Above the battlefield, three figures Dragon, Flame, and Judicator bore down on the Voidflame Titan like arrows. Below them, on the field, Kero cursed, half-sane and half-hate, and the world around Tildaroot held as if waiting to see which will would break the other first.

Khael's jaw tightened. The teal in his eyes deepened, and something like an animal thrill threaded through his indrawn breath. He held the pressure until every tendon in Kero's neck quivered — then, with the precise cruelty of a surgeon, he eased it.

Kero gasped as if pulled back to shore. He coughed, one hand scrabbling for his sword, the other pressed to his throat where Khael's influence had been. He spat dark saliva and managed a wet, dangerous smile.

"You, " he rasped. "You're not merely human."

"No," Khael said quietly, almost to himself. "I'm what I must be."

Kero's eyes glittered with something like reverence and hate at once. He straightened, steadied, and the wind around him snapped into a blade again. But the pause had cost him muscle memory stuttered, rhythm broken. The next time he moved, Juno's fist met his ribs; Ceyla's lightning branded the air where his shoulder had been. Lira's healing hands flared to keep their lines from collapsing.

Kaen, flame coiling like a living thing, threw a glance at Khael and barked, "On me! Now!"

Rael answered with a shout that was half prayer, half war-cry; his Lumen Blade ignited anew, the Verdant Mirror at his back flaring as Seraphis fed light into Kenji's battered wind arcs and the group's converging path.

Bakuza peeled his gaze from Kero to the trio closing on him. The grin returned, wider and wilder, a creature hungrier for the hunt than the kill. "Such a strong," he breathed. "Conviction"

They all moved a mountain of wills converging. Khael released the last thread of pressure from Kero and pivoted, wings folding like shutters as he launched into the sky to join the fray. The ground roared under their feet; the air tasted of ash and metal.

Lira gathered Ceyla and Juno between her lights, shepherding them back with hands that left a luminescent trail. "Rest," she said, gentler than any command. "Breathe."

Ceyla huffed, but she didn't argue. Juno's sighed breath was raw and relieved; he watched Khael lift and his eyes flashed with something like hope.

Above the battlefield, three figures, Dragon, Flame, and Judicator bore down on the Voidflame Titan like arrows. Below them, on the field, Kero cursed, half-sane and half-hate, and the world around Tildaroot held as if waiting to see which will would break the other first.

As Kero staggered backward again, gasping, his cracked mask trembling as he forced air back into his lungs. His eyes sharp, wind-carved and desperate locked on the dragon-clad figure standing amid the storm.

(This monster… the Dragon Knight…) he thought, each word pulsing like a wound inside his skull.

The air around Khael burned blue and gray, his Draconic Dominion pulsing with that measured, storming calm, the calm before annihilation.

And as Kero's trembling fingers tightened around his blade, Khael's mind slipped not away, but back.

Two years ago.

Under the shadow of the ancient pillars of Tir'Valen, the training grounds of the Dragon Knights. The air there was always thick like it remembered too many roars.

Master Isen stood across from him, old robes fluttering against the mountain wind. His aura, faint and precise, pressed the air flat around them.

Khael (younger): "Master… can I really use that power?"

His voice was hesitant, the kind that came from both fear and longing, a boy still uncertain whether he was ready to become the thing he was born to be.

Isen closed his eyes for a moment, the faintest smile ghosting across his scarred face. His voice rumbled like a distant dragon's breath.

Isen: "Hmm… there is no drawback anymore. But it's hard to control."

He looked at Khael, his gaze heavy and unwavering. "Khael… you are a Dragon Knight. Your power is not a mediocrity, it is a dragon. It grows, it feeds, it's limitless."

Khael had clenched his fists back then, his aura flickering faintly small arcs of blue light licking at his fingertips.

Khael: "But what if I lose control? That last time, I couldn't even move without feeling my bones burn."

Isen's laughter rolled out, warm yet weighty. He turned, eyes glinting like tempered steel.

Isen: "Losing control is part of learning how to command a dragon's heart. You think a dragon ever learns restraint before it learns fury?"

He paused, stepping closer. "Your form….this 'Draconic Dominion' you call it… is still incomplete. But…"

He placed a hand on Khael's shoulder.

Isen: "I believe if you master that form… if you awaken it through will, not rage… your power will be comparable to my Eclipse Vanguard."

Khael had stared, wide-eyed.

Khael: "Comparable… to your vanguard?"

Isen nodded once, then looked toward the endless sky.

Isen: "But remember this, Khael. Strength means nothing if your heart burns before your flame. Control the storm, or it will consume everything you care about."

The memory ended with the sound of Isen's footsteps fading into the mountain mist.

Now, in the ruins of Tildaroot, that same wind returned, the same pulse in Khael's chest that once trembled beneath Isen's gaze.

But this time… it no longer trembled.

He whispered under his breath, eyes narrowing at Kero.

"Master Isen… I think I finally understand."

The blue veins across his arms surged brighter, the markings moving, alive, like draconic sigils responding to a long-awaited command.

Each pulse shook the battlefield.

Each heartbeat whispered a promise.

The Dragon Knight had remembered who he was.

The ground shuddered.

Molten cracks split beneath Khael's feet as the crimson and azure auras around him intertwined, dragonfire and stormwind and light merging into something deeper, something ancient.

Khael raised his head, his calm eyes glinting with restrained fury. His voice came low, but it carried like thunder through the ruins:

"I call this… second form—"

The veins along his body ignited, surging into spiraling runes of molten blue and dark silver, coiling like living dragons beneath his skin. His shadow lengthened, stretching into a vast silhouette with wings and horns—the shadow of a true dragon.

"—Dragonite."

A pulse followed.

The entire battlefield trembled.

Wind tore apart the clouds above. The air itself screamed as Khael's Shinrei overflowed, forming scales of pure energy over his body, sharp and glimmering like tempered crystal. His eyes once calm now glowed with the ancient fury of his kind.

The world remembered the dragons that once ruled it.

Kero staggered back, his remaining mask fragment cracking under the sheer pressure. His voice was strangled with disbelief.

"This… this power—!"

Khael flexed his hand, the air distorting around it.

"You said you wanted to see which side breaks the world first, right?"

His gaze sharpened like a blade.

"Let's see how your void holds against a dragon's wrath."

To be continue