Ashkaroth's POV
Pain was all I knew.
For three hundred years, pain was my entire world. The seal drained my essence drop by drop, pulling magic from my core like someone slowly ripping out my soul. I couldn't move. Couldn't escape. Couldn't even scream because they'd bound my voice as part of the torture.
All I could do was feel. And remember.
Remember the betrayal. Remember my family's death screams. Remember the Dragon Wars when humans slaughtered my kind for their blood. Remember the first King—the one who called himself my friend—stabbing me in the back with a cursed blade and laughing while they chained me.
Three hundred years of that memory playing over and over while my power bled away to fuel their precious human magic.
I'd gone mad somewhere around year fifty. Sane again around year two hundred. Then mad again. Then something beyond mad—something cold and patient and filled with so much hate it became its own form of consciousness.
I would burn them all when I got free. Every last human. I'd turn their cities to ash. Make them watch their children die screaming like I watched mine. Make them—
Wait.
Something was different.
Through the agony, through the endless drain of the seal, I felt... warmth? No, not warmth. Blood. Fresh blood touching the lock mechanism.
But not just any blood.
Dragon-Speaker blood.
The kind I hadn't sensed in three centuries. The kind that died with the woman who tried to save me and paid for it with her life.
How? I tried to reach out with my consciousness, tried to feel who was bleeding on my prison. Who dares—
A girl's voice, barely a whisper: "Please. Please let this work. Please let me survive long enough to make them all pay."
Rage. Her rage tasted like mine—pure and desperate and burning. She wasn't trying to strengthen my prison. She was trying to break it.
Yes, I thought back, not sure if she could hear me. Yes, little fool. Break it. FREE ME.
More blood hit the seal. So much blood. She was cutting herself deeply, deliberately, letting her life pour out onto ancient magic that hadn't been touched by Dragon-Speaker blood since the day they locked me away.
The seal cracked.
Just a hairline fracture, but it was enough. After three hundred years of perfect containment, there was finally a weakness.
I gathered every drop of power I had left—which wasn't much after centuries of draining—and I pushed.
The crack widened.
MORE! I roared into her mind. MORE BLOOD! DON'T STOP!
"I'm trying!" Her voice was panicked now, pained. "I'm cutting as deep as I can—"
The seal cracked wider. Light—real light, not the eternal darkness I'd lived in—started seeping through. I could smell fresh air. Feel the wind. Sense the sunrise starting beyond my prison walls.
Freedom was so close.
One more push. Just one more—
The seal shattered.
The chains binding me for three centuries exploded like they were made of glass instead of enchanted steel. Magic—my magic, finally flowing back where it belonged—surged through my body like lightning. My wings burst free. My voice, silent for so long, erupted in a roar that shook the mountains themselves.
"FREE!"
I erupted from the Gate in an explosion of black fire and rage. My dragon form was smaller than it should be—three hundred years of draining had taken its toll—but I was still massive. Still deadly. Still very, very angry.
The world had changed. I could see that immediately. Buildings that hadn't existed before. People dressed differently. Magic used in ways that made my scales crawl because I could feel it—stolen dragon essence woven into every spell, every ward, every pathetic human trick.
They'd built an entire civilization on my family's bones.
They'll burn, I thought savagely. Every last one of them will—
Then I saw her.
The girl who freed me.
She was still chained to the broken Gate, bleeding from a deep wound in her arm. Young—barely more than a child by dragon standards. Silver-blonde hair. Violet eyes that were too old for her face, like she'd seen horrors that aged her soul. And on her arm, glowing like a brand: the Dragon-Speaker mark.
The same mark I'd seen on the woman who died trying to save me three centuries ago.
"You," I said, my voice crashing into her mind like thunder. "Your blood. You freed me."
She looked up at me—this tiny, bleeding, broken girl—and she laughed. Not from joy. From despair so deep it had wrapped back around to something almost like humor.
"Then kill me," she said, her voice hoarse. "You'd be doing me a favor."
I paused. That wasn't the response I expected. Humans who freed me usually begged for rewards or tried to control me with binding spells. They didn't ask for death.
I reached out through the connection her blood had created—the soul-bond that formed when Dragon-Speaker blood touched a dragon's prison—and I saw her memories.
The betrayal at the party. The false accusations. The beatings. Three days of torture. Her own father condemning her. Her stepsister's cruelty. The man she loved revealing it was all a lie.
And underneath it all: rage. Beautiful, burning rage that matched my own.
This girl wasn't asking for death because she wanted to die. She was asking because she thought death was the only escape left.
I knew that feeling intimately.
Interesting, I thought. Then, in her mind: "Death would be mercy. And I haven't felt merciful in three centuries."
I shifted to human form—easier to communicate, and it took less energy. When I materialized in front of her, I saw her eyes widen. Good. Let her be afraid.
I grabbed her chin roughly, forcing her to meet my eyes. "Do you understand what you've done, little human? You've freed the World-Breaker. The monster your ancestors locked away. I should thank you by tearing your throat out."
"Then do it," she whispered. But her eyes—those strange violet eyes—didn't look away. Didn't beg. Just waited.
Brave or broken? I couldn't tell which.
I was about to respond when I felt it: the soul-bond completing. Her blood hadn't just broken my seal. It had bound us together.
I looked down at my chest and saw the mark forming—silver and burning, a mirror of the one on her arm.
No. No, this wasn't possible. Soul-bonds were supposed to be chosen, not accidental. They were—
"What did you do to me?" she gasped, staring at her own chest where the matching mark blazed to life.
"I did nothing," I snarled. "This is what you did. Your Dragon-Speaker blood didn't just free me—it bonded us. Your life is tied to mine now. If you die, I return to that cage. If I die, you follow me into death."
The horror on her face was almost satisfying. Almost.
"We're stuck together," I continued coldly. "Until one of us ends it. Congratulations, little Speaker. You've just become the most valuable and hated creature in this empire."
I could see her processing it—the implications, the danger, the absolute impossibility of what she'd accidentally done.
Then she asked something that made me pause: "Can you break the curse on my brother?"
What?
"Before everything went wrong, my little brother got cursed. He was dying. That's why I went looking for the dragon shrine in the first place—I thought ancient magic could save him." Her voice cracked. "Can you help him? Please?"
I stared at her. This girl had just been betrayed by everyone, condemned to death, accidentally bonded herself to a furious dragon, and her first question was about saving someone else?
Humans didn't do that. Humans were selfish. Cruel. They took and took and never gave unless they could benefit.
But this one...
I reached out with my senses, following the blood connection. I could feel the curse—weak, recent, designed to track Dragon-Speaker bloodlines and slowly kill them. Not actually meant to kill the child, but to use him as bait.
"Your brother was bait," I told her flatly. "That curse was a tracking spell. Whoever cast it wanted to draw Dragon-Speakers out of hiding."
Her face went white. "No. They used Finn to trap me?"
"Yes." I could have been gentler. Should have been. But three hundred years of torture had burned away my kindness. "They knew you'd do anything to save him. Including something desperate enough to wake me."
I watched her break then—not physically, but something inside her cracked. The last piece of innocence, maybe. The last bit of trust in the world.
Good. She'd need to be broken before she could be remade into something stronger.
"I'll break the curse," I said abruptly. "Consider it payment for freeing me."
"Why?" She looked up, confused. "Why would you help?"
"Because you're bonded to me now. Which means what affects you affects me. If your brother dies and you grieve, I feel it through the bond. I don't want your pathetic human emotions cluttering my head."
It was a lie. Sort of.
Truth was, she reminded me of someone. Someone brave and foolish who'd tried to save dragons three hundred years ago. Someone I'd failed to protect.
Before I could second-guess myself, High Mage Vorian appeared with a flash of light, already chanting attack spells.
"Return to your prison, beast!" he shouted.
I smiled. Finally. Someone I could hurt without hesitation.
But before I could move, the girl—Elara, I'd heard them call her—did something unexpected.
She stepped between me and the mage.
"Don't," she said. To me, not him. "Please. Let me do this my way."
"Your way?" I laughed. "Little Speaker, your way got you chained to my prison. Perhaps it's time to try my way."
"Which is what? Kill everyone and then what? You're still alone. Still the last dragon. Still trapped by what they made you." Her eyes were fierce now, not broken anymore. "Help me expose them instead. Make the truth hurt worse than death."
I stared at this impossible girl who'd gone from begging for death to negotiating with a dragon in the space of five minutes.
And I realized something that made my ancient heart twist uncomfortably:
She was going to be either the most interesting thing that had happened to me in three hundred years, or the most annoying.
Possibly both.
"Fine," I heard myself say. "Three days. You get three days to try your way. But if it fails, we do things my way. And my way involves significantly more fire."
She smiled—small but real. "Deal."
As Vorian and the others scrambled to escape, I felt something strange through our new bond. Not her fear or her pain.
Her determination. Her rage. Her absolute refusal to stay down.
Oh, I thought. This changes everything.
Because I'd expected to be free and alone, planning my revenge in isolation.
Instead, I was bound to a nineteen-year-old girl with trust issues, family trauma, and apparently a suicidal tendency to stand between dragons and danger.
Either this bond would destroy us both, or we'd destroy the kingdom together.
I was oddly curious to see which.