The climb into the Whispering Peaks was a descent into a different kind of death. The air at this altitude was no longer something meant for human lungs; it was thin, frigid, and saturated with the "Wild Mana" of the rifts—a jagged, unfiltered energy that tore at Caelum's throat with every breath. Astra, the Storm-Eater Eagle, banked hard against a gale that threatened to pluck them from the sky. Her metallic feathers shrieked as the wind whistled through them, but she held her course, guided by the desperate, iron-cold intent of the boy on her back.
Caelum saw it then: a jagged fissure in the side of the tallest peak, glowing with a pale, ghostly cerulean light. This was the Frost Drake's Lair. In the novel, it was a place mentioned only in passing as a "Forbidden Zone," a tomb for any adventurer below A-Rank.
He slid from Astra's back as they touched down on the icy ledge, his boots crunching on frozen bones—remnants of creatures that had sought the same power he now craved. He didn't look back. He walked into the cavern, the temperature dropping so sharply that the moisture on his eyelashes turned to needles of ice.
At the heart of the cave, suspended in a pillar of eternal ice, was The Heart of the Frost Drake. It wasn't a biological organ, but a crystal of compressed mana left behind by a True Dragon's final breath. It pulsed with a rhythmic, sub-harmonic frequency that made Caelum's very teeth ache.
"C-Rank talent," Caelum whispered, his voice echoing in the crystalline tomb. "A 'shitty' heritage."
He reached out. His fingers, numb and blue, brushed the surface of the crystal.
The world exploded.
It wasn't a flash of light, but a flash of absolute, agonizing cold. The mana didn't flow into him; it invaded him. It felt like liquid nitrogen being pumped directly into his marrow. Caelum fell to his knees, his mouth locked in a silent scream.
In the original Caelum's body, the mana circuits—the "veins" that carried magical energy—were not weak. They were clogged with a spiritual calcification, a byproduct of a curse he had carried since birth. The Frost Drake's mana didn't care about the blockage. It acted like a high-pressure torrent hitting a dam.
CRACK.
The sound echoed inside his skull. The first blockage in his chest shattered.
Pain, hot and white, flared in his lungs. It felt as though a thousand red-hot needles were being pushed through his skin from the inside out. He could see his own veins glowing through his translucent skin—not the warm gold of the Dragon line, but a fierce, terrifying silver-blue.
"More..." he wheezed, his fingers tightening around the crystal.
The system of his body was being forcibly rewritten. The "C-Rank" limitations were being burned away. The calcified veins in his arms began to split and widen. He could feel the biological architecture of House Dragon—the dormant genes of the ancient drakes—reacting to the extreme cold. His heart, which had been beating with the frantic rhythm of a dying bird, suddenly slowed.
Thump. A shockwave of silver light rippled out from his chest, shattering the stalactites hanging from the ceiling.
Thump.
The pain reached a crescendo. He felt his mana circuits tearing, then stitching themselves back together with threads of pure frost. The "Wild Mana" of the cavern, once a poison, was now being vacuumed into his core. His perception expanded. He could hear the shifting of the tectonic plates beneath the mountain. He could feel the heartbeat of Astra waiting outside. He could feel the distant, pulsing rot of the Void Rifts.
Then came the final breakthrough. The central mana gate, located at the base of his brain, was the final bastion of the curse. It resisted. The Frost Drake's energy coiled like a serpent, then struck with the force of an avalanche.
Caelum's vision went white. For a moment, he wasn't a boy in a cave. He was a creature of scales and starlight, soaring over a world that was still whole. He saw the "World Will"—a vast, indifferent consciousness—and for a split second, it looked back at him with a flicker of confusion. He was an anomaly. A soul that shouldn't exist, wielding power he hadn't earned through the "natural" order.
The light faded.
Caelum slumped against the pillar of ice, his breathing heavy and ragged. The cavern was silent. The blue glow of the crystal had dimmed, its ancient reservoir nearly drained.
He looked at his hands. They were no longer shaking. The skin was pale, almost marble-like, and beneath the surface, his veins pulsed with a steady, crystalline light. He closed his eyes and reached inward.
The "shitty" C-Rank pool of mana was gone. In its place was a sea—small, but infinitely deep and cold. He didn't know what rank he was now; the traditional scales of Aetheria likely couldn't measure a mana circuit forged in Dragon's breath.
He stood up, and as he did, the ice on his robes shattered and fell away. He felt lighter, faster, and utterly devoid of the fear that had plagued him since waking up in this world.
He walked out of the cavern. Astra was waiting, her head bowed in a gesture of instinctive submission she had never shown the old Caelum. She sensed it. The predator had finally grown its teeth.
Caelum looked toward the horizon, where the sun was beginning to bleed over the edge of the world.
"Three months," he said, his voice now carrying an edge of resonance that could cut glass. "I'm coming for you, Aris. Not as a bully, but as your nightmare."
He mounted the eagle and took flight, leaving the Whispering Peaks behind. He wasn't the fifth heir anymore. He was the only Dragon that mattered.