NOVEL NEXT Chapter 179: Dragons
Flashes. Moments. Centuries of history compressed into seconds.
A black-scaled egg, warm in the nest of obsidian glass.
A dragonling clawing her way out beneath a sky split by lightning.
Her first flight… Leaping from the peak of a spire so high, clouds wrapped around its base like silk.
Battles against titanic beasts, their bones left bleaching under moons not seen on Earth.
Feasting in halls made of molten crystal and volcanic glass, surrounded by dragons whose wings blotted out the sun.
And then, Damien saw it.
The truth.
Earth wasn't where dragons lived.
It was where they played.
Where they hunted.
Where they tested their young.
Their true home lay elsewhere.
The Dragon World.
A pocket dimension, separate from Earth's mana field.
Vast. Pristine. Ancient.
Damien stood on a mountain ridge, or rather Blackie's memory of one. The air shimmered with raw mana so thick it tingled against his skin.
The mountains were colossal. Jagged peaks piercing the clouds like spears, some glowing with veins of living crystal, others perpetually crowned with frost.
Valleys stretched below, filled with colossal beasts, herbivores the size of castles, lumbering through golden plains. Forests of titanic trees, their trunks wider than city blocks. Rivers like silver snakes winding through the landscape, their waters humming with latent magic.
Swamps bubbled with ancient gases, hiding predators with too many eyes. Volcanoes slept beneath black lakes, the land ever-shifting, alive.
It was a paradise, but not for mortals.
It was a world built for apexes.
Every inch of it belonged to dragons.
No creature rivaled them. Not even close.
Here, they didn't rule.
They existed.
And everything else adapted around them or died.
And then came the memory Damien hadn't expected.
A vast hall carved into a mountain's heart, black stone etched with pulsating runes.
Black dragons curled along the edges, regal and silent.
At the center, a golden figure stepped forward, his mane flowing like fire, his eyes sharp with intelligence and pride.
A lion. A fully mana-awakened lion.
He bowed not in submission, but in formal respect.
"I am Askar, Sovereign of Flame, King of the Awakened Beasts of Earth."
"I request an audience with the Black Claw Matriarch."
The black dragons stirred, surprised.
A non-dragon requesting entry into their realm was rare. And yet… the lion stood tall. Fearless.
Damien's breath caught.
The Lion King.
The same lion Grand Marshal Li Qingshan wanted dead.
The same one leading a rebellion of awakened beasts across the continents.
He had been there. In the dragon realm. Speaking to Blackie's family.
"Sovereign of Flame." A voice thick with ridicule sounded from the deepest recess of the massive hall. "A mere kitten dares to call itself a Sovereign"
The dragons chuckled, deep, thunderous sounds that echoed like collapsing mountains.
Black-scaled heads shifted. Eyes narrowed. Wings rustled along the ridges of the high cavern. None moved to attack, but none needed to.
Askar stood at the center, unmoving. Regal. Unflinching beneath the weight of their scorn.
Then he spoke with deep authority and without fear.
"I do not come to beg. I come to warn. And if you will not hear me as a King… then you will see what it means to stand before one who walks the path of Sovereigns."
He raised one paw.
The flames ignited—instantly, effortlessly—but they were not ordinary flames.
They were silent.
A ring of fire erupted around him. There was no heat. No smoke. No roar of combustion. And yet, the space around it warped subtly. The light bent, as if the very concept of fire was being redefined.
The stone beneath Askar's feet cracked—not from pressure, but from rejection. The world resisted his presence, and still, it yielded.
This was not the power of a Sovereign.
But it was dangerously close.
Others could wield the elements. Mages, dragons, and awakened beasts shaped fire, ice, lightning, and shadow through affinity.
They borrowed power from the world, reshaped it, redirected it, and bent it to their needs. But it was never truly theirs.
Their flames needed fuel. Their lightning needed charge. Their magic had to ask permission and the world would decide whether to grant it.
A Sovereign did not ask.
A Sovereign commanded and the world obeyed.
When Askar raised his paw, he did not conjure fire. He declared that fire should exist. And so it did. Where others coaxed elements into motion, he simply spoke through existence and reality listened.
But that was only the first mark of a Sovereign.
The second was far greater.
Only a Sovereign can infuse their elemental power with the essence of Time and Space. No other being, no dragon, no archmage, no beast emperor, can even comprehend what that fusion demands.
Askar's flames did not burn with heat.
They shimmered with temporal law.
They moved in all directions at once, backward, forward, and sideways in time. A wall of ice summoned to block his fire would already be melting before it had formed. A blink-step spell cast to dodge him would fail, because the space being stepped into had already collapsed.
This was not speed. This was not illusion.
This was fire touched by timespace and only a Sovereign could bind such power to their will.
A Sovereign of Ice would not simply freeze a battlefield. They would erase the concept of heat from a moment in time.
A Sovereign of Metal would not forge a blade. They would summon the memory of a weapon that already killed you.
A Sovereign of Blood could rewrite the location of your wound, letting you bleed from a strike that never landed.
This is why Sovereigns were feared. This is why even dragons knelt.
A Sovereign's power is not a spell. It is not a technique.
It is a truth spoken through mana.
And truth cannot be blocked.
The dragons stopped laughing.
A few of the younger ones recoiled instinctively. Even the older ones shifted with unease.
Askar stood still, flame flickering calmly at his mane. Not yet a Sovereign. But closer than any beast had ever dared approach.
And at the far end of the hall, the massive obsidian throne stirred.