The day after the moderate void tide, the Dragon's Rest valley smelled of charred void ichor and sun-warmed basalt. Vorath lay stretched across his favorite sunning boulder, one wing held at a careful angle, picking at the dried black crust along a deep gash left by a void stalker's claw. The wound would heal in a few days—dragon flesh knit fast—but it itched, and he was in a suitably grumpy mood.
Laia materialized at the mouth of the valley without fanfare, a flat slab of polished slate tucked under one arm. She climbed the loose scree up to his boulder and set the stone down with a soft clink. Fine, twisting runes coiled across its surface, glowing faint gold in the sunlight.
"Finished reworking the breath technique," she said, brushing stone dust from her tunic. "Adjusted the flow to match your lung structure and core reserves. Should ignite on your first try, if you stop lazing around long enough to practice."
Vorath cracked one amber eye open, glanced at the slate, and drooped his great horned head with a rumble of disappointment.
"Oh. That's all?" He huffed a warm breath that stirred the dust at his feet. "Dull."
He shifted his weight, claws scraping shallow grooves into the rock. "Every creature I face these days goes down with one swipe—save for the lords of other realms, and they never dare show their faces here. Void beasts are little more than target practice. This magic trick of yours sounds… unnecessary."
"Take it or leave it," Laia snapped, crossing her arms. She perched on the edge of the boulder, still half-riding the quiet triumph of securing the sacrifice agreement, and already he was back to being unimpressed. "And stop fixating on killing gods. The whole difference between a deity and a creature like you is divine essence. So long as that power wraps around our souls, nothing you can do will so much as scratch us.
"Once you step past the seventh rank, though? You start brushing up against the world's rule-forces. Wield that, and you could injure a weak god. Kill godservants, easy. But by the time any of you reach that height, I'll be far stronger than I am now. You still won't lay a claw on me."
Vorath gave a low, dismissive hum, his tail sweeping lazily back and forth across the valley floor, kicking up plumes of fine ash.
"So we grind and bleed and grow strong, and you sit up in the sky and reap the rewards," he muttered. "Sounds like exploitation to me. And for what it's worth—you're awfully casual about spilling all the divine secrets. Most gods would never let their subjects know half this stuff."
"It's not exploitation—it's symbiosis!" Laia's voice rose, sharp and flustered. "Symbiosis! Do you even know what that means?"
She bit her tongue a heartbeat later, jaw tight with frustration.
If she wanted to exploit them, she could. If she could force a mass sacrifice across every clan, she would walk away with tens of thousands of divinity crystals in one go. The only catch was that forced sacrifice required a baseline of genuine faith to work—and she had none to spare.
She glowered at the valley below, thoughts turning sour.
Seventeen thousand souls in her kingdom, give or take. If every last one of them felt even one percent of true devotion, it would add up. She would pull in a thousand crystals a day, easy. She wouldn't be counting every coin to pay for rent and academy supplies.
And those purification oracle cards? Ten crystals apiece to erase a thousand creatures. Highway robbery. She should have scraped together every last scrap of power she had, back at the start, and bought a single proper life-seed—the kind that breeds born believers. Then she wouldn't be stuck with a kingdom full of ungrateful, stubborn, argumentative heathens.
Vorath watched her stew, her brows drawn tight and her mouth twisted into a scowl, and slowly turned his head away, his gaze drifting out over the twin realms spread below the mountain pass.
He did not know what other gods were like. He only knew they could not be like her.
From the moment he had drawn his first breath, the word god had been carved into the deepest part of his soul—an imprint of the kingdom's own rules, a quiet, constant truth: this world was shaped by a creator, and he was its subject.
He had resented it, at first. Resented the invisible chain tied around his existence. He had fought to survive from the day he was born, scrabbling for food in the dark, fending off void beasts with tooth and claw. Why should he bow to some stranger in the sky just because they had made the land? If the world would die when the god died—so be it. This harsh, hungry, miserable place would be better off broken.
Then she had started coming down.
Not with thunder and wrath. Not with demands for worship. With farming techniques. With better forge designs. With sun-blessed saplings and wound salves and a hundred small, stubborn ways to make their lives less brutal. She never stood on high and commanded. She knelt in the dirt with them, scribbling diagrams in the soil, arguing with the dwarves about alloy ratios, arguing with him about how many hours a day he was allowed to sleep.
He knew why she did it. She was saving her own skin as much as theirs. That did not change the fact that she had done it. That she had dragged this barren, cursed twin-kingdom from the edge of collapse and turned it into something that could grow.
All the clans knew it. They did not revere her. They did not pray to her. But they had accepted her. She was sharp-tongued, petty, endlessly stubborn, and far too willing to throw a tantrum to get her way—and she was theirs.
Nothing like the cold, distant, all-powerful creator the soul-imprint had promised. Just a hardworking, short-tempered young thing, trying her best.
He huffed a quiet, rumbling laugh to himself, and said nothing.
When he glanced back, Laia had hopped down from her perch and knelt beside the flat slate slab. A faint golden glow wrapped around her fingertips as she etched finer, denser patterns into the stone, and a thin sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead. She frowned in deep concentration, her tongue peeking just slightly between her teeth.
Vorath craned his neck to peer at the markings.
"What are you doing now?" he said. "You going to make us carve all this into the rock? Teach us rune-writing?"
"Get your big head out of my light," Laia said without looking up. "This is Blood-Heritage Witchcraft. I dug it out of old records from another deity's realm. Took me weeks to rework it for dragon physiology."
She leaned back on her heels, brushing stone dust from her sleeves.
"The ancient witch clans used it to strengthen themselves. Push it far enough, and you can multiply your physical strength several times over. The entry barrier is low, but it burns through vitality and blood energy like wildfire. Perfect for dragons."
Vorath's brow ridge furrowed. He tapped a claw against the edge of the slate, dubious.
"Witchcraft?" he said. "We can barely read the common script. How in the void are we supposed to master witchcraft?"
Laia sighed, long and suffering, and stood up to face him.
"For the last time—the core of blood-heritage witchcraft isn't writing. It's blood. The old witch clans used the blood of the beasts they killed to fuel their rituals. They built altars from their prey, marked their bodies with sacred patterns, and let the power sink in. It made them stronger, faster, tougher. Sometimes they'd even take on traits from the creature they'd harvested.
"Gods with lich clans buy whole populations of lesser subjects just for blood stock. I reworked the whole thing into a dragon-specific art. Wove in what I could find of true dragon magic from the academy archives. It will work."
Vorath nodded slowly, a low rumble of approval building in his chest. Even his tail gave a small, pleased flick.
"Not bad," he said. "You really will steal every useful trick you can find, won't you? Fair enough. Say—can you get your hands on some proper blood materials for us to practice with? Void beast blood works, but it's thin stuff. Doesn't hold much power."
Laia let out a sharp, amused laugh.
"Proper? The most valuable blood material in all the divine realms is dragon blood. Whole dragon clans sell for a fortune on the open market." She grinned, sharp and teasing, and leaned forward slightly. "Why don't you volunteer? I'd have enough crystal to plant entire forests, dig out great lakes, pile your hoard high with gold. Your descendants would live like kings. Think of the legacy."
Vorath flinched so hard his wings rustled. He shook his great head so fast his horns cut through the air.
"No. Absolutely not. I've got far too many years left to waste. The whelps can fend for themselves. I'm not throwing my life away so a bunch of ungrateful brats can have an easy time of it. They couldn't handle that kind of wealth anyway."
Laia rolled her eyes, stepping back from the stone slab.
"Relax. I'd never sell you. That kind of rotten trade isn't worth the trouble."
Vorath chuckled, a deep, rolling sound that shook the pebbles at his feet. He'd known it. For all her sharp words, she had a soft streak a mile wide.
"Why not, though?" he asked, idly curious.
"Because blood-heritage witchcraft inherits one core trait from the donor." Laia looked up at him, her face perfectly, deadpan serious. "If some poor soul ended up with your wits? They'd demand a refund. I'd never hear the end of the complaints."
Vorath went still.
Then he blinked. Once.
"And let's be honest." She tapped a finger against her chin, pretending to think it over. "You're old. You're scaly. You haven't got an ounce of magical talent. I've been teaching you personally for ages, and not a single one of you can cast even the simplest spell. The demons over on the volcano have already figured out how to grow grain in volcanic ash, and you lot still just bite everything. Terrible quality. You'd never sell."
Vorath stared at her for a very long, very silent moment.
Finally, he let out a long-suffering huff of warm air that ruffled her hair.
Pretty little thing, he thought, resigned and amused all at once.
Pity about the mouth.
Laia pushed the finished slate toward him with her foot, ignoring his dramatics.
"Start memorizing the flow patterns after the sacrifice in seven days," she said. "And tell the other clans the ritual is still on. No backing out now."
As she turned to leave, her gaze drifted to the leather pouch at her belt. Tucked inside was the strange rune-carved chitin shard she had pulled from the behemoth's carcass the day before. The red markings still glowed faintly, warm against her palm.
Void creatures did not bear crafted runes.
She tucked the thought away, and vanished in a soft wisp of golden light.