"Again"

"Argh!!!"

"Again!"

"Please stop!!! Argh!!!!"

"AGAIN!!!!"

Long before Kael Dragonyx stood as a wielder of chaos and draconic might, he was simply a boy born into the iron-cold halls of the Dragonyx family estate. Those halls were not a home, but a fortress of cruelty, their very stones echoing with the voices of ancestors who had ruled through fear, conquest, and absolute dominion.

The Dragonyx family was no ordinary lineage. They were steeped in draconic blood, tracing their ancestry back to ancient wyrms who had demanded tribute from nations. To be a Dragonyx was to bear the belief that all beneath the sky existed only to kneel before their fire.

Kael's father, Lord Valyne Dragonyx, embodied that legacy with terrifying perfection. A towering man with scales etched into his skin like dark armor, he was both revered and feared by the world. Within the family, however, he was nothing short of a tyrant. His voice was law, and law meant cruelty.

Kael was no more than five when he first learned the meaning of dominion. And tragically, he learned in the most cruelest way possible.

He remembered it vividly: standing in the training courtyard, a wooden sword trembling in his small hands, the cold eyes of his father drilling into him like a predator studying prey. At his side stood his elder brother, Darius Dragonyx, already a prodigy, already the perfect heir. Darius was taller, sharper, a mirror of their father's ruthless ambitions.

"Power is not given," Lord Varian had said, his voice a blade. "It is taken. Seized. Wrenched from the weak. Kael, strike your brother. Show me that you deserve to breathe the air of Dragonyx."

Kael had hesitated. Darius, however, had not. The elder brother's strike was swift and merciless, the wooden blade snapping against Kael's ribs, driving him to the ground. Kael gasped, the pain suffocating, but what crushed him more was his father's booming laughter.

"Pathetic," Varian spat, the word like venom. "A Dragonyx who cannot dominate is no Dragonyx at all."

Kael looked up, his vision blurred with tears, only to see Darius standing tall, pride swelling in his chest as his father laid a hand on his shoulder. That day, Kael was branded—not with fire or steel, but with the infectious obsession that would fester in his heart forever.

He was not nurtured. He was not comforted. Instead, he was fed a steady poison: that weakness was sin, that mercy was death, and that only dominion over others could bring survival.

Nights were no gentler. Kael would curl against the cold stone walls of his chamber, listening to the distant roars of his father's training and the sharp laughter of Darius as he bested every opponent. The shadows whispered to Kael, pressing into his mind the words his father had carved into him: "To rule, or to be ruled."

As the years passed, the lessons only grew crueler. At ten, he was made to fight servants' children, beaten savagely if he dared hold back. At twelve, his father forced him into the family's dragon crypts, where the echoes of long-dead wyrms weighed on his spirit. At fourteen, Darius nearly killed him in a spar while their father watched, unmoved, declaring that "the strong thrive while the weak are forgotten."

Every scar, every humiliation, every drop of blood became a scripture etched into Kael's soul.

And though he despised his father and brother, Kael began to crave their approval. Deep down, a fire burned—not of love, but of obsession. If power was the only language the Dragonyx understood, then he would master it. He would become it.

He would dominate, not for survival, but because the poison in his veins left him no other path.

And thus, the seed was planted. A seed of madness, watered by cruelty, and nurtured by his family's endless shadow.

Kael Dragonyx, the boy who once trembled, began to dream of a world where no one could ever force him to kneel.

------

Back to the present.....

The battlefield was fractured silence and broken echoes, the air itself groaning under the weight of the beings that now stood within it.

Aegon—the crimson dragon wearing Christopher's body as his vessel—shifted his gaze from Alen's monstrous form, his burning irises like twin furnaces that threatened to reduce reality itself to cinders. The doom-born incarnation that Alen had become snarled back, shadows twisting, absorbing the remnants of the labyrinth's slaughtered beasts into himself until the ground quivered beneath his sheer density of corruption.

But before those titans could collide, before doom could meet dragon, a new force ripped through the silence.

Kael.

"You think you have bested me!? Well, THINK AGAIN!!!"

From the distance where Aegon had earlier swatted him away like a ragdoll, Kael Dragonyx rose again. His form trembled—not from weakness, but from the roaring chaos inside him. His five-fingered Chaos dragon transformation shone violently, scales glistening in iridescent storms of mana, wings spread like a devouring abyss. Every vein in his body pulsed with both his latent magic and the cursed power he had stolen from Endless. His presence shook the ground as if the world itself despised what he was becoming.

"Fallen god…" Kael muttered, his voice low but carried by fury, loud enough for all around to hear. His amber-crimson eyes burned with a feverish madness. "I will not… cannot… bow to you."

His words were more to himself than to Aegon, a desperate chant, a defiance against the primal, instinctive terror flooding his chest. That fear clawed at him, whispering truths he could not accept: that the being before him was beyond anything he could conquer, beyond any dominion he could enforce.

But Kael Dragonyx had been raised in chains of tyranny, molded in fire and cruelty. To submit was to die. To bow on someone else of the similar race was to spit on every scar his father and brother had carved into him. His very blood screamed for one thing only: to dominate or be dominated.

And so, his madness bloomed.

With a deafening roar that tore through the clouds, Kael surged forward. Every muscle in his body was ignited, every ounce of power he possessed combusting into sheer propulsion. He cut through the air like a meteor, trails of chaotic magic tearing rifts in the atmosphere. The ground cracked violently beneath the pressure of his ascent, stone and steel shrieking in protest.

Spectators—Celestials, mortals, even Alen himself—watched as the young Dragonyx became a living tempest, an avalanche of wrath charging at the crimson dragon who had usurped Christopher's flesh.

Yet Aegon… did not move.

The crimson dragon stood utterly still, one hand lowered, his body relaxed, his eyes indifferent—like a god regarding the tantrum of a child.

Kael closed the distance in a blink, his clawed arm raised, chaos and Endless's black energy fused into a strike that could rend mountains. His aura screamed with the violence of dominion, a madness that sought to crush divinity itself.

But just as Kael's strike was about to descend—

Aegon's right hand lifted. Slowly. Casually.

The crimson palm opened and pressed forward.

It met Kael mid-charge.

The instant the palm touched him, the storm died.

"Refraction"

There was no explosion, no shattering clash of titans—only silence, and then a concussive force so overwhelming it bent the very fabric of the battlefield. Kael's attack collapsed against that palm like fragile glass, all of his roaring might reduced to nothing.

A soundless shockwave detonated.

Kael was launched back.

His body folded violently under the weightless force, wings snapping backward as he was hurled through the air. Rock and stone splintered into powder where his body tore across the ground. He slammed into the shattered walls of the labyrinth with such violence that the entire section of the battlefield crumbled. Dust and blood erupted from his impact, a crimson trail marking his helpless flight.

BANG!!!

The world went still again.

Aegon did not pursue. He did not boast. He simply lowered his hand back to his side, eyes fixed on Kael's crumpled form in the distance. His silence carried its own cruelty—it was the silence of something that did not need to prove superiority.

From the sidelines, even the Celestials exchanged unsettled glances. To them, Kael had been the image of rising dominion, a being shaped by fury and chaos. Yet in front of this crimson dragon, he was a child batting at a mountain.

Kael dragged himself from the rubble, his body wracked in pain but his eyes blazing brighter than before. His breathing was ragged, blood dripping down his lips, but his voice did not waver.

"You think… you can stop me with that?" he spat, coughing, his madness only sharpening. "No god—fallen or eternal—will make me kneel!"

His body shook, his aura writhed, and despite the agony, he stood again. That instinctive fear clawed at his chest, whispering surrender. But his madness drowned it. His obsession twisted it into fuel.

To bow was death. To yield was to betray his scars.

And so, Kael Dragonyx rose again.

Aegon simply watched, unblinking. And right after, he muttered.

"Now this is becoming bothersome"