The Shadow Dragon didn’t roar; it struck with silence.
As Kaelen drew his blade, the beast opened its skeletal maw and unleashed a localized shockwave of anti-magic. It wasn’t a blast of energy, but a vacuum. A terrifying wave of dark, absolute emptiness swept across the crystal cavern floor.
Instantly, the glowing fire-stone in Jax’s hand went dark. The amber vein on Kaelen’s master-forged sword flickered violently, its blue lightning dying down to a pathetic, sputtering spark. Even the ambient heat of the underworld seemed to vanish, replaced by a deep, unnatural chill that seeped directly into Kaelen's bones.
"My core..." Goran gasped, stumbling as the passive strengthening magic inside his northern blood was violently pulled from his muscles. He crashed to his knees, using his heavy drake-bone axe just to keep from collapsing.
The five hundred soldiers behind them groaned in unison, many dropping their weapons as the dragon began to literally inhale the residual mana from their bodies.
Kaelen felt the drag immediately. It felt as though a thousand spectral chains had wrapped around his heart, dragging his inner azure spark toward the dragon's yawning throat. His breathing became shallow, his muscles growing heavy.
The serpentine beast glided forward, its six shadow-webbed wings slicing through the violet fog without making a sound. It hovered over Kaelen, its three pairs of burning violet slits looking down at him like a scholar inspecting an insect. It didn't view him as a threat; he was just a slightly larger morsel of energy.
"You like to drink?" Kaelen muttered, his knees shaking, but his teeth bared in a fierce, manic grin. "Then don't stop sip-sipping."
Kaelen slammed his obsidian blade into the calcified dirt, completely abandoning his sword stance. He extended both hands forward, palms open, pointing directly into the center of the dragon’s dark maw.
*MAXIMUM UNFILTERED OUTPUT.*
Instead of fighting the vacuum, Kaelen did the exact opposite: he threw open the floodgates of his lightning core. He allowed the dragon’s anti-magic vacuum to pull his energy out at a terrifying, suicidal speed.
*CRACKLE!*
A blinding torrent of azure lightning erupted from Kaelen’s palms, forming a thick, roaring river of electricity that shot straight down the Shadow Dragon's throat. The sheer volume of mana was immense—a reservoir built from years of breaking royal tutors' rules and surviving the brutal training of the Iron-Garrison.
The dragon’s violet eyes flared with a sudden, greedy delight. It swallowed the lightning whole, its serpentine neck pulsing with a bright blue glow as it absorbed the high-frequency current, turning the energy into its own dark power.
"Kai! What are you doing?!" Jax screamed from the dirt. "You're just feeding it!"
"He's giving it a feast," Sylvia whispered, her amber eyes widening as she watched Kaelen’s face turn pale, sweat pouring down his caked soot as his core rapidly emptied. But she noticed something the others didn't—Kaelen’s grin wasn't fading. It was widening.
The dragon continued to drink, its massive body expanding slightly as it gorged on the prince's pure, dense lightning. But Kaelen’s magic wasn't standard imperial magic. It wasn't stable.
In the capital, mages refined their mana to be smooth and compliant. Kaelen refined his to be volatile, fast, and violently compressed. He had spent the last week manual-pounding obsidian plates under a magma forge; he knew exactly what happens when you compress too much energy into a space that can't expand.
"Hey, lizard," Kaelen gasped out, his vision blurring as his core hit its absolute limit. "Have you ever heard of a short circuit?"
*COMPRESSION.*
With the last residual ounce of his willpower, Kaelen didn't change the element—he changed the frequency. He forced the lightning inside the dragon's stomach to violently oscillate, shifting the electric current into a chaotic, unstable resonance that the dragon's digestive core couldn't ground out.
The dragon’s golden-violet slits suddenly blinked.
The blue glow inside its matted violet scales didn't fade; it turned a violent, erratic white. The beast’s serpentine neck began to twitch uncontrollably. It tried to close its mouth, to stop the absorption, but the high-frequency current had already paralyzed its internal nervous system.
*BZZZZZZT!*
"Back! Get back!" Sylvia yelled, grabbing Jax by his collar and dragging him behind a massive purple crystal.
The Calamity of the Abyss let out a choked, muffled sound—like a thunderclap trapped inside a deep cavern.
A microsecond later, the dragon’s internal void-core overloaded. The absorbed lightning, compressed to its absolute breaking point, violently detonated from within the beast's stomach.
*BOOM!*
A colossal explosion of blue and violet light shattered the silence of the underworld. The shockwave tore through the crystal forest, shattering the translucent purple structures into a million glittering shards. The dragon’s massive, six-winged form was thrown upward, its matted scales cracking open as arcs of wild, uncontrolled electricity leaked from its flesh like blood.
The massive beast crashed heavily back into the calcified dirt, its six wings bent, its skeletal head smoking as the violet fog around it completely burned away into ozone.
Kaelen dropped to one knee, completely spent. His hands were smoking, his chest heaving as he used his unsheathed obsidian sword to keep from falling face-first into the ash. His core was empty, cold, and aching.
But as the dust settled, he forced his head up, his dark eyes locking onto the fallen dragon.
The beast wasn't dead. Its three pairs of violet slits slowly opened, flickering weakly. It looked at the teenage prince who had just blown up its stomach from the inside out. There was no more hunger in its gaze. There was no more ancient arrogance.
There was only a deep, trembling terror of the boy who smiled when he bled.
Kaelen dragged himself to his feet, leaning heavily on his black sword as he walked toward the dragon's smoking snout. He stopped inches from the skeletal jaw, his signature, cocky smirk returning through his sheer exhaustion.
"So," Kaelen breathed, his voice a gravelly whisper. "Are we going to do that again, or are you ready to follow a real monster?"
The Calamity of the Abyss let out a low, submissive whine, its massive skeletal head sinking flat into the dirt at Kaelen's feet, its six shadow-wings folding tightly against its back in absolute submission.
Behind them, the five hundred soldiers of the Vanguard stood up from the dust, staring at their sixteen-year-old captain in a silence that was no longer just awe. It was worship.