THE REAL PROTEGE

Twin souls.

One clutched a slingshot as if it were a talisman. The other stared unblinking, as though instinctively reading fate. Their auras pulsed in the mirror — not loudly, not fully formed.

But there was something unmistakable about them. Something ancient.

They weren't just curious children.

They weren't ordinary.

Enchanted Dale leaned in, eyes narrowing against pain.

"Dragons," he breathed, voice raw. Then, louder — a reverent whisper laced with amusement:

"They have two dragons. Ha ha ha ha!"

He grinned — a twisted thing cracking across his bloodied face.

Despite the pain, despite his broken tools and ruptured tether, he began to laugh.

"Pharsa wasn't the only vessel," Enchanted Dale whispered. "The stars have been busy."

Then, with a rasping breath, he reached for fresh parchment.

And began to write.

Enchanted Dale: New Targets, New Plans

The ritual chamber was dim and sweltering, lit only by oil lamps and the sickly glow of fractured wards stitched hastily into the cracked walls. Enchanted Dale sat in a jagged circle of bloodstone runes, his body still scorched and twitching from the backlash Pharsa had unleashed. But his smile — crooked, bruised, defiant — never faded.

His scrying mirror shimmered again, weaker than before, showing flashes of the Li Estate: silver-robed guardians repairing protective seals… monks chanting under lunar threads… and then, in perfect clarity—

Two little girls.

Kim Kim, balancing a crystal shard on her slingshot. Chin Chin, drawing protective circles in the dirt while whispering incantations she only half understood.

Their auras shimmered in the mirror — uneven, unstable. But Enchanted Dale saw through the veil. They were awakening.

He leaned close, blood dripping from his temple, and whispered:

"Not just dragons. Twin vessels. Undivided essence. They don't even know what sleeps inside them."

His breath caught, half a wheeze, half a laugh.

He picked up a cracked bone quill and began to write, not in any language spoken, but in sigil-script used to mark chosen prey.

"Forget convergence," he muttered. "I will forge ascension through fusion.

If I cannot harvest power from the sealed… I will claim it from what is pure."

A twisted wind surged through the chamber as his corrupted aura began to reconstruct — not stable, not whole, but sharpened by obsession. Enchanted Dale called forth black butterflies, carriers of cursed omens, and released them into the night.

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Li Estate: Ling Li Feels the Shift

Ling Li returned to her room to find Four Eyes, whom she had given a medical bath, and asked him to stay for two hours. This is for him to recover from having his strength taken away and then restored all of a sudden, causing his internal energy to become chaotic.

Thus, he wasn't present during the ritual and wasn't aware of his twins' mischiefs.

"Are you done?" She asked.

"Yes, I just finished," Four Eyes replied, drying his hair with a towel.

"Alright, let me shower too," She said.

Later that night, Ling Li sat with her eyes closed, palms raised, absorbing the last whispers of elemental wind. Her immortal senses stretched far beyond stone walls — into rivers, into starlight, into echoes not yet spoken.

Then, Ling Li felt it.

A thread of spiritual focus is bending unnaturally.

Her daughters were no longer hidden. They were watched.

Ling Li opened her eyes sharply.

The protective *sigils over Kim Kim and Chin Chin's sleeping quarters flared without her touch — a warning.

Ling Li vanished in a breath and reappeared beside the twins' door.

Four Eyes, startled, followed closely.

Inside, the twins slept peacefully, curled beside each other. But the air around them shimmered with residue — faint, like fingers brushing through silk.

Enchanted Dales had seen them.

Ling Li stepped into the room, her presence instantly waking Kim Kim."

"Mom."

Ling Li knelt beside her, voice low and fierce." "Tonight, someone watched you through mirrors no child should ever reflect in. I don't blame you for watching the rituals, but I didn't expect that you would be discovered."

Chin Chin stirred. Kim Kim clutched her crystal shard tighter." You're not ordinary," Ling Li whispered. "And it's time I start teaching you as if you were"

The twins didn't fully understand — but they recognized the power behind the words.

Ling Li stood and raised her hand.

She summoned a protective veil made of Phoenix silk and Spirit Ink, shielding their room from cursed gazes. Her aura flared — so sharp and vast, it made the stone beneath her feet tremble.

From the shadows, Shinsei entered, silently watching." He's shifted targets," he said.

Ling didn't look back. "Then let him. But if he thinks he can touch what I bore into this world," she said, voice laced with immortal thunder," I will unravel him down to his forgotten birthmark."

"Ling, you mean our twins have been targeted, too?" Four Eyes nervously asked.

"Don't worry, I got this," Ling Li said and continued to chant with Shinsei.

Four Eyes felt so helpless that he couldn't do anything to help protect his twins.

Outside, the wind flared, scattering Dale's cursed butterflies before they reached the gates. They were all destroyed by Ling Li and Shinsei's chanting.

Sacred Beginnings: The Training of the Twin Dragons

Early the next day, at the edge of the eastern grove, bathed in the soft haze of pre-dawn mist, Ling Li stood atop the ritual stone platform, her robes cinched with obsidian cords, sleeves embroidered with guardian sigils. Her hair flowed behind her like ink in water, and her presence sparked a quiet stillness in the air, commanding reverence and attention.

The grove had been consecrated at midnight. Shinsei had layered the earth with moonflower salt and drawn a triple-ring protection seal at the perimeter. In its center, Ling Li's daughters — Kim Kim and Chin Chin — knelt with widened eyes, dressed in pale training tunics stitched by Madam Li.

Four Eyes, still bleary-eyed from dawn preparation, stood nearby holding twin practice blades no longer than his forearm. His aura flickered faintly beneath his worn collar — subtle, but no less formidable.

Ling Li turned toward the girls. Her gaze was solemn.

"You are not children in this rite. You are carriers of legacy. What sleeps inside you must be awakened carefully, with discipline and grace — or it will awaken chaotically, and consume you."

Kim Kim nodded, gripping the slingshot she had woven with phoenix string and jade beads. Chin Chin squinted at her blade's reflection.

---------- *Sigil means a seal. ----------