The wind in the northern highlands was thin.
Lucius walked in silence, his cloak tugged by the breeze, Aira's small cat-form curled inside like a ball of fur. The trail he followed wasn't marked on any map — and he preferred it that way. No border patrols. No wandering merchants. Just cold stone and quiet steps.
He had no grand destination today.
Only the distant mountain — where, according to memory, the Elric Bloom grew.
The fruit that would awaken his mana.
One step at a time.
No drama. No fate. Just survival.
The scent hit him first.
Burnt iron.
A hint of blood.
Lucius paused at the edge of a crag and looked down.
A mining camp, half-hidden under rock and illusion.
Guards didn't wear armor. They wore robes. Red ones.
And the chains — mana-dampening, laced with runes — gleamed in the torchlight like leeches.
Lucius didn't care.
But he kept walking.
Not toward the fruit.
Toward the smell.
Getting inside was easy.
These weren't soldiers. They were ritualists. The type who memorized chants, not ambushes.
The cave was deep. Deeper than it should've been.
He passed broken pillars. Old runes. Something ancient once lived here — and now it had been turned into a prison.
Then, the sound.
Breathing.
Wrong. Wet. Labored.
Lucius turned the corner.
And saw it.
A small dragon — barely larger than a grown hound — chained to obsidian slabs. One of its wings was torn. The other hung limp. Its scales were pale where they hadn't been burned black. Its eye — the one not swollen shut — glared at him, half-crazed, half-dead.
Lucius didn't speak.
The nobleman standing beside the beast turned, startled. His hands were covered in ritual ink.
"Who are—"
Lucius's mana flickered.
It wasn't elegant. It wasn't trained.
But it was enough.
A single burst crushed the man's staff and tossed him into the stone wall behind him. He wouldn't die. Probably.
Lucius stepped forward.
The dragon hissed.
He met its eye — not with pity, but calculation.
"You're free," he said. Not gently. Not cruelly. Just… fact.
He shattered the chains.
Turned.
Walked out.
Outside, the air bit sharper than before.
Aira stirred, poked her head from his cloak. "You found food?"
"No," he replied, pulling out a biscuit and breaking it in half.
They ate in silence.
Then — the faint scratch of claws behind them.
Lucius didn't turn.
But he heard it.
Careful steps. Not limping — cautious.
Following.
The dragon.
Not flying. Not roaring.
Just… following.
Lucius didn't acknowledge it. He kept walking.
"Do what you want."
And the dragon did.
It followed him into the cold