Fifteen years passed in Aerithrael, but to Kael, it felt like the world had slammed its foot on the accelerator of fate. The seasons bled together—snow to sun, moon to blaze, storm to fire—until the passage of time was a blur of breathless growth, triumph, and defiance.

  From the moment he could crawl, Kael was not normal.

  He bit a healer when they tried to force medicine into his mouth. He growled when told “no” and once set a rival noble boy’s hair on fire during a tantrum—by sheer will alone. His mother called him passionate. His father called him dangerous.

  And both were proud.

  By age five, Kael could walk barefoot across molten stone during his flame rite. He didn’t cry—he laughed, black eyes gleaming like twin furnaces.

  By seven, he was sneaking into the family crypts beneath the estate, whispering to bones and shadows until they moved.

  By ten, he’d raised a skeletal falcon that perched on his shoulder, watching with hollow eyes as he trained in sword forms with his father.

  By twelve, he’d been caught attempting to summon from the Lower Veil, the plane of restless dead. It nearly cost him his arm. Instead, it earned him the first of his many soulmarks—a black sigil burned into his skin, alive with quiet hunger.

  And on the eve of his fifteenth year… everything changed.

  Among the Drakenborne, fifteen was not a number. It was a rebirth. The age when child became fire, when bloodlines revealed their true strength, and one was named adult.

  The ceremony took place under the twin moons—one silver, one red—where Kael stood before the elder matriarchs of his bloodline. All around him, braziers roared with violet flame. The family crest hung behind him, soaked in ancestral blood and bone-dust.

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  And Kael—Kael was magnificent.

  He stood tall at just under six feet, though still growing. His skin retained its ashen-gray tone, tinged faintly with violet along his ribs and neck, where dragonblood

  coalesced strongest. Across his shoulders and forearms, patches of onyx-black scales glistened like obsidian, etched with natural patterns that shimmered slightly when he moved.

  His eyes were deep amber, slit-pupiled like a serpent, but they flickered with an unnatural glow—evidence of the necromantic energy always pulsing beneath his surface.

  His hair was shoulder-length, swept back in a wild, unruly mane of jet-black with streaks of deep violet running through it like veins of shadow.

  Most striking of all were his horns—two jagged, almost demonic protrusions that arched up from his temples and curled slightly backward like the crown of a fallen god. They were pitch black, rough near the base, and polished to a glass-like gleam at the tips.

  His canines were slightly elongated. His nails were blackened and claw-like. He wore a sleeveless dark leather tunic reinforced with boneplate, engraved with the mark of his family and the sigil of his Unique Trait—Soulbrand—burned into the collar. A belt held the Hollow Grimoire, now larger, thicker… and very much alive.

  Kael had become a force of reckoning.

  He had learned:

  The fundamentals of necromantic theory: soul-binding, corpse preservation, essence harvesting.

  Drakenborne blood magic: fire-forged sigils etched into flesh to enhance power.

  Swordplay and aerial combat, though he preferred to fight from the shadows.

  Politics, etiquette, how to lie with a smile—because noble blood demanded as much ruthlessness as the battlefield.

  Ancient rites whispered by the Hollow Grimoire—rituals older than kingdoms, including one that caused a tree near the estate to bleed black for three days.

  He had earned:

  The fear of rival houses.

  The whispered respect of older mages.

  A place in the House Council as the youngest member in five generations.

  And yet, Kael still felt the hunger. A quiet roar inside him that wanted more. Stronger summons. Deeper knowledge. Greater power.

  Now, as he stood beneath the twin moons with violet fire dancing in his veins and shadows curling around his heels, Kael of House Vire looked to the horizon of Aerithrael…

  And the dead looked back.