Vo'ruun's enormous body seemed much larger in that infinite space.
In truth, I was maybe a little bigger than one of his eyes. Just a little. Honestly, he must have been two or three times larger than the last time I saw him — and his voice struck my mind like a punch, without passing through my ears, while my body floated in that immensity of nothing.
"You have everything my race possesses in its purest essence… How is it possible not to know how to use even one percent?"
The words left me confused.
But I didn't care. There were far more important things I needed to know.
"How… how is everyone?"
The pain filled my entire body as soon as I opened my mouth.
Honestly, I had never felt so destroyed in my entire life. Not when the mark was engraved into me. Not when the dragon's DNA remade me piece by piece — at least that pain was passing; this one held its size and intensity.
"Hmm… I think you're well enough not to need his help. But, if you keep this up, maybe he'll show up."
The great dragon's words were confusing.
Help from whom? Show up from where?
And, while I was still trying to assemble that in my head, a scream struck me and the dragon himself with force enough that the two of us screamed together in pain. The sound came followed by something else: chains. Chains intertwining, clashing, scraping against one another somewhere in that nothing.
But I couldn't see.
My body was too sore to turn my head.
"Seems someone woke up… I think this would be a good moment for you to wake up too."
✦ ✦ ✦
The dragon spoke while looking at the horizon.
And, before I could turn to discover what he saw, his eyes came back — and stared directly at me.
"Human… use my power. You conquered my powers. USE THEM."
The words came out with a completely different tenor than what I was used to hearing from that creature.
Because, deep down, I managed to feel a pang of something that shouldn't exist in a dragon.
Fear.
Dragons were held to be creatures capable of facing colossi that crush planets. In truth, no race had the courage to confront them. And, now, there was something in that voice that didn't match any of it.
But fear of what? I couldn't understand. So I tried to ignore it — maybe it was just my body trying, desperately, to find a way out of the hole I had gotten myself into.
"Which power? I only recognized two of them…"
The enormous dragon seemed irritated. So, instead of saying anything, he brought one of his claws to my body.
The size of those nails was clearly larger than all of me — and the tip of one of them pointed exactly at my chest.
"You are very stupid. Very well: I'm going to show you. We dragons are different from any other race for a simple reason."
✦ ✦ ✦
While he spoke, the nail began to penetrate my skin.
And my body didn't move.
For the first time, I realized that, however much I wanted to move and stop him, I simply couldn't. It was as though every muscle had been switched off from the inside out — and, looking into his eye, I understood: at some point in that conversation, he had used some kind of magic to stop me.
The most I could do was open my mouth.
And scream.
Scream desperately while I felt the gigantic nail tearing my skin, layer by layer, with an obscene slowness. At the same time, far away, the scream of that other creature I couldn't see grew louder — and the sound of iron against iron grew along with it, more and more desperate.
None of that seemed to bother the dragon.
He kept pushing the nail inward until I felt the touch on my own heart. My scream became erratic, and blood began to come out of my mouth.
"We were graced with a unique ability… For some reason, now, you have it too, boy. ENDURE."
✦ ✦ ✦
It was there that I finally understood.
The enormous dragon didn't want to harm me.
For the first time, I felt that that pain was truly necessary — and, upon looking at his face, I saw something that confirmed everything. There was effort in that expression. The kind of concentration of someone doing something extremely difficult.
He was straining not to kill me.
A creature capable of melting mountains trying to be delicate with a human body — and failing narrowly, the entire time. Maybe it was the hardest thing he had ever done in his entire existence.
So I stopped screaming.
The pain of being torn open remained exactly there, without granting any truce. But I stopped fighting against it.
"Morgana… Livina… Daughter… Pegasus… Sister… help me."
My mouth began to spell out the names.
One after another, like a chain I was assembling to hold on to something. Anything that wasn't the pain tearing me open without stopping. And, when the air ran out, my eyes returned to the enormous dragon.
He now seemed to be smiling.
"Honestly… I didn't know it was possible for another race to have this. And much less that you would survive a process in which even some of our own died. But maybe you're different. Well… it makes sense, with something like that at your side. I think you shouldn't even be called human anymore."
✦ ✦ ✦
The enormous dragon spoke while his eyes turned again toward that place I still couldn't see.
And then I felt my body start working again.
I didn't care what he was looking at. I brought my hand straight to my chest — and found the skin closed. Whole. As though none of it had truly happened.
"What did you do to m—"
Before my mouth finished the sentence, my heart beat.
Hard. So hard it was like taking a punch from within. And then another. And another.
"Well… the hard part is over. Try not to explode yourself."
The enormous dragon said something more while pulling his face from that hidden place and looking at me one last time.
And then he disappeared.
"What do you me— ARGHHHH!"
✦ ✦ ✦
My heart began to beat faster and faster.
And my body began to move on its own — violent, uncontrolled spasms, as though someone had taken the reins from inside. However much I tried, it simply didn't answer me.
And, along with the body, the feelings came in waves that made no sense at all.
I was sad. Then angry. Then sad again. Then with an absurd joy that belonged to nothing of what was happening. It was as though someone were flipping through my entire life backward, too fast for me to read any page.
The sensation of being incapable of controlling my own body made me scream again.
I don't know how much time passed.
A day. A month. A year. A second. In that place, all those words meant exactly the same thing.
Until, finally, my body stopped trembling.
And the silence that came afterward was the most comfortable silence of my life.
[ — Affinity with Magic (Unique) ]
[ Congratulations. You have discovered the power of the dragons. ]
[ You are the first creature to merge Affinity with Magic. ]
✦ ✦ ✦
And then a smile appeared on my face.
It was the smile of when a thorn is finally torn out of the body. As though all the weight of the world had left my back at once. The relief of enduring the most terrible thing anyone can feel — and returning to normal the following second.
My face was all wet.
I had cried without even noticing. Everything my body managed to do to get that out of me, it did, until it didn't need to anymore.
And, when it ended, the only thing left was dopamine.
That idiotic euphoria of someone who survived something they shouldn't have survived — the body pouring out everything good it had to compensate for everything that had just been taken from it.
"Son of a bitch… Did I really have to go through that?"
I was still in that place.
But now I could move normally — and the pain of the battle had vanished along with all the others. I put my hand to my chest. All normal. No scar, no hole, nothing.
And I couldn't understand what had happened.
Because, despite having discovered Vo'ruun's magic, I still had not the slightest idea what that meant in practice.
✦ ✦ ✦
It was then that I felt a cold at my back.
As though someone had opened a window — and the cold outside were the absolute cold.
And I remembered what Vo'ruun had been looking at.
I turned slowly.
"What the fuck is this…"
The cold that came from it wasn't temperature. It was something else — something the human body understands before the head does, the same kind of warning that makes an animal stop eating and look at the brush for no apparent reason.
In front of me there was a creature so gigantic it made me look smaller than a cell.
It was so close that I couldn't see its entire body — only a dark wall occupying everything. But, looking upward, I saw the horns.
And I finally recognized it.
It was that one. The creature that was beside Zaridan in that same void. The one that slept chained, immense, too quiet for its own size.
And it wasn't sleeping anymore.
That was why Vo'ruun was afraid. Not of me. Not of what I carried.
Of him.
"What are you?"
My mouth asked the question on its own, before I could decide whether it was a good idea.
The answer was a scream.
There was no word. There was no name. Nothing beyond pure, ancient sound, coming out of something that probably existed before any language had been invented.
A scream that pushed me away with a physical force, and my body began to spin uncontrollably — and the sensation was of falling. A strange feeling, because it was the first time that place had given me the impression of having up and down.
✦ ✦ ✦
And, while I fell, the sounds began to arrive.
First the creature's scream, falling behind. Then metal striking against metal. And, finally, another scream — one I would recognize anywhere in the universe.
Arachne.
Not the roar of the hunt. Not the snap of mandibles closing on some neck. It was the other kind of sound — the one no creature should produce.
By instinct, I looked down.
And I saw my own body down below. But it was different: the mark no longer covered it. No armor, no shield, nothing — just a man fallen in the middle of the dark while the world collapsed around him.
I couldn't think properly. Not about the fall, not about the scream, not about what was happening down there while I fell.
I only realized, when I was already a few centimeters away, that I was falling into myself.
And I shut my eyes.
Without knowing what I would find on the other side. Without knowing how much time had passed up there while a dragon opened my chest to hand me a gift.
✦ ✦ ✦
"How pathetic… How dare you submit yourself to a useless human like that? You're going to die along with her, you repugnant creature."
The sound came back first — metal, screams, the roar of something collapsing. Then the smell: burned earth, blood, and smoke, all mixed into a single unbreathable air.
And, right after, something slimy and hot fell over my face — running down my neck, covering half my body.
Too thick to be rain. Too hot to be anything else.
My eyes opened.
By instinct, I looked up. And there was something above me.
I recognized that black leg immediately. I would recognize it anywhere, in any state.
Now it was completely stained with blood.
The creature took a step to the side. And fell, making a crash that shook the entire ground.
It was only then that I saw what was happening.
An enormous axe buried in Arachne's back.
The black leg I had recognized above me was hers. She had placed herself over my unconscious body — and the blood running down my face was hers too.
She was protecting me. While I slept.
While a dragon opened my chest in a place that doesn't exist, she was here — using her own body as a roof over an unconscious human.
✦ ✦ ✦
My chest beat hard.
And, before I could get up, the Burman tore the axe out and buried it again — deeper this time — tearing a guttural scream from my baby.
"NOOOOO!"
My scream drew the enormous Burman's attention.
He was now at least triple his original size, and with his entire body dirty with blood.
And I knew exactly whose blood that was.
"She likes you… I needed a creature that liked me like that. Such a pity. HAHAHAHA!"
His smile while he wiped his own face, with his feet resting on my daughter — who no longer moved — made something inside me give way.
I felt something break inside me.
It wasn't rage. Rage I knew well — I had been collecting rage since the first day in that place, storing each one in a deep corner to use later. This was something else. It was the sound of a rope holding something heavy snapping for good.
✦ ✦ ✦
I hated that world.
I hated it with a clarity I had never allowed myself to have before. I hated its rules, its hierarchies, the way it turned everything into a resource. I hated the races that thought themselves owners of everything.
I only wanted to survive. I never wanted to harm anyone. I entered that place to protect a single person, and everything I built since then — every wall, every creature, every dirty alliance — existed only to keep breathing until the day I went back.
But, at some point, everything went wrong.
If this is what this world wants to give me…
I will give double it back.
My body grew light.
Light in a way that matched nothing — not the exhaustion, not the broken bones, not the weight of the armor that no longer even existed.
And something exploded.
A green energy left me in every direction — crossing the courtyard, climbing the wall, penetrating every ally still standing on that battlefield. My healing magic. The same as always.
Only, for some reason, it no longer had a single target. Nor a limit. Nor distance.
My magic seemed to want to heal the entire kingdom at once.
Somewhere on the wall, I felt a Yokai — bleeding, nearly dead — return to life and stand up as though nothing had happened. On the other side, at the north gate, I felt an entire cavalry be mended, going back to what it was before the enemy had slaughtered it. And each of my warriors who still breathed received, all at once, everything I spent weeks learning to give one person at a time.
And then the magic reached my daughter.
It was there that I understood the real gravity of her wounds.
And it was there that my rage rose one more degree.
✦ ✦ ✦
I summoned Zaetar.
Without thinking. Without calculating cost, mana, or consequence. The same summon I had been using since Livina became mine, the same way as always.
And what came out wasn't what I knew.
The creature that rose at my side was at least half the size of Arachne — so large that it took me a whole second just to accept that it had come out of me.
But I didn't care.
The only thing that existed in my head was the Burman on top of my daughter.
The creature I raised from the egg. Who learned to walk stumbling over her own legs. Who called me father before I understood that was possible. Who defended an entire kingdom alone, mutilated, while I was sixty meters underground making deals with gods.
I activated Blood Magic.
The same one I had already used so many times. The same one that always cost resistance and vitality like an open tap.
But, unlike all the other times, my blood exploded into muscle. My body began to grow, to inflate — and an energy ran through every fiber of me. A strength I felt was capable of stopping a building with my hand.
None of that made sense. Blood Magic had never done anything like it.
But I no longer cared about what made sense.
Later I would discover what the Affinity had done to each of my magics. Later I would understand the price, the limits, the new rules. In that instant, the only thing that mattered was that everything I touched responded stronger than it should.
I saw the Burman's eyes narrowing while he watched me. Something in that expression had changed.
And I didn't care about that either.
"I will never forgive you, Burman. For everything you did. For my kingdom. For my daughter."
"Endure!"