Aros stood upon the rim of a broken cliff, where the wind sang in tongues unknown to his world.

Beneath him sprawled the human lands—rolling fields painted in the silver wash of dawn, rivers that bled light, and towns pulsing with fragile warmth. He breathed in deeply.

The air was thin here, untainted, shimmering with mana that hummed like a heartbeat beneath the soil. It was different. Pure. Almost too pure.

So this was the human world.

He had only ever heard of it through fragments—tales whispered by dying elves and roaring dragons, by soldiers who had crossed the veiled thresholds during the War of Convergence.

Back then, he had been a child watching the sky torn apart by color and fire. He remembered the cries of his kin, the songs of the dying, the taste of lightning.

When the gates had opened in their realm, every race had clawed for dominion. Elves seeking glory. Dragons seeking vengeance. And the humans—those small, brittle things—seeking survival.

Now the war was decades dust, and yet its ghosts lingered in him.

He flexed his clawed fingers, the scaled skin glinting under sunlight. His reflection in the river below was wrong: elven sharpness fused with draconic power, beauty marred by something monstrous.

An abomination, they called him. The word had cut once. Now it merely echoed.

He stepped forward. The earth here was soft, the grass damp with dew. Birds scattered as he passed—tiny, warm-blooded creatures that reminded him of all that was breakable.

Humans.

He had thought them mighty once. When the first slayers breached his homeland, clad in runes and steel, they had seemed like gods of precision and will.

But walking among them now, cloaked in illusion, he found them disappointingly fragile. Small hands. Dulled mana. Lives measured in heartbeats instead of centuries.

Pathetic, he thought.

And yet, there was something disquieting about them—their laughter, their persistence, the way they built cities out of ruin and still called it hope. They developed more so than any other race. Curious bunch.

He watched a boy chase his sister through a market street, wooden sword raised. The sunlight caught their hair. For a fleeting moment, Aros saw himself reflected in their joy and felt an ache he could not name.

He tore his gaze away. Weakness. That's all it was.

He should have returned to the hunting fields within the dungeon. The elves still lived, still breathed arrogance. Their citadels had not yet burned. That was his purpose—to erase them, one by one, until no memory of their song remained.

But something in him resisted.

He had lingered here instead, wandering this soft, green world like a ghost.

Perhaps it was the purity of the mana that held him. Or perhaps it was the memory of Aiden's eyes—those golden, fearless eyes that had seen through him rather than around him.

"Pathetic human," he muttered, but the words rang hollow.

He remembered Aiden's voice: 'I can change you back...'

Change....me?

What did that mean? To change something was to mend what was broken. But Aros was not broken. He had shed his elven weakness long ago, embraced the fire of his draconic blood. He was whole in his monstrosity. Complete in his hatred.

No.

He would not let that thought root.

He roared it into the wind. "No!"

The sound tore through the forest, scattering leaves and startling the deer into flight. His wings twitched beneath his cloak, aching for the sky.

He was the only one of his kind—a bridge between worlds, forged in the sin of lust and power. To reject that was to reject his birthright.

Still, Aiden's voice clung like smoke. 'You could stop being him.'

He sank to one knee, claw pressing into soil, the earth's pulse rising to meet his. Heat rolled beneath his skin. Flames licked the edges of his restraint. He wanted to burn something. Anything.

Instead, he stood.

The human world stretched before him, ignorant, ripe for ruin.

The elves had once allied with these creatures. Together they had sealed the dungeon gates, trapping his kin in the dark. Let them suffer, the elves had said. Let them rot.

Aros smiled bitterly. Perhaps, if he could stoke the old hatred between elves and humans, he could make the elves bleed again.

The gates were weakening. He had slipped through one himself—through cracks that should not exist. If he could pass, so could others.

All it would take was a spark.

He turned toward the horizon, feeling the air shift. The wind smelled of rain and iron. Somewhere far away, thunder rolled—a reminder that even skies could break.

He began walking, cloak dragging through the dirt.

"That human....his honey laced tongue, might be useful...."

A human scent—but not quite.

He rose slowly.

From the shadows, she stepped into the moonlight.

Her hair was golden, falling like molten sunlight over armor of pale silver. Her eyes, deep blue, shimmered with faint luminescence. She moved with the precision of a predator—quiet, assured, dangerous. But beneath it, Aros sensed something else.

Dragonblood.

He could taste it in the air, faint but unmistakable—a resonance that called to the fire inside him.

"Who are you?" His voice rumbled, low, edged with suspicion.

She didn't flinch. "You....you hurt my beloved.. you should not have come to my home.."

Her words were calm, but her stance was ready, hand near the hilt of a blade carved from wyrmscale.

Aros smiled—a slow, dangerous curve. "Neither are you."

Their gazes locked. The wind shifted between them, carrying the scent of ozone and rain.

"I was told monsters crawled from the dungeons," she said. "I didn't expect one to speak."

He tilted his head. "Monsters speak.... You just never listen."

Something flickered across her face—surprise, maybe even sorrow. "You sound almost…human."

"I am not."

"Then what are you?"

He stepped closer, each movement deliberate. The grass wilted beneath his boots. "I am the union dragon kind and elven trive tried to erase."

Her eyes widened, but only slightly. "A halfbreed....An abomination..."

"Yes...An abomination." His grin was sharp enough to cut. "So they called me."

She studied him, gaze lingering on the horns that curled from his temples, the faint shimmer of scales at his throat. "You wear the name like armor."

"It is armor." He circled her slowly, watching the tension in her shoulders. "Better to embrace the blade than die by it...."

"And yet," she murmured, "I see weakness....I see guilt, guilt of chossing a path you did not pave."

That stopped him.

For a moment, the forest held its breath.

He looked at her again, truly looked—and saw the faint outline of something behind her, a ripple in the air. Wings. Concealed, but real.

"You…" His voice dropped to a whisper. "You're like me...."

She shook her head. "No. I'm human."

"Liar." His eyes flared crimson. "I can smell the dragon in your blood."

Catherine's hand tightened on her sword. "And I can smell the madness in yours...so before you try doing something stupid again...."

They stood in silence, moonlight pooling around them.

For the first time in centuries, Aros felt the tremor of recognition—not the human kind that sought comfort, but the primal awareness of kinship long denied.

"You don't belong among them," he said softly. "Their kind will never understand you...."

"Perhaps," she said. "But someone understand me, someone I dearly love. That's enough."

Her blade flashed from its sheath in one fluid motion, the edge gleaming with runes that burned pale blue. The light caught his face, painting the ridges of his scales.

"You will die now...," she warned.

Aros chuckled, a sound like crackling embers. "Many have tried, the men and women you call slayers..?"

"I'm no slayer....I'm a Nobel...."

"What's the fucking difference...?"

She hesitated—and that was enough.

Aros moved, faster than air. One moment he stood before her; the next, his clawed hand caught her wrist, holding the sword just shy of his chest. Sparks flew as steel kissed scale.

Her breath hitched. "Let go."

He didn't. "You're strong.....Very strong...What are you called?"

Silence. Only their breathing, their hearts—a rhythm caught between war and wonder.

Finally, she said, "Catherine."

Aros tasted the name, the syllables rich on his tongue. "Catherine," he echoed. "A name fit for fire."

She jerked her arm free, stepping back. "You will remember it, as you will bleed to death, thinking my name, and you will know, why nobels rule the world, while slayers play hunter..."

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