In the realm of her consciousness, Noah found herself puzzled by her ancestor's sudden decision to reveal herself.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked the elegant white-haired woman. "Didn't you once insist I shouldn't tell anyone about you residing in my mind?"
The ancestor had explained her reasoning thoroughly back then:
"If your family found out there was an ancient spirit from ten thousand years ago living in your mind, even if I meant no harm, they would try every possible means to drive me out. That would undo all the efforts we've made together."
"Furthermore," she had added gravely, "I worried that such knowledge might attract remnants of the Dark Sect. Among them are extremists who, upon learning of my existence, would go to any lengths to eliminate you, hoping to aid their master's return."
And so, for all this time, both Noah and her ancestor had acted in secrecy, keeping their profound connection hidden from everyone.
But now, with her ancestor openly revealing herself to her two younger sisters, Noah naturally felt curious and slightly concerned.
"The efficiency of gathering primordial power has been frustratingly slow lately," the ancestor explained, answering Noah's unspoken question. "Beyond your physical limitations and the lack of consistent support from the Night Spirit Crystal, there's another significant reason. Do you know what it is?"
Noah thought for a moment, then shook her head within their shared mental space.
"External distractions."
The ancestor elaborated, "Over these past few months, we've been gathering primordial power every night after your physical training, a process which requires absolute, undivided focus. But we've constantly had to remain vigilant, careful not to alert others—particularly certain curious little dragons—to what we were doing. This perpetual division of attention inevitably reduces our efficiency."
"You understand, the 'others' I'm primarily referring to are your two younger sisters."
"I wouldn't be so concerned about Muen; she's generally gentle and unobtrusive. But that pink-haired whirlwind... she's concocted more chaos than the entire Dragon Clan civil war generated."
Listening to her ancestor's exasperated complaints, Noah scratched her head sheepishly.
"Is it really that exaggerated?"
"You don't realize the half of it because, most of the time, I'm the one monitoring your surroundings while simultaneously aiding your gathering of primordial power."
The ancient being sighed, a sound filled with millennia of patience being tested.
"Hmph. You can simply focus on condensing energy, but I have to constantly split my attention to maintain our secrecy."
Noah's eyes widened in understanding. "So, that's why our progress has been so inconsistent..."
"Moreover..." the ancestor continued, her tone shifting.
"Yes?"
"Even if those two are endlessly mischievous," she said, her voice softening remarkably, "they trust you implicitly and depend on you completely." She paused, letting the weight of her words settle. "They genuinely care about your wellbeing."
Noah blinked, recalling the brief moment she'd mentally frozen when her ancestor had "taken control" earlier. That split-second lapse had been long enough for the observant Muen and Aurora to nearly catch on to their secret.
The ancestor sighed again, this time with a note of resignation. "If it were solely up to my ancient, pragmatic instincts, I would have handled this alone and permanently stopped these interruptions. But even with only a fragment of my power remaining, I find I wouldn't want them to lose the chance to support us if needed."
"Besides," the ancestor added, a sly note entering her voice, "they're resourceful and might even serve as excellent cover if necessary. Remember the time they secretly followed you to the temple hall while I briefly 'possessed' you to examine those ancient murals?"
"...Are you using this opportunity to complain about that incident again?" Noah asked dryly.
The white-haired beauty smiled slightly. "Not at all."
Noah sighed softly, a warm fondness spreading through her. "You're right, though. They're clever, and they truly do care."
She couldn't help but smile proudly, feeling deeply honored to be someone her sisters could depend on so completely.
"Now, listen closely to what I'm about to tell them," the ancestor instructed, her demeanor turning serious once more.
Noah nodded, her own expression mirroring the gravity. "I'm listening."
She took a steadying breath and exited her consciousness.
Back under the cherry blossom tree, the three dragon sisters sat together once again.
Aurora's gaze still held a glint of suspicion, while Muen seemed genuinely nervous, fidgeting with the hem of her dress.
After months of dedicated ghost-hunting, they had finally cornered their quarry, yet it felt like they hadn't fully grasped what they'd caught.
Muen nervously leaned closer and asked in a cautious whisper, "This... 'spirit' has been with big sis for so long... Is it dangerous?"
"Alright, ghost," Aurora demanded, crossing her arms with attempted authority, "what do you have to say for yourself?"
"First," Noah's voice replied, but with the ancestor's distinct cadence, "I am not a ghost."
"Got it, ghost," Aurora said, nodding sagely.
"You could think of me more accurately as a... preserved soul."
"That's still basically a ghost, isn't it?" Aurora countered.
"...."
Under the gentle shower of cherry blossoms, the ancient soul was momentarily rendered speechless by the three-year-old dragon's logic.
Kids these days... Old Dragon King Noah thought with immense, ancient irritation.
"Let's just listen to what she has to say, Aurora," Muen interjected softly, ever the peacemaker.
"Fine," Aurora relented, "go on."
"My presence poses no harm to your sister's body or mind," the ancestor explained through Noah. "Quite the opposite—I help her gather and refine a stronger, purer form of power."
To demonstrate, Noah (under the ancestor's guidance) opened her palm. A soft, milky-white glow materialized, coalescing into a small, swirling sphere of energy that floated serenely above her hand.
Both Muen and Aurora, familiar with various forms of magic, could instinctively sense the unique, ancient mystery contained within this energy. It felt older and more fundamental than anything they'd encountered.
After the demonstration, Noah dismissed the primordial energy and continued.
"Now, onto the main point."
"I am here for a specific, vital purpose, and it is also the reason I awoke after slumbering for millennia..."
Aurora, Muen, and the small conscious part of Noah still listening within her own mind held their breaths, hanging on her every word.
This was a story buried deep in the folds of time, one conspicuously absent from any historical text.
Only this living "fossil," speaking through Noah, could reveal the truth hidden in history's deepest shadows.
"You might have learned in school about the simplified origins of the Samuel Continent."
"In brief, as the legends go, at the dawn of creation, the world was shrouded in primordial chaos, and the ancestor of our Dragon Clan, the great Dragon Goddess Tiamat, shattered this chaos with her immense power, achieving what the myths call the 'Great Opening.'"
"This part of history is written in all the ancient texts and modern schoolbooks alike."
"But no book, no song, no legend mentions how the Dragon Goddess Tiamat acquired the specific power needed to dispel that all-encompassing chaos."
"Primordial magic is powerful, yes, but when constantly exposed to and battling the formless chaos, it inevitably becomes... tainted, impure."
"The Dragon Goddess realized this too late. She tried countless ways to purge the creeping chaos from within her own being."
"Yet, after millennia of struggle, the corruption persisted, subtly gnawing away at the foundations of her primordial power."
"The Dragon Goddess came to a terrifying realization: if this continued, she would inevitably fall completely into the abyss of chaos herself, forever deprived of light and reason."
"So, in a moment of desperate brilliance, she made a daring, unprecedented decision—"
"If chaos had rooted itself inextricably within her very essence, and could not be expelled by any normal means, then she would..."
She paused, letting the suspense build.
"...Split herself in two."
Hearing this, even the well-read Aurora looked utterly confused.
"Split herself? How is that even possible?"
"Her physical form, her personality, her thoughts, her virtues, her shadows, her sense of order, and the clinging chaos—all were meticulously divided into two distinct, separate beings."
Noah continued, her voice taking on a reverent, storytelling quality,
"This was her last, desperate resort. She knew that if she delayed any longer, she would lose even the power to combat the chaos from within."
"In the end, against all odds, she succeeded in performing this ultimate division."
"The chaos left, taking her darker, corrupted persona with it."
"At that very moment, the pure and supreme Dragon Goddess, freed from her internal struggle, descended upon the nascent world, igniting the heavens with her purified primordial magic and finally bringing true light and order."
Aurora blinked, glancing between her sisters, her clever mind working. Finally, she asked, "But doesn't that mean the Dragon Goddess couldn't handle her own chaotic half, so she just... got rid of it? Like taking out the trash?"
Noah (guided by the ancestor) nodded, looking at Aurora with a mix of annoyance and approval.
"You're irritatingly insightful, little pink troublemaker."
"After becoming the true master of creation, the purified Dragon Goddess sought to completely discard the chaotic personality she had cast out."
"But by then, the immense effort of the split had left her permanently weakened, her remaining life force slipping away like sand through an hourglass."
"In her final years, she spread her remaining power..."
She gestured broadly, as if encompassing the entire world.
"...And her very life essence across the Samuel Continent, which in time grew and evolved into today's diverse Dragon Clan."
"I was later hailed as the first Dragon King in our history, named 'Primordial' in honor of Tiamat's supreme power."
"But I am neither born of the Dragon Goddess's scattered life essence, nor am I a natural child of any particular tribe. So, pink troublemaker," she said, focusing on Aurora, "you've likely guessed the truth by now, haven't you?"
Aurora nodded, her expression uncharacteristically serious. "You're the part she kept. You represent the order and justice, the direct opposite of the chaotic persona Tiamat cast out."
"Precisely," the ancestor confirmed, a note of grim satisfaction in her voice. "When the Dragon Goddess forcibly expelled her darker half, I was born into this world as its opposite, its counterbalance."
Noah looked skyward, her eyes softening with a profound, ancient sorrow, as if her gaze could pierce through the veil of time to the distant past.
"I had hoped to continue her magnificent mission of creation, but back then..."
"I was too newborn, too weak to achieve such a colossal feat."
"So I could only watch, a helpless observer, as my creator exhausted her strength, her glorious life ending peacefully among the very mountains and seas she had forged."
"In her final, fading moments, the Dragon Goddess entrusted me with one sacred mission: to protect the Dragon Clan until the end of time, for they were the living extension of her own life."
"As long as the Dragon's Flame continues to burn in even a single heart, Tiamat's spirit will never truly vanish from this world."
In her consciousness, Noah's own expression softened, her lips pressing into a tight line of shared sorrow.
She hesitated for a moment, then asked in a quiet, mental whisper,
"Since you appeared as a direct consequence, as the counterpart to the Dragon Goddess's discarded chaos... do you still feel that your own birth was a mistake?"
"...Yes," her ancestor sighed deeply, the admission filled with millennia of complicated emotion. She visibly shook off the melancholy, choosing not to dwell on this painful point.
Instead, her face turned solemn, the weight of destiny settling upon her features as she continued,
"Moreover... before she faded, the Dragon Goddess gave me one final, desperate mission."
Noah, her expression mirroring this solemnity, repeated the ancestor's words aloud for her sisters to hear.
"To fulfill this ultimate mission..."
"To find, and ultimately confront, the chaotic persona that Tiamat had cast out."
The ancestor within nodded.
"I traveled across the entire breadth of the Samuel Continent for centuries and clashed with it several times."
"With each battle, it had grown stronger, fed by the latent discord of the world."
"Until one day, it discovered it could actively feed on the negative emotions of all living beings—hatred, fear, despair—and it began to evolve, rapidly, into something far more terrible. It became what the legends now call the 'Ultimate Fear.'"
"Our final, cataclysmic battle lasted for months, its fury so great it shrouded the entire world in an unnatural darkness, leaving the sun and moon without light."
"In the end, we both sustained injuries from which we could not easily recover. It was a stalemate; neither could destroy the other."
"But I could not, would not, betray the Dragon Goddess's final wish. So, gathering the very last dregs of my strength, I performed the greatest working of my life—I sealed the Ultimate Fear away."
"Afterward, I myself slept for a year, my power nearly extinguished. When I awoke, my strength had recovered a bare fraction, but..."
She paused, the memory clearly painful.
"...a devastating civil war had already broken out within the Dragon Clan."
"Uh—" Muen raised her hand tentatively, her eyes wide with sudden understanding. "I get it now! The Ultimate Fear feeds on negative emotions, and a full-scale Dragon Clan civil war would have created a feast for it, giving it endless power to break the seal!"
"So you had to stop the war, not just to protect the clans, but to prevent it from breaking free and to uphold your promise to Tiamat!"
Noah smiled, reaching out to pinch Muen's nose affectionately. "You're a clever one, little sister. Now, say it with me properly—Ti~a~mat~"
Muen 😲: "Ti~ti~mat!"
Noah: "Tia~mat~"
Muen 😦: "Ti-dia-mat."
Noah, patiently: "Ti-a-mat!!"
Muen, on the verge of frustrated tears 😭: "Bubble-mat!!"
"..."
Aurora patted Noah on the shoulder sympathetically. "Give it up, ghost. You know why Mom and Dad mostly call me by a nickname?"
"Why?" the ancestor asked through Noah, intrigued.
"Because second sis could never pronounce 'Aurora' properly when we were little! It always came out as 'Awowa'!"
"So the hidden cost of her dual elemental awakening was a speech impediment?" the ancestor mused aloud.
"..." Muen pouted.
"Hey!" Aurora defended her sister. "Don't say that about her! She only mispronounces 'Aurora' as 'Awowa' and 'Tiamat' as 'Bubble-mat'."
"But managing to turn 'Tiamat' into 'Bubble-mat' is a special kind of talent!" the ancestor retorted.
With a fond sigh, Noah gently steered the conversation back on track.
"You stopped the civil war, but what eventually happened to the Ultimate Fear? If it's still sealed, why are you here now?"
"It didn't break free then," the ancestor replied, her tone grimly pragmatic, "but wars are not limited to the Dragon Clan. Every corner of Samuel Continent is perpetually plagued by conflict of some kind."
"Hatred, fear, and desire linger everywhere, a constant, low-grade feast for the entity I sealed."
"Someday, inevitably, the Ultimate Fear will gather enough strength to break its prison."
"After all, there's no conceivable way to convince every living being to abandon war and negativity entirely. Such emotions are an intrinsic part of mortal nature."
"So the Ultimate Fear's return is not a matter of 'if,' but 'when.'"
"But the seal I placed was woven with the last of my original power. By my calculations, it should have taken at least several thousand more years for it to erode sufficiently."
A heavy silence fell upon them before she delivered the final, chilling line.
"Yet now, I sense disturbances in the seal's integrity. The timeline has accelerated dramatically."
"I fear we may not have centuries, but merely years before it breaks free."