The Heaven-Marked Tomb didn't look like much from the outside.
No golden statues. No divine sigils. No banners or relics.
Just a jagged stone gate covered in cracks and half-buried under vines, as if the world itself had tried to forget what lay beneath.
But Yanlong remembered.
Even before the first glyph flared at his presence, he could feel the heat.
Low.
Choked.
Not warm like fire, but thick like blood left too long in the sun.
---
He approached the gate with slow steps.
It didn't open for him.
It yielded.
The stone cracked inward, groaning like bone under pressure, and parted just enough for a man to step through.
Beyond it: pitch-black stairs, spiraling down into the earth.
---
He didn't hesitate.
---
The deeper he walked, the more the air changed.
It wasn't silent down here.
It was listening.
And breathing.
---
Each step echoed with a ghost of flame. His own qi was restrained. His internal fire dimmed itself instinctively, like even it feared to burn too brightly in this place.
He passed the markers of ancient battle: shattered spears fused with ash, chunks of charred armor, sigils of celestial command broken in half.
No corpses.
Only reminders.
He was not the first to walk this path.
But he might be the last.
---
The staircase ended at a wide hall of obsidian.
The floor was covered in an intricate spiral—one he recognized.
A sealing array from the original age of flame. Not created by Heaven.
Created by the traitor gods of the Ash Court.
Those who once thought even the dragons too dangerous to exist.
---
Yanlong stepped into the spiral.
And the spiral responded.
Flames rose in a ring around him—black and crimson, silent, pulsing.
In the center of the chamber, a pedestal.
And on it—
A scale.
Large. Iridescent. Glowing faintly with heat.
It pulsed once.
Then again.
Like a heartbeat.
---
His voice was dry when he spoke.
"Vengralis."
---
The flames shifted.
And then a voice answered.
Not from the shadows.
From within him.
"You returned."
---
Yanlong's spine straightened.
It wasn't the voice of a beast.
It wasn't roaring or monstrous.
It was calm. Familiar. Like a brother.
Or a reflection.
---
"I came to make sure you stayed sealed."
The voice laughed. Quiet. Cold.
"Then you shouldn't have brought your name with you."
---
Yanlong's flame flared, unbidden.
He stepped back.
The spiral's edge caught underfoot.
The chamber shook.
And the scale on the pedestal cracked—just slightly.
---
"You and I were never different," the voice whispered.
"You burned for freedom. So did I. You wanted to break the heavens. I wanted to watch them kneel."
"That's where we're not the same," Yanlong said through clenched teeth.
"No," the voice replied. "That's where you started pretending."
---
A shadow began to take shape in the spiral's center.
Not full. Not whole.
But rising.
And it wore the outline of a dragon made of smoke and flame, eyes closed, breath slow, like something dreaming of firestorms.
---
"You came to destroy me," it said. "But you've already opened the gate."
"No," Yanlong growled.
But even as he denied it, the scale on the pedestal glowed brighter.
Responding to him.
To his flame.
---
Vengralis laughed again.
"You were the key, brother."
"Don't call me that."
"Too late."
---
A gust of pressure pushed Yanlong back.
The spiral beneath his feet cracked.
And the voice grew quiet, almost gentle.
"Now that you remember who you are… can you still pretend you're not mine?"
---
Yanlong drew his blade.
He knew the battle hadn't begun.
But something worse had:
The question.
The one he didn't yet know how to answer.
---
The blade in his hand grew hot.
Not from the fire he summoned—but from the seal fighting against it.
The spiral beneath him cracked again, and this time, it wasn't because of Vengralis.
It was him.
His flame. His presence. His name.
He was unsealing the tomb just by being here.
---
Vengralis' voice circled around him like smoke.
"You still don't understand, do you?"
"I understand enough," Yanlong spat.
"You think you're here to prevent the end. But your mere presence… was the beginning."
---
The spectral dragon took fuller form. Smoke hardened into shape—towering, curved horns, wings that stretched like tattered banners, and eyes glowing like dying stars.
But still no heartbeat.
Still no soul.
Just the idea of Vengralis.
Waiting to be whole again.
---
"I sealed you," Yanlong said. "I ended you."
"No," the voice whispered. "You feared me. So you buried me alive."
"That's not true."
"Then why is your flame feeding mine?"
---
Yanlong's blade shook.
A trick. A lie.
But the seal was reacting. He couldn't deny it.
The spiral—once dormant—had begun to glow with alternating hues: crimson for his flame, black for Vengralis'.
Two flames. One pattern.
---
"You were always the stronger one," Vengralis continued. "Not because you fought harder. But because you dared to feel."
"Enough."
"You loved her, even when your wings were soaked in her people's blood."
"Stop it."
"You wanted peace, even as your blade fed on screams."
"I said—"
"You're not my opposite, Yanlong. You're my evolution."
---
He roared.
Not a cry of pain.
A refusal.
He drove his blade into the center of the spiral.
The ground exploded in a circle of flame and ash.
The entire chamber shook.
For a moment, the shadow of Vengralis flickered—faded.
Yanlong staggered forward, dragging the blade along the spiral, breaking each line of the seal with fire and steel.
---
"You think I'm still yours?" he shouted.
"Then take what's left!"
---
And with a final strike, he cleaved the pedestal in half.
The scale atop it shattered, glowing embers scattering through the air like dying stars.
For a second, all was still.
---
Then Vengralis laughed.
Not in triumph.
In joy.
---
"You broke it."
Yanlong froze.
"What?"
"You think that was the seal holding me back?"
The smoke coiled around him, tighter now.
"That was the last chain holding you away from me."
---
The flame in Yanlong's chest surged.
Uncontrolled.
Wild.
For the first time in centuries, he screamed—not in pain, but in loss of control.
His own fire turned on him, rising from his limbs, burning his veins.
Memories—his, not his—flashed behind his eyes:
A palace made of black scales.
A woman crying as she cradled a broken sword.
A dragon, wings wide, devouring the sky.
---
Then—
Nothing.
Silence.
The flames vanished.
---
Yanlong lay on the ground, breathing ragged.
The tomb was quiet again.
Too quiet.
He pushed himself up.
His blade was gone.
No longer in his hand.
No longer in the room.
His body trembled—not from fatigue.
From unraveling.
---
Inside him, something had changed.
A door had opened.
And something ancient now stirred behind it.
---
From the far end of the chamber, the final wall crumbled.
Beyond it… a staircase.
Descending deeper.
---
And somewhere far above, on the mountain ridge, Lianxin felt it too.
The warmth that had always lingered at the edge of her senses—
It had twisted.
It no longer called for her hand.
It hungered.
---
She turned to the disciples behind her.
"We leave. Now."
"But—"
"If we wait, the Yanlong we knew… may not be the one who comes back."
---
And below, as Yanlong stepped toward the final descent—
Vengralis whispered once more.
"You've remembered who you are, brother."
"Now let me show you who you could become."
End of Chapter 9