The first thing Renmei noticed was the cold.
The cave floor was stone, smooth and damp, biting into her palms when she pushed herself upright. Pale morning light spilled through the entrance in a single slanting beam, slicing the dim interior into blue-gray shadow and silver-white glow. Dust motes drifted lazily in the air, and the faint scent of ozone and char lingered—like the memory of lightning that had burned through the night.
She sat up slowly, wincing as her muscles screamed. Her memory was a blur — the cyan dragon, its scales gleaming like frozen lightning, the deafening rush of air as it carried her away from the village — and then nothing.
But before she could step outside the cave, her body froze. Her legs — her own legs — refused to move forward. She strained against the invisible grip, panic bubbling up as her knees trembled but didn't budge.
"What—what's happening?"
"You shouldn't go out there yet," said a voice — the same calm, placid tone from before, threading into her thoughts like a ripple in still water.
Her breath hitched. "You again?!" she blurted. "What did you—are you doing this? Let me go! I have to go— Baosheng— Ruoyu—!"
"If I didn't, you'd be walking straight into danger," the voice replied evenly. "Calm yourself, Renmei. Breathe."
"Calm myself?!" she snapped, trying again to move and failing miserably. "You're hijacking my legs!"
"Borrowing," the voice corrected, gentle but firm. "And only because you would do something foolish otherwise."
Renmei pressed a hand to her forehead. "Okay, okay. Great. The mysterious, disembodied voice in my head can paralyze me. That's… totally normal."
"You are safe," it said, its tone like cool water over heated stone. "No harm will come to you while I remain."
"While you remain?" she echoed. "Wait. Remain? You mean you're still inside me?"
There was a faint, amused hum. "Where else would I be?"
She groaned. "Unbelievable."
Minutes passed as she argued and the voice countered with patient restraint. Every time she approached the mouth of the cave, her legs would lock in place again until she gave up, muttering curses under her breath. Finally, she sat down on a flat rock near the wall, rubbing her temples.
"All right," she exhaled. "Fine. You win. Just—talk. Start from the beginning. What happened last night? The dragon—the cyan one—he picked me up. I swear he did. I remember the wind, the scales—then nothing."
There was a small pause before the voice answered. "Ah," it murmured, faintly amused. "You should turn around."
Renmei froze. "What?"
"Turn around," he repeated.
The words rippled through her spine, and something in her gut told her to listen. Slowly, she rose to her feet and turned.
A man stood several paces behind her.
For a second, Renmei did not breathe. The world reduced to that face: the small, pink bow of his mouth; the high cheekbones, lashes long as threads, and eyes the exact color of frozen cyan—eyes that held glints, like stray stars caught in ice. His hair fell in a long, managed sweep the color of sun-bleached wheat, luminous and strange in the cave's dim light. She felt absurdly foolish for the way her chest tightened and her mind, traitorous, went to the same idle place it had earlier — that his hair looked almost like a halo carved of pale gold.
His presence filled the space effortlessly — not loud or overbearing, but inevitable, the way a storm loomed before thunder. Even the faintest tilt of his head exuded an unthinking grace, as though he had been born knowing exactly how beautiful he was.
"Oh," the voice in her head groaned, and Renmei felt it like a ripple against her own thoughts. "You are taken with him. How delightful." he groused. "That will feed my brother's already severely inflated ego."
"Brother?" she echoed, then froze as the realization began to dawn. Slowly, she looked back at the man before her — the gleaming cyan eyes, the color of the dragon's scales — and whispered, "Wait. If he's your brother…"
Her gaze widened. "Then you're—you're a dragon too."
The man smiled faintly, as though her shock amused him. He straightened, the gesture filled with an effortless, aristocratic grace, and placed a hand over his chest in mock courtesy. "You stand before the Dignified Eternal Guardian and Unyielding Sentinel of the Cyan Inferno," he announced, voice rolling like distant thunder. "Elder of the Azure Kin, Protector of the Firmament, and brother to the Custodian of Cobalt Flames, who currently inhabits your fragile little body."
Renmei blinked at him, stunned. "…That's a mouthful."
"Show respect, mortal," he said sharply, lifting his chin. "You stand in the presence of—"
"Why the heck do you two have such long names? Do I really have to call you that? I already forgot everything he just said." Renmei muttered silently in her head. "Is that seriously your name? You?"
"Correct," the voice murmured. "I am the one inhabiting you. The Custodian of Cobalt Flames, as is my title. But if you must use names, you may call me Seth."
Renmei gaped, processing that. "And what about him?"
"That's Caius," Seth replied, almost lazily.
Caius's eyes flicked toward her, narrowing slightly. "You're very quiet, vessel," he said with a frown. "Are you conversing with my brother in that head of yours?"
Renmei hesitated. "I—uh—maybe?"
"I cannot hear him," Caius said, in a tone of deeply offended dignity. "Therefore, when you go silent, I am being excluded." His gaze flicked between her and the air around her head in agitation. "Cease secret discussions at once. It is rude."
Renmei stared blankly.
Seth, in her head, sounded like he was smiling.
"He's sulking," he murmured dryly in her mind.
"You think?" Renmei shot back silently before she could stop herself.
Caius bristled at that as if stung. "Hmph. I cannot speak into minds. I have no appetite for such baubles of intimacy. If you two keep secrets in silence, then include me with your declarations."
Renmei swallowed hard, trying to process the layered niceties of dragons bickering in a cave while her legs remained stubbornly stilled. "Seth, you're in my head, tell me what do do with this brother of yours!" she blurted, breathless.
He hummed. "Yes, I am in your head," came the reply—not mocking, simply factual. "It is an advantage. It is also quite revealing. You think that certainly too much of my brother's cheekbones. A shameful number of times you lingered on them in your head just now. You could compliment him on his looks, that would be sure to ease the tension here."
Heat thundered up her cheeks at that. "Absolutely not!" she protested aloud, meaning it in the most honest way she could muster.
Caius's huff was audible and disdainful. He stepped closer—a measured motion that made the cave feel suddenly too small—and fixed Renmei with a gaze that pierced polite pretense. Up close, his cyan eyes were otherworldly: bright enough to seem constructed of cut glass, patient and unreadable. He lowered his voice so that even the cave seemed to lean in. "You will be a hindrance if you continue to flinch and flutter like a startled bird. We have matters to attend to, and you will not help if you faint at every polite insult."
She dared to glance at Caius again. Even when annoyed, he carried himself with regal bearing, every movement deliberate, precise. The air around him seemed charged — elegant, yes, but dangerous in its restraint.
"Wow," she muttered under her breath. "You two couldn't be more different."
"I am simply less hot-headed at the moment," Seth replied conversationally, "because your soul placates mine. A fortunate balance, wouldn't you say?"
Renmei's brain was a churn of questions. "You're a dragon. He's a dragon. They can both speak to me. Caius is in human form. Seth is in my head. What the damn—"
She opened her mouth, then caught herself, clearing her throat.
"So, ah," she stammered. "You're both dragons. Inside me is Seth, the Custodian of Cobalt Flames, and you—are Caius… Is that right?"
Caius's mouth curved with a humorless, incredulous superiority. "You deduce the obvious with the grace of a crying fox," he said. His tone was sharper now, part irritation, part the careful custody of someone waking to an insult.
"Well," Renmei started, putting on a smile to ease the air. "I'm Renmei!"
"Mmmm, I didn't ask, vessel." Caius hummed, not even bothering to hide his lack of interest.
Seth's presence hummed in her chest, steadier now, bolder. "He complains," the voice said, mildly amused. "He is always theatrical when roused. Do not mind him. He is fastidious where I am reckless."
"You still speak silently with him?" Caius asked, each word precise. He could not bridge the mind with the Custodian's voice, but he could perceive the residue: Renmei's tiny shifts, her eyes moving as if following an invisible interlocutor. He sounded affronted more than angry; it was a familial irritation, as if an intimate jest had been pulled from under him.
Renmei's heart stumbled. "I—he's in my head," she blurted, helpless. "He told me his name is Seth. He—he stopped me from leaving. He said to—" Her words trailed off under Caius's stare. The man's cyan eyes were unblinking.
Caius snapped a small, precise laugh. "Of course he is in your head. Of course." He sighed, his gaze narrowed to slits of disdain and concern. He took a few steps closer, the cave's air seeming to shiver in his wake. Up close, the fine detail of his face sat like a carved mask: small freckles against smooth skin, a faint scar at the temple, eyes that burned bright but with the coolness of frozen glass. "You speak of his name with affection," Caius said abruptly, as if noting a flaw in his brother's taste. "Do not grow sentimental. You are mostly safe so long as you keep your wits and do not invite too much adoration. If anyone pursues, I will not be gentle."
Seth's voice hummed with something close to mirth. "He apologizes in dragon-speak. Accept it as you would a cup of bitter tea."
Caius's expression softened only a fraction, though on him it looked more like stone shifting beneath centuries of weathering—barely perceptible, but unmistakable. He folded his arms, fine sleeves whispering like silk against one another, and regarded her with the measured scrutiny of one accustomed to being obeyed.
"You need not look so frightened," he said, although his tone did very little to ease anything. "Your role in all of this is painfully simple."
Renmei swallowed. "…My role?"
"Yes." Caius paced a slow, deliberate circle around her, as though assessing an inferior soldier. "You are a vessel. A temporary one, ideally, but a necessary one nonetheless." His words were sharp, precise, and entirely without warmth. "Your only duty, from this moment onward, is to ensure your continued existence. Keep yourself alive, and by extension, you keep him alive."
She frowned, looking down at her hands. They still tingled faintly — faint blue threads of light pulsing under her skin like veins of fire. "That's… not much of a plan."
"It's not meant to be," Caius replied curtly. "You are human. Fragile. Predictably rash. You were not built to hold what lies within you."
"I didn't ask for it!" Renmei snapped, her voice bouncing off the cave walls.
"Nor did he," Caius countered, tone unwavering. "And yet, here we are."
There was a long silence. The only sound was the soft drip of water somewhere deeper within the cave.
Then, with the faintest sigh, Caius turned back toward the entrance, eyes narrowing toward the far-off horizon. "Listen carefully, girl. The being that resides within you — my brother, the Custodian of Cobalt Flames — cannot remain bound to a mortal for long. Your mana core, pitiful though it may be, is not forged to contain the essence of a dragon."
The word hung, and with it a pressure: choices to be made, paths to be considered. Renmei's mind skittered ahead to the village, to Ruoyu's wise, rumor-silvered face, to Baosheng's steady hands. To the life she had started to claim as an apprentice. She had, absurdly, a hundred tiny domestic dreams — drying herbs in sunlight, stitching pouches, setting poultices on trembling knees — and every one of them felt fragile now.
Renmei's breath hitched. "What… what do you mean?"
Caius looked over his shoulder, gaze cool and unwavering. "I mean that the longer he remains within you, the faster your mana will burn. And when it burns out…"
He lifted a hand, fingers curling into a fist. A faint blue light shimmered between his knuckles, flickering like dying embers.
"…you will both be extinguished."
Renmei stared at him, speechless. "E–extinguished?"
"Gone," Caius said simply. "Body, soul, flame. It is not a matter of if, but when."
Inside her mind, Seth stirred, his voice as calm as ever. "He's not wrong," he murmured. "The vessel's core was never meant to hold a dragon's spirit. It burns like oil on open fire. You were already frightened enough, Seth replied, faintly apologetic. Besides, I didn't expect my brother to start spouting doomsday prophecies this early in the morning."
Caius' eyes flicked toward her sharply. "You are speaking to him now, aren't you?"
She flinched, caught. "Uh—"
His expression hardened. "Tell him," Caius said, his voice lowering into something that rumbled faintly, the echo of his true draconic timbre bleeding through the human shape. "Tell my brother that if he values what little remains of his flame, he will bring you to the Ancestral Pyre of Dragons."
"The Pyre lies far west," Caius started all the sudden, his tone reverent but still tinged with his usual arrogance. "It is the resting place of our kind — where the first fire was kindled, where every dragon's flame is born and reborn. Only there can your fragile form withstand the burden you now carry."
Her heart thudded. "You want me to go west? That's leagues away! I—I can't just abandon the village, or Ruoyu, or—"
Caius cut her off with a flick of his hand. "Your mortal attachments are irrelevant. Should you remain here, you will perish. My brother will perish. And the flames that have chosen you will turn to ash."
"That's easy for you to say!" Renmei shot back, anger trembling beneath her voice. "You're not the one stuck sharing your body with a—" She stopped herself, cheeks heating. "—with a dragon."
Seth's quiet laughter echoed in her mind. "You can say it. I won't be offended."
She glared at the air in front of her, which only made Caius raise an eyebrow. "Are you done?" he asked, tone dripping with condescension. "Then hear this and hear it well: you have little choice. You may come willingly, or you may die slowly. Either way, we are going to the Pyre."
The word we startled her — he said it as if it were an inevitability, as if she had already agreed.
Caius brushed invisible dust off his sleeve, clearly finished with the conversation. "Once we reach the Pyre, the bond between you and my brother can be stabilized. After that, you may do whatever your mortal heart desires. Chase your little human dreams. It matters not to me."
He started walking toward the cave entrance, his figure haloed by the sunlight, and added over his shoulder, "But for now, your life is mine to safeguard. You are a vessel of dragonfire, girl — and that makes you far too valuable to waste."
He inclined his head as if reciting an inevitable truth. "The Custodian of Cobalt Flames that you harbour is powerful—too powerful to dwell in a shell not meant for him. The mana will scald the host in time. If you refuse, your core will not merely dim; it will burn out. Your bones will be ash and your name forgotten. The Custodian will be sundered; his essence will drift and fail. That is no idle threat."
Silence followed the pronouncement, thick and full. Renmei felt each word press into her chest like a chill hand. Her mouth moved, tongue dry. "How long—how long before—?" she managed, a bare thread of a question.
Caius's gaze sharpened in reply, not with cruelty but with the austere impatience of a man who measures life in seasons. "Long enough for the foolish to take comfort and long enough for the wise to move. A handful of moons at most." He let the measure sit between them, simple and cruel. "You will not be given a slow fate."
Renmei stood there, fists clenched, pulse hammering in her ears.
Inside her, Seth sighed softly. "He means well, in his own… pompous way."
"'Means well'?" Renmei hissed silently. "He basically said I'm a glorified carrying case!"
"Better a carrying case than a coffin," Seth murmured. "And for what it's worth, I'll make sure we both make it west alive."
Renmei exhaled shakily, staring at the sunlight beyond the cave mouth where Caius waited, tall and untouchable.
"Great," she muttered. "Just what every girl dreams of — being stuck in a cave with two dragons, one in her head and one with an ego the size of a mountain."
Seth chuckled. "You'll find it's never dull traveling with us."
Something in his tone — warm, teasing, almost human — softened her frustration just a fraction. Still, as she looked toward the western horizon beyond the cave, Renmei couldn't shake the feeling that whatever awaited them there would change everything — for her, and for the dragons bound to her fate.
"So either I go with you," she murmured, voice barely steady, "or I burn from the inside out."
"That is the essence of it, yes," Caius replied matter-of-factly, as though discussing the weather. "You are free to live however you wish until we depart — eat, sleep, prattle about human things. But when I say it is time to move west, you will come." His tone softened by a fraction — not kind, but patient in a detached way. "In truth, I care little what you do, as long as you do not perish. Keep yourself alive, little vessel, and you may have whatever freedom your heart desires."
Renmei let out a shaky breath, frustration boiling beneath her fear. "You make it sound like I'm just—just cargo."
"In many ways," Caius said evenly, "you are."
"Allow me to clarify," Caius continued, tone smooth and confident. "By staying alive, you ensure the continued existence of my younger brother—The Custodian of Cobalt Flames—who currently resides within your mana heart. And by extension, you ensure my continued existence as well, for I will not suffer the loss of my last surviving kin."
"So—when do we leave?" Renmei asked, the question trembling between dread and relief.
"As soon as we can make the road without drawing eyes," Caius replied. "At first light if need be. We will move quickly. We will not linger in settlements where rumor walks faster than trust."
He speaks with the fervor of one accustomed to command, Seth thought, and there was admiration there that made Renmei's chest twist. But he will watch us both like a hawk. You will have time to close things at the orphanage, to see Ruoyu, to prepare what must be prepared—short minutes, but sufficient.
Renmei forced a laugh that tasted like stone. "Short minutes," she repeated. "I—this is—" Her voice broke. "Can I say goodbye?"
Caius's jaw twitched in what might have been a sardonic approximation of indulgence. "You may tell your companions you have business in the west. Tell them the magistrate offered an apprenticeship or a trade. Tell them what you will. But do not dawdle on sentiment. We leave before the moon soars whole."
Renmei nodded numbly, feeling the newness of the decision settling like a weight. Seth murmured around the edges of her panic, a warm hand in the dark. "I will be there. I will be with you. We will go together, he promised. My brother and I can ensure your safety."
Caius's voice cut the sweetness with a sharper thing. "And know this: if you betray your duty, you will not only doom yourself; You will doom my brother, and that is enough risk to make cowardice an option only for the truly cruel."
The cave hummed with their voices—one clanging hard and decisive, the other soft and intimate inside her skull. Renmei pressed her fingers to the hollow at her throat where the warmth sat like a living thing, and for the first time since the cobalt in her eyes had flared, the heat felt less like a secret and more like a compass.
"West," she said at last, tasting the direction as if it were a prophecy. "To the Pyre."