Serena's breath crystallized inside her frost-covered respirator. "This hellhole's colder than Dracula's coffin—" She yanked hair frozen to her collar, her wings shriveled into ice daggers. "Dragonkin ancestors sure knew how to pick real estate."
Garret's wolf tail dragged icicles, mechanical eye flickering crimson. "Three hundred meters ahead... thermal readings gone wild... Something's eating the heat."
Ellen's starlit scales detached, forming a swirling galaxy in the glacial corridor. Her spine shrieked, exposed circuitry glowing with archaic draconic runes: "Protocol 000... Prime directive..." Her body jerked forward like a marionette.
Raine's scaled vambraces crackled with frost, crown burning his brow. "Ellen!" He reached out, only to have quantum scales pierce his palm—black void-mist oozing instead of blood.
The tunnel exploded into a cavern.
The First Dragon Lord's mechanized corpse hovered under ice crystals, 360 laser beams from its spine etching a live star chart onto walls. Seven ice coffins nailed the Big Dipper's positions, each holding Raine's doppelgänger with inverted scales carved with dates: 1999.12.31, 2012.12.21... The nearest marked 2025.06.18.
"Welcome home, Vessel 299." The mechanical dragon's voice was grinding gears. "Verify your doomsday countdown—23:59:59 remaining."
Serena collapsed, tactical gloves turning cobalt—her blood crystallizing into dragon-vein patterns. Dracula's brand burned her neck: "Fuck... That's regal—"
"Bloodline confirmed." Five mechanical eyes stayed locked on Raine while the sixth swiveled to her. "Rogue third princess detected. Initiate purge?"
Ellen's quantum form dissolved into the star chart, data-tears streaming from her remaining eye: "Raine... My core has your termination code... Run..."
Garret's beast form rampaged, fangs shattering on starlight chains. His blood compressed into diamonds rolling into ice abyss: "Screw your damn prophecy—"
The crown's thorns stabbed Raine's temples. He saw Elaina weeping at the void's edge in memory fragments, clutching an identical controller: "No choice... But you..."
"Countdown accelerated." The dragon's chest cavity revealed Raine's clavicle-shaped slot. "Vessel reclamation initiated."
Serena's crystalline blood speared three mechanical eyes. She tore her artery, hurling black blood at the star chart as her wings shattered into ice blades: "Hatchling! Either sacrifice me to that machine or snap my neck now—"
Ellen's scales restructured through quantum entanglement, resonating with the crown. Glaciers collapsed as coffin corpses opened milky eyes.
When Raine's claw pressed the dragon's chest cavity, the star chart projected global fissures—continents cracking into dragon shapes, centered on the Night Citadel's sanctum.
Submerged Currents
In subterranean rivers, Dracula's fang necklace absorbed leaking energy. Blood-ice revealed Serena's childhood memory: twelve-year-old her trapped in a liquid nitrogen pod, watched by a lab-coated scientist with Elaina's face...