I withdrew once again to my favorite room in the estate: the tea room. It had changed slightly since the last time I visited. The maids, ever perceptive, had set up a small study in the corner. There were neatly arranged shelves of books, a polished desk with parchment and ink, and a globe that looked older than the estate itself. But what caught my attention most was the new chair.

It was large. Comfortable. Excessive, even. I sank into it without hesitation. The fabric welcomed me like a second skin—soft, warm, and familiar.

I paused.

"This is my wool," I said, my voice carrying a small smirk.

Naturally, Cordelia answered first. She was seated near the desk, flipping through a report without looking up.

"Correct," she said with a quiet nod.

Fallias, who had been lounging near the window with her feet up on the sill, gave Cordelia a long, sideways glance. Her voice was more direct, tinged with suspicion.

"So, can you tell me why she's always so close to you?" she asked. "If you're really falling for me, shouldn't one of your male retainers be the one you keep closest? That's what the old tales say, anyway. The ones with princes and their chosen brides."

I sighed and rubbed the side of my face. Fallias's tone was cautious, not jealous exactly, but sharp with the edge of a truth she wasn't ready to say plainly.

"I trust Cordelia," I said. "But I also know that if she and I ever pursued anything romantic, it would end in tragedy. We're too similar in the wrong ways. She's sharp, quiet, calculating when she wants to be. I'm reckless, instinctive, always pushing the line. It wouldn't work. We'd hurt each other."

Cordelia didn't react, just continued flipping the page in her book.

"But I do trust her," I continued. "And if you asked me whether I would die for her, the answer would be close to yes."

Fallias raised an eyebrow. "Close?"

"I'd die for Fractal too," I said. "Same with Ten. Barbra, maybe not die, but I owe her greatly. And V's an ass, but he's our ass. We're a team. We fight together. We survive together."

I paused, watching the way Fallias was now looking at Cordelia again, more carefully this time.

"Eventually, they'll be joining me in Otherrealms," I said. "Not when they're ready for me. When I'm ready for them."

Fallias's eyes turned back toward me. Her pupils narrowed slightly, and I felt her miasma pulse just once before she spoke.

"That explains why your miasma density is slightly lower than everyone else's," she said. "You're not pulling everything into yourself just yet. You're holding space."

I leaned further back into the chair, staring at the ceiling for a moment.

"I have to," I replied. "If I don't, I burn them out. Or worse—I lead them to burn themselves out trying to match me. I'm still learning. Still becoming the kind of person who doesn't just hold the line, but anchors it."

"That's very lordly of you," Cordelia commented. Her tone was unreadable, but there was a faint smile curling at the edge of her lips.

I scoffed.

"I don't think lords are supposed to trip over their own sheep half the time."

"You only did that once," Fallias said with a smirk. "Twice, at most."

"I counted three," Cordelia added.

"Oh come on," I groaned. "Whose side are you two even on?"

"Yours," Cordelia said simply. "But we're allowed to tease the one we follow. That's in the contract."

Fallias rose from her seat near the window and walked over, planting herself on the edge of the desk. She studied me with that unnerving intensity she used when reading battlefield patterns or trying to decode the way the stars bent above Danatallion's Halls.

"You said you're still becoming the kind of person your team can follow. Does that include Sven?"

That made me pause.

"I don't know," I admitted. "He speaks well. Has clear loyalty to Fractal. Military discipline, good Arte. But trust isn't earned in a night."

Cordelia finally set her book down, fingers laced together in her lap.

"Then keep watching," she said. "Trust is like tea. You let it steep too fast and it turns bitter. But if you don't let it settle at all, it's just hot water and good intentions."

"Was that wisdom or shade?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied.

I chuckled, despite myself, then leaned my head back against the wool-wrapped chair. This was my team. Not just swords and shields. But thoughts and truths, woven carefully together.

I let the silence stretch, held gently by the room, by the wool, by their presence.

"What are you reading, Cordelia?"

She didn't look up as she answered, her voice calm and level. "The Maiden Who Rose from Hell."

I nodded slowly. That was a name I recognized. A strange little novel whispered about in our household. According to family legend, it had been written by a friend of the Duartes. But the truth was more surreal—it had come from Tristania, my reclusive sister, during one of her dreams. A dream turned into ink, stitched with fragments of half-sane genius.

Fallias scoffed from across the room. She was lounging on her side along the couch like some smug noblewoman at rest, her arms folded under her head.

"You know," she began, "for someone who clawed their way out of an icy abyss built from books, you surround yourself with them far too much."

There was an amused lilt in her voice, but the words carried weight. A not-quite accusation, a nudge at something deeper.

I glanced at the shelves, at the stacks of worn tomes and dog-eared volumes arranged not by genre, but by how recently I'd escaped into them.

"Books are wonderful things," I replied. "They let you step outside of yourself. Step into someone else's war, their victory, their loss. They're doors."

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Cordelia turned a page, the faint rustle of parchment the only sound between us.

"It just so happens," I continued, "that for me, the doors are real. When I read, sometimes I fall into the words. And when I fall, I bring things back with me."

Fallias let out a sharp breath, half-laugh, half-huff. "You make it sound romantic."

"It is," I said. "Terrifying, but romantic."

"You've been touched by too many cursed tomes to still believe in romance," she muttered.

"Maybe." I smiled. "But the best curses are always born from love."

That made Cordelia pause. She lifted her gaze to me, eyes unreadable but not unkind. Something passed between us in the silence—understanding, or maybe shared weariness.

"You like that book?" I asked her.

Cordelia considered for a moment. "It's darker than I expected. The prose is beautiful, but cruel. There's a kind of violence hidden in the elegance. Like silk wrapped around a blade."

"That sounds like Tristania," I said with a soft laugh. "Even asleep, she's too sharp for her own good."

"She's like you," Cordelia added. "You both make prisons out of beautiful things."

Fallias raised an eyebrow. "Is that praise or insult?"

"Yes," Cordelia answered without inflection.

Fallias snorted.

I leaned back into my chair, letting my eyes drift to the ceiling. "The words are where I feel safe. Not because they're gentle. But because they're honest. Even lies in books ring clearer than half the truths spoken aloud."

Cordelia set the book down at last, placing a ribbon to mark her page. She studied me, one leg crossed over the other, hands folded neatly in her lap.

"And yet," she said, "you're building something that lives outside the page now. A home. A table. A team."

"That's what makes it real," I murmured. "I step into stories so I can bring something back. So I can give it form. A house. A battle standard. A name people can follow."

Fallias tilted her head. "You talk like you're writing a story of your own."

"I am," I said. "We all are. I just happen to be cursed with remembering how easily the author can die before the tale is done."

That silenced the room. Not heavily, but enough for it to settle.

Cordelia returned to her book. Fallias stared into the fireplace, expression unreadable. I sat with them both, surrounded by bindings and echoes and the quiet certainty that the next chapter—like every one before it—would demand something new of me.

And when it came, I'd write it in blood and ash if I had to.

But for now, I watched the words flicker in Cordelia's eyes and listened to the pages turn like clockwork gears, pulling us toward whatever came next.

That cadence—soft, rhythmic, full of unspoken tension—was comforting. But eventually, I decided to add my own rhythm to that quiet symphony of pages. Slowly, deliberately, I reached into the folds of my coat and drew out the book I had requested from Isaac's private collection. Not just any book. The book.

The Biology of Dragons.

I turned the spine away from Fallias. She was lounging too comfortably nearby, gold eyes half-lidded, but aware. Always aware. Pretending to nap, perhaps. But I knew better. She was a half-gold dragon—by blood and by presence. I could feel the heat she gave off even now, subtle, coiling around the room like sun-warmed incense.

Hiding this from her felt ridiculous. But I needed a moment with it first. Alone. I needed to know the things people weren't supposed to ask. The things that polite society, especially those living among dragons, simply didn't speak aloud.

So I cracked the cover, as quietly as I could.

The paper smelled old, inked in browns and ochres, the pages slightly thicker than modern parchment. A handwritten dedication filled the first page:

For those who still ask, "What is a dragon?"

And so I began to read.

A dragon is not merely a scaled beast with fire in its throat. It is not simply an apex predator, nor merely a magical construct left behind by ancient gods. A dragon is its own category of being—a convergence point between biology, arcana, and spiritual phenomena.

Dragons defy taxonomic simplicity. While they can be studied anatomically, their bodies adapt and evolve in ways inconsistent with fixed physiology. For instance, no two Gold Dragons have identical organ structures. Their hearts shift shape and rhythm over time, sometimes splitting into multiple nodes to handle shifts in magical saturation.

This alone has rendered postmortem studies nearly impossible, as the corpse of a dragon tends to rapidly lose coherence—breaking down into elemental residue, bone dust, or vanishing entirely within hours of death.

Subsection: On Lineage and Variants The commonly known chromatic and metallic categories are not merely colorations or temperaments. They represent divergent evolutionary paths—one driven by territorial dominion, the other by legacy-bound memory.

Metallic dragons are known to pass on not only physical traits but moral imperatives encoded in aetheric strands of their lineage. A Gold Dragon's heir, even if halfling or hybrid, inherits the burden of ancient ideals: protection, judgment, restraint, fire tempered by purpose.

This brings us to the matter of half-dragons.

Chapter II – The Half-Blooded

The fusion of dragon and human essence is rare, but not unnatural. In such unions, biology yields to spiritual precedence. The child of a Gold Dragon and a human, for instance, may outwardly resemble their mortal parent—but they will still shed heat unconsciously, still see in ultraviolet, still develop a second set of vocal cords attuned to draconic resonance by the age of twelve.

These hybrids are not accidents of fate. They are living nexuses. More than children. Less than gods.

They tend to struggle with emotional regulation, particularly around concepts of betrayal or dishonor. This is not merely cultural—it is inherited. Their blood remembers. And that memory often manifests as rage, sorrow, or flame.

Addendum: On Heat and Territory

Even in half-bloods, thermoregulation becomes a dominant trait. They burn hotter at rest than any mammal, their bodies rejecting cold with instinctive violence. Most will gravitate to high altitudes, open sunlight, or hoarded warmth. This is not preference. It is compulsion.

Their internal organs, particularly the liver and secondary lung chamber, are often lined with shimmering scale-like tissue. These are not armor, but heat sinks—organic glyphs made flesh to manage the pressure of what lies inside.

Do not provoke them.

Do not lie to them.

Do not think them tame just because they wear mortal skin.

I stared at the page for a long time. It explained a lot. Too much, really. Fallias's quick temper. Her searing sense of justice. The way her presence made tea boil faster in its cup.

It was all written here. As if Othram Vel Dasken had met her already and lived just long enough to write it down.

And somehow, I knew that if Fallias saw me reading this, there would be a conversation I wasn't quite ready to have.

Not yet.

Especially because there was always one particular "cup" she seemed to set alight without ever touching it.

Even her proximity carried weight. Not pressure, not heat—though there was that too—but gravity. A pull. A certainty. The closer she was, the harder it became to think straight, let alone breathe evenly.

Her scent—like something ancient and sun-warmed. Her hair, a cascade of gold touched by firelight. Her skin, kissed by heat, the faintest glow beneath.

Fallias wasn't just beautiful. She was demanding. Not in action, but in presence. She demanded to be witnessed. Admired. Survived.

And I kept reading, each page of The Biology of Dragons peeling back some new layer of her that I had already begun to understand long before ink confirmed it.

She was dangerous. She was radiant. She was clever. She was sharp. She was playful. She was terrifying.

She was—

And then my thoughts stopped.

She was on me.

In one fluid motion, she had closed the space between us, slipped the book from my lap, and pressed her lips to mine. Not with ceremony. Not with restraint. Like a fire breaking loose of its lantern.

We fell—well, I did. She came down with me, laughter humming at the edge of her breath as she pinned me there, the warmth of her body a furnace against mine.

"Cordelia said you were thinking too loudly," she whispered into my ear, her voice thick with amusement. "And I should do this."

I blinked. Tried to breathe. Failed.

Damn it, Cordelia.

I mean… you're right.

But still—Damn it, Cordelia.

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