Before Lyra could press him on what a ‘title of the soul’ meant—
“Lyra!”
She snapped her head up to find her mother weaving desperately through the thick crowd of families, her eyes frantic until they finally locked onto her daughter.
“There you are. Oh, thank goodness.”
“I’m here, Mom,” Lyra said, stepping away from the pillar.
Her mother let out a relieved breath, her warm gaze instantly dropping to Lyra’s extended hand.
She noticed the tiny speck on her knuckles and leaned in slightly, squinting.
“So… this is the little one who chose you?”
Lyra looked from her mother’s gentle face to Myrmor, who remained perfectly still.
“…You can see him clearly?” She asked the first thing that came to mind.
“Of course I can see him,” her mother chuckled softly, reaching out to gently pat Lyra’s uninjured shoulder.
“He’s sitting right there on your finger. To be honest, I think he’s actually quite adorable. Much better than a slimy reptile.”
Lyra’s heart beat a little faster.
“…Can you hear him, Mom?”
“Hear him?” Her mother tilted her head, her expression shifting into mild confusion.
“Hear what? Does he make a clicking sound?”
Lyra quickly shook her head, pulling her hand back slightly.
“N-Nothing. Just a passing thought.”
Her mother laughed, the sound warm and comforting.
“I think today’s excitement and that nasty bump from the Ironhorn have finally caught up with you. Come on, let’s get out of this madness.”
As they began walking toward the massive wrought-iron exit gates of the plaza, Lyra lowered her voice to the lowest whisper.
“She really can’t hear you.”
“No. My physical manifestation exists in this reality for all to witness,” Myrmor explained.
“I occupy space. I cast a shadow, I’m not your hallucination.” He assured her.
“And your voice?” Lyra asked determined to know something, anything at all.
“It belongs exclusively to the consciousness acknowledged by the Throne.”
“The Throne again…” Lyra let out a quiet sigh, navigating around a group of shouting teenagers.
“You really enjoy speaking in cryptic riddles, don’t you?”
“I speak only the absolute truth, my Queen.”
“…Just not the whole truth.” Lyra derisively mumured, softly rolling her eyes.
Myrmor didn’t deny it.
Instead, he fell silent, quietly observing the bustling, chaotic crowd through his microscopic golden eyes.
After they had walked a few dozen meters in silence, his voice echoed in her mind again, softer this time.
“Tell me, Lyra.”
“Yeah?”
“When the entire plaza erupted into mockery… when the examiners labeled us a failure… why did you smile down at me?”
Myrmor was honestly expecting some kind of rejection from Lyra, as in the eyes of people of this era, an ant is something you can step on without any consequences, but Lyra did none of that.
Lyra paused near the gate, looking down at her hand.
“You expected me to be angry? To throw you away or curse my luck?”
“It would have been the entirely logical, human choice,” Myrmor stated flatly.
“An insect-type beast commands zero respect in this civilization. I am a burden to your social status.”
She thought about the little boy on the bus, the bread on the floor, and the helpless feeling of standing before the charging Ironhorn.
“When everyone else looked at you and saw something worthless,” Lyra said softly, her amber eyes reflecting the afternoon light, “I just saw someone who looked even lonelier than I felt. We were both outcasts the moment that crystal flickered. I figured… we might as well stick together.”
Myrmor became completely, utterly still.
For several long seconds, the ancient presence in her mind didn’t make a sound.
When he finally spoke, his usually immovable, steady voice carried the faintest, trace of raw emotion.
“…Ten thousand years,” he whispered into her mind.
Lyra tilted her head, stepping through the gates onto the public sidewalk.
“What was that?”
“…Nothing.”
Before she could demand a real answer, a thunderous, earth-shaking roar erupted from the center of the plaza behind them.
The sky flashed a brilliant, blinding gold.
Kael Draven was finally leaving the central platform.
He was completely surrounded by high-ranking academy representatives, regional military commanders, and city officials, all of them practically begging for a moment of his time.
High above his head, the massive, magnificent phantom of the Heavenly Dragon Emperor had yet to fully fade back into his soul.
Its enormous, glacier-blue eyes slowly swept across the sea of thousands of humans.
Then… without a single warning… the dragon’s gaze locked.
It bypassed the nobles.
It bypassed the generals.
It settled directly upon the tiny black ant resting quietly on Lyra’s hand at the very edge of the exit gates.
For the briefest, terrifying instant, time itself seemed to violently stutter.
Myrmor slowly lifted his microscopic head, his tiny golden eyes meeting the dragon’s cosmic gaze.
Neither entity spoke.
Neither moved.
Yet a heavy, ancient current of mutual understanding passed between them, completely bypassing the physical world.
The Heavenly Dragon Emperor—a beast of supreme, world altering Celestial Grade—slowly, deliberately lowered its massive, horned head toward the sidewalk.
It was a gesture of profound, instinctive deference.
A bow so slight, so subtle, that not a single human in the plaza noticed it.
Myrmor answered with an almost imperceptible nod of his tiny antennae.
A greeting between two forces that had walked the earth when the continents were still shaping themselves.
The dragon’s phantom instantly dissolved into a beautiful shower of golden starlight, vanishing into the clouds as though it had never been there.
Kael Draven never noticed the brief divergence.
He kept walking, his handsome face frozen in its usual cold, disciplined mask.
Only Myrmor quietly tracked the empty sky before murmuring inside Lyra’s mind:
“So… one of the old bloodlines still remembers the order of the world.”
“What are you talking about?” Lyra asked, her eyes wide as she witnessed the phantom fade.
“Did that dragon just look at us?”
“It was nothing of immediate importance, my Queen.”
Lyra clicked her tongue in frustration.
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”