice, before a sharp blinding spike tore through my skull, violent enough to force me to brace against the stone bench.
My breath hitched as sensation flooded in wrong for a fleeting moment.
It wasn't vision.
Depth.
For a heartbeat, I felt the distance between myself and the world. Between air and stone. Between Khaos's warmth and the cold beneath it.
Then it vanished.
The pressure receded, leaving behind a dull and aching emptiness that throbbed behind my eyes. My pulse thumped in my ears as I straightened slowly with dread settling heavy in my chest.
I exhaled slowly through my nose.
Khaos was rigid beneath my hand. "That wasn't me," she whispered with an uneven breath. "I felt it pull—right where your sight should be."
I felt it too.
She pressed closer to me instinctively, her warmth both flaring, and protective.
"You're still here," she said firmly. "Whatever that was, it didn't take you."
The crone's words resurfaced in my mind and it no longer feels like a distant prophecy, but a sentence finally reaching its end.
When she comes into your world, everything will seal into place.
My fingers curled at my sides.
Dove's arrival hadn't brought restoration.
It had begun something.
I could feel how subtle and insistent it is, like a door that had been sealed for centuries finally shifting under pressure. Not opening. Not yet. Just enough to remind me it existed.
Whatever the council had promised me, whatever fate had woven into her existence, it was no longer dormant.
And when the cost came due...
It wouldn't be paid by me alone.