The teleportation didn't lead to the Dragon King's palace not yet. The "Lady of Thorns" was cunning; she wouldn't send her weapons into the jaws of a Dragon without sharpening them first.
The four "Daughters" Dessy, Kaelith, Vane, and Sora materialized in a forest that felt wrong. The trees were tall, white-barked, and silent. This was the Boundary Lands, the buffer zone between the human kingdoms and the Dragon King's forbidden territory.
"Look at the sky," Sora whispered, her twin daggers already in her hands.
The sky wasn't blue. It was a pale, shimmering gold, webbed with silver veins. "The Barrier of the Immortals," Vane growled, clutching her broken jaw. "They've locked this world in a cage to keep him in."
Dessy stepped forward, her boots crunching on fallen leaves. For the first time in ten years, she breathed human air. It tasted sweet too sweet. It tasted like the gardens of her childhood manor. Her chest burned. The First Seal was humming, vibrating in sympathy with the earth beneath her feet.
"We have a quota," Kaelith said, her voice sounding raspy. The violet stains from the shadow-poison she had taken in the pits were still visible under her eyes. She looked hungry. "One thousand souls each. Only then will the Lady open the gate to the Obsidian Spire."
The First Village
They found a village at the edge of the woods. It was a peaceful place called Aethelgard. To the humans living there, the "Eight Families" were still their protectors. They didn't know the Families had turned into cold-blooded tyrants. They didn't know the "Daughters of Ruin" were coming.
"They look so... weak," Vane remarked, watching a blacksmith at his forge from the treeline. "How can beings this fragile have the same blood as the Chosen?"
"They don't," Dessy said, her voice hard. "They have the blood of the protected. We have the blood of the sacrificed."
"Enough talk," Sora hissed. "I'll take the east. Vane, take the west. Dessy, Kaelith... try to keep up."
The slaughter was efficient. Sora moved through the shadows of the huts like a ghost, her daggers ending lives before a scream could form. Vane was a whirlwind of brute force, her mace shattering the very foundations of the homes.
Dessy stood in the center of the village square. A small boy, no older than she had been when her parents died, stared up at her. He wasn't afraid yet; he saw her silver hair and the faint glow of her brand and thought she was a Hero.
"Are you... a Solaris?" the boy whispered.
Dessy's heart stuttered. The name was a curse. "The Solaris are dead," she said.
She raised her hand. She didn't want to kill him, but the Ruin Brand on her forehead flared. The Lady of Thorns had placed a "Soul-Leash" on them if they didn't harvest, the brand would consume their own brains.
"I'm sorry," Dessy whispered.
But before her hand could strike, a shadow fell over the entire village. It wasn't a cloud. It was a wing.
The Dragon's Roar
The air suddenly grew hot unbearably hot. The golden sky of the Immortals cracked. A roar ripped through the atmosphere, a sound so ancient and powerful that every window in the village shattered.
HE IS AWAKE.
In the distance, the Obsidian Spire exploded with pillars of black fire. The "Havana" rebirth had begun, but it wasn't going smoothly. The Dragon King was fighting back against the transition.
"Look!" Kaelith pointed to the sky.
A massive creature of obsidian scales and silver fire soared above the clouds. It wasn't Malphas's true body he was still in the Spire but a Soul-Projection. The Dragon King was screaming at the Gods.
"The Immortals are attacking him!" Vane shouted over the wind.
High in the golden sky, flashes of white light spears of divine energy were raining down on the Spire. The Gods were trying to kill the Dragon King while he was between skins.
"The mission has changed!" Sora yelled, reappearing from the shadows. "The Lady just sent a telepathic command! Forget the souls! The barrier is weak! We move to the Spire NOW! If we don't get his heart before the Gods do, the Lady will flay us!"
The Path of the Cursed
As the four girls ran toward the Spire, Dessy couldn't stop looking at the Dragon in the sky.
Everyone called him a tyrant. Everyone called him a monster. But as she watched him struggle against the golden spears of the Immortals, she saw a reflection of herself. He was alone. He was hunted. He was being punished for being too powerful to control.
Why do the Gods fear him so much? she wondered.
"Dessy, hurry!" Kaelith called out. Kaelith was running with a strange, frantic speed, her violet energy flaring. She was looking at the Spire not with fear, but with a terrifying ambition.
Dessy tightened her grip on her sword. The human world was burning behind them, the Dragon was screaming above them, and the "sisters" she called family were ready to kill each other for a prize.
The 350-chapter journey had truly begun. They weren't just going to a palace; they were walking into a war between a Dragon who refused to die and Gods who refused to forgive.