“Of course. You’re thinking, so what? How could one ‘gifted’ brat stop you from walking out with your adorable little sister?” Rahman kept hamming it up, a peacock fanning rotten feathers. “Impossible, right? You’re the strongest Blood Mage alive, blessed with the Apex rank and the Sacrifice Domain.”

Adelaide said nothing. Cold tightened first in her chest, then in her gaze. Only now did she realize she had never once met Rahman’s eyes head-on.

He used to keep his head bowed, shy as a field mouse. She’d read it as fragile confidence. But when she finally saw his eyes, they were swamp-water murky, brimming with unspeakable delight, a chill slithering up her spine like frost on stone.

He wasn’t wrong. In a way, Rahman counted as her “kind.”

Like her lady-of-the-house mask—soft hands, harmless smile—his “eclipsed by brilliant brothers” routine was just a pelt. He’d hidden so well that even in the script’s Third Prince route, he never slipped in front of the heroine. Adelaide had never once doubted him, and that ignorance felt like a thorn under the fingernail.

Maybe that’s why alarm bells rang like iron on bone now—she, the Third Prince, bore profane Blood Magic and dealt with corpse-crafters—yet he, a shadow-dweller, suddenly flashed secrets that could topple a crown. Her gut clenched first. Then her mind snapped to distance.

“My offer stands. Tonight, we walk our own roads and pretend we never crossed.” Her voice was level, blade-thin. “You can’t stop me. I don’t care about you or your goal.”

“True. Even at school, your eyes chased Mira and my two brothers. Never a proper glance for me.” Rahman sounded wounded, a child pouting under a storm cloud. “That’s fine. You’ll be interested in this.”

He flicked a finger. Silver threads in the air thrummed like plucked spider silk, yanking the cloth off a massive cage. Rot stung the room like old blood in winter wind. Adelaide’s pupils blew wide, ink blooming in cold water.

Burnished-copper scales. Bone-spurs sharper than any steel. A slit-pupil that burned like a trapped sun even in death.

Inside the cage lay a whole dragon’s head.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Rahman stroked the scales, rapt before a legend’s corpse, like a pilgrim before a blasphemous shrine. “The Knights lost thousands and couldn’t get close. If it hadn’t just woken and failed to regain its prime, even Lord Rockridge might’ve fallen. No wonder those fool Kasi thought it a bargaining chip.”

He grinned, a knife-curved mouth.

“Their plan was adorably naive. Can you imagine? Send a physician to win royal trust, use him as a step to the council, then win rights for Dalahaman? A newborn off the teat wouldn’t pitch that. But a dragon makes the impossible sway like a reed.”

“No one wants a dragon for an enemy,” Adelaide said. The sacrifice array in her palm shivered, magic overloading like thunder trapped in glass.

“Exactly. The king of old Lantatu emptied the treasury, gild and silver pouring like a river, all to appease Tari and avoid a clash with that peak of the elements. Who knows what made this one shelve greed and sign a guardian pact with humans. With it backing them, the Kasi had reason to think we’d bend, let Dalahaman take a council seat.”

Rahman trailed his hand along the scales, circling the cage with a predator’s patience. He pressed a gloved palm to the narrow, auric dragon eye. It sizzled at once, leather burning with a stench like scorched hide under noon sun.

Adelaide’s brow tightened, a stormline drawing. “Yet you still chose war. Does Lord Rockridge suffer no rival stronger than himself?”

Even dead, the dragon eye glowed hot enough to melt gold. Rahman didn’t flinch. He turned, gaze like a cold lamp.

“No. All of this is for you.”

At his words, Adelaide lifted her sword, point steady as a winter star. “Think twice before you cast. I’m confident I can separate those pretty hands from your wrists before your array lands.”

He slowly drew his hands back and raised them, a parody of surrender. The sneer in his eyes only deepened, a hook in dark waters.

“Adelaide, Adelaide. I admit it—I’m sick with envy of your talent. Heaven stuffed you so full that pride blinded you. You forgot the obvious: for those without instant casting, showing the tell of a spell is suicide, especially a large one that drinks time like sand.”

As he spoke, his golden forelock stirred—though the sealed room held no wind, as if a hidden tide were breathing.

“So if someone flashes their trump card first, it means one thing—”

The pressure change struck her skin first, a wind without breath. Adelaide’s stomach dropped. She crushed the sacrifice array in her palm at once, but it was too late. Red light burst beneath the dragon’s head, painting Rahman’s face with twisted bliss, a fox grinning at the henhouse.

“The array is already complete.”

The array’s aura kicked back her hood. Her white hair streamed up like winter smoke. In the same heartbeat, the massive head turned to ash, and her sacrifice array finally bit into her chest. Pain flared as her blood drew away, breath strangled like a fist at her throat. Stronger than the lab’s chokehold, it signaled Crimson Frenzy taking root—time froze again, the world holding its breath in front of Adelaide.

This time, she was far from calm. Panic pricked first; action chased second. She didn’t rush him. Instead she snapped her Bloodsword into a chain-blade and whipped it toward Rahman, the steel slivers a river of moonlight. She aimed to bind his limbs, to maim his motion before the sacrifice finished eating.

But when she hauled the chain tight, it didn’t bite like cutting flesh. It caught. The links went taut, snagged like a fishhook wedged in river-stone. No amount of pull won an inch.

The “stone” snagging the hook was Rahman’s skin.

The chain-blade ripped his fine suit like paper, yet didn’t sink a hair into him—if that could still be called skin. Countless fine, burnished-copper scales burst through, forming the same armor as the head in the cage. His frame swelled; the chain around him groaned, then snapped like dry reeds. Bone-spurs pushed from his face. His legs overgrew, lengthening, knitting into a serpent’s tail that hissed against the floor.

In the brief instant of Crimson Frenzy, he swelled from boy-sized to a dragon-headed, serpent-bodied beast twice Adelaide’s height. His slit, reptile pupils looked down on the Bloodsword in her hand, mocking her like a priest caught sinning at the altar.

Among those who steal power, Blood Mage against Blood Mage isn’t judged by spellcraft.

It’s judged by the offering’s quality—the weight of the sacrifice decides everything.

Crimson Frenzy fell away. Rahman threw his head back and opened his jaws in a roar. Silence held like black ice. A few heartbeats later, dogs all around the palace streets barked in panic, and sleeping infants wailed like gulls at dawn. Parents fumbled for their Magic Crystal Stone lamps, clicking switches to dead glass.

At the heart of it, in the parlor that birthed the omen, Adelaide’s body turned to lead. Her knees buckled; she dropped to one knee before Rahman, pride a blade she clamped between her teeth. The Bloodsword in her hand shattered to motes, as did the arrays coiled on her body. The same fate took the arrays in the lamps: everything unraveled into dust, a snowfall of dead glyphs.

Dispel Magic, a privilege God granted to dragons.

As beings closest to the mana element, dragons speak a tongue that rules magic within earshot. The sound Rahman released was a dragon’s roar, a subsonic command beasts and children can sense. Adults, dulled by years, can’t hear that ancient authority; they only see every array within miles gutter out at once.

Only then did Adelaide understand his line.

“Well? Do you like the gift we prepared for you?” Rahman’s voice rasped through his changed throat, dry scales over stone.

“You… knew I’d come.”

Teeth gritted, she pressed a trembling palm to her knee and fought up, anger a coal in cold lungs.

At this point, even her last scrap of luck burned away.

For most mages, a dragon’s Dispel hits hard, but you can rebuild an array after it fades. Not so for Adelaide. Confident in the long life of the arrays that bolstered her, she’d brought no materials to recast them. Without them, forget close-quarters. Even walking long drains would crush her frail heart like a wine press.

For her, this was the worst-case winter. No other legendary trophy could’ve cut deeper.

Rahman waiting here wasn’t chance. This snare was knotted for her throat. But when had he started weaving?

When they smuggled the head into the capital in bridal furniture? Earlier, when Mira’s engagement was moved up? Or—

“Like I said, we killed a dragon just for you.”

Rahman slid around her with a serpent’s leisure, tail scales whispering, a ring of copper circling a pale flame. As he coiled, he plucked her doubts like strings and hummed answers.

“That poor Sister thinks it’s all her fault. If she knew we chose Dalahaman from the start for this head, I wonder what colors would cross her face?” His jaw unhinged like a snake’s, laughter spilling out weird and wet. “Shame you won’t be around to see it.”

Adelaide lifted her eyes to his ugly delight. Anger surged up, a tide against a black moon. She bared her teeth into a smile, stubborn as frost on iron.

“Don’t count on it.”