“Tartarus, do dragons live in places like this?” Lilith stared blankly at the giant dragon’s remains, her thoughts frost-bitten by awe, voice swallowed like a stone in deep water. She couldn’t imagine a creature growing to such a world-sized body.

“Yes. That was the Father of Dragons, my husband, Gaia,” Tartarus said, her tone calm as moonlight on a cold lake. “When she died, she turned her bones into a mountain that spears the clouds, a peak for dragons to roost.” Lilith sat on Tartarus’s back, unable to read her face; emotions knotted like vines, she shut her mouth and let the wind carry the silence.

“Want to know where we live?” Tartarus asked after a stretch of flight, wings beating like slow thunder across a vast sky.

Lilith tilted her head like a fledgling testing its feathers, guessing where a queen would nest. If Tartarus was the Mother of Dragons, her dwelling had to be sacred. “The head?” She glanced at the unreachable skull, a throne cut from stars and old bone.

“No. That perch is for the star-watchers.” Tartarus shook her head and banked toward the heart, hovering at the wide mouth of the chest cavity like a hawk pausing over a canyon. Then she dove into a crimson sphere glowing like a harvest moon. “This is our home.”

The red dragon folded her broad wings like sails in a dying gale. Her tail curled Lilith down in a gentle coil, then tapped her brow with the tip like a warm ember. Tartarus set a claw to a door at least thirty meters high and pushed; wood groaned like winter pines, and she dipped her head to enter.

Lilith followed, curiosity fluttering like a sparrow’s heart. She swayed her gaze side to side like a chick fresh out of the nest. Tartarus’s home… carried a classic medieval vibe, with walls of pure wood, a roof woven from stone, gravel, and straw, the floor thinly paved with stone that veiled the pale ground beneath. It looked rustic as a farmer’s barn under frost. Was this structure truly stable?

“It’s World Tree wood. Don’t worry about stability,” Tartarus said, reading Lilith’s worry like ripples across a pond. “The Earth Dragons under our feet coax the World Tree to grow boughs fit for building. The Black Dragons strip the strongest fibrous sheets. The Water Dragons ferry them across lands like rivers bearing driftwood. The Silver Dragons plane and polish them into forms meant to hold. The Red Dragons fasten it all together into rooms where we can breathe and sleep.”

“Oh? What about White Dragons? What do the White Dragons do?” Lilith lifted her chin, curiosity bright as dew. She hadn’t admitted the title to herself, but rare White Dragons had to matter. It wasn’t that she already saw herself as a White Dragon. Not at all.

“White Dragons don’t join the building of the nests. They are too few to shoulder that vast workload,” Tartarus said, and she nudged foreheads with Lilith, warm as a hearth, affectionate as a mother. The little White Holy Maiden turned away from the dragon’s hot breath and huffed twice, a tiny kettle piping steam.

“But a White Dragon appears every hundred years, right? That doesn’t sound that rare.” Lilith counted on her fingers like beads on a prayer string. Dragons were long-lived. One more every century shouldn’t thin the flock this much.

“Because…” Tartarus fell into brief silence, her head bowing slowly like a sun sinking behind mountains. Amber slit-pupils fixed on the slender, snow-pale Saint. Her voice trembled like a plucked zither string, and she spoke with care, as if each word could bruise. “Lilith, you are the first new-hatched White Dragon I have spoken to in five hundred years, and the last White Dragon among us since the previous one left. Whatever you endured to become dragon, that truth doesn’t change.”

“Lilith, you are the only White Dragon to break shell in five hundred years.”

Tartarus finished and padded to the kitchen, tail swinging like a banner, to cook Lilith’s dinner. She left the little Saint alone in a room wide as a valley. “You can go find Typhon. She should be in her room. It’s the one facing the main door,” she said before she slipped away. The room was so large that crossing it felt like trekking a plain, so Lilith called out her dear Knight-Captain. She charged forward astride his shoulders, a bored rider under a quiet sky. She yawned, wishing she could shift to dragon; walking a cavern as a human felt like wading through waist-high grass.

Help arrived on a gust. A little silver-white dragon burst from the room like an arrow in a squall, wrapped in a spinning hurricane, slicing across the hall so fast she nearly toppled Lilith. Keen eyes caught the White Holy Maiden at the last heartbeat, and the small dragon halted right before her like a hawk snatching breath mid-dive.

“Oh my heavens, why’s there a human here?” The tiny Silver Dragon dipped her head, peering at a girl not even as big as her claw-tip, curiosity glittering like sunlight on water.

Lilith’s eyes went wide; a dragon’s eye as large as hers pressed close like a moon looming over a field. The little dragon pulled back quickly, and the Hero patted her flat chest, heart thudding like a drum. She introduced herself in a shaky voice, like a reed in wind. “Hi. I’m Lilith. Tartarus brought me back…”

“Oh! Oh! I know you. You’re the newborn Little White Dragon, right? All White Dragons are children of the Dragon Emperor,” the Silver Dragon chirped, bouncing like a pup handed fresh meat. “I’m almost a hundred years older than you, so you should call me Sister Typhon!” Like her mother, Typhon flicked her tail and tossed Lilith onto her back, then stretched her neck to watch her. “Hehe! Mom said you’re a human Hero. Do you humans have dragon legends? Have you heard of me?”

“Uh, uh…” After crossing worlds, Lilith hadn’t learned much beyond the Taint. But back in her old world, she had heard of Typhon—something like a storm giant wielding a great axe, a name carried by thunder. And in those tangled myths, an ultimate universe-hopping lifeform and some earth-stomping guardian got drunk and birthed a bow-loving, purple-haired tsundere. Lilith shook her head hard, as if shaking dust off a cloak. Some thoughts were rabbit holes she refused to dig. “No. I’ve been fighting the Demon King and the Taint. No time for anything else.”

“Fair enough. At your age, I was still in my egg,” Typhon said, padding toward the dining table, curiosity flickering like fireflies. “It’s my first time seeing a White Dragon. Do you have special powers? I heard White Dragons carry unique gifts. What’s yours?”

“I don’t know. Ophelia said I haven’t gone through shell-breaking, so my dragon power hasn’t awakened.” Lilith puffed her cheeks and tapped open her skill sheet, a familiar screen glowing like a window in night. The system was still studying Ophelia’s Dragon Claw, sulking in silence. “As a human, I’ve got the powers of Hero and Saint. And it seems the Demon King’s power is mine now?”

“Oh? What’s the Demon King’s power like? Show me?” Typhon leaned forward, impatient as a breeze pushing chimes, eager to watch the white lotus bare thorns.

“Mm…” Lilith thought for a moment, then unhooked the amulet at her chest. In an instant, dark gray Taint flooded her like a storm tide, devouring her clean light. Black vapor hissed from flesh; the holy breath was smothered, and she became a walking blot of pollution, a thunderhead rolling over snow. Typhon shuddered, scales prickling, and flung Lilith off reflexively.

“Ah!” Lilith hit face-first, ground leaping up like a rude wave. The amulet fell back against her chest, and the Taint retreated like a receding tide. White returned, pure as fresh snowfall. “Uu… What was that for? That hurt.” She sat up, voice wobbling like a thin reed. Typhon’s low crawl meant she was a good twenty or thirty meters long; falling from her back stung like cold rain on a bruise. Some eerie ward kept Lilith from injury, but pain was real as iron. She sat there, small and tearful, eyes shimmering as she glared at the Silver Dragon. “You wanted to see it, so why toss me?”

“Sorry. That aura was terrifying. I slipped,” Typhon muttered, head lowering like a cloud ashamed to drizzle. She remembered Tartarus’s warning: human bodies are more fragile than Silver Dragons. A fall like that really hurt.

“What are you two doing?” Tartarus stepped out, dinner balanced on her tail like a platter carried by a serpent. Typhon sprang to the table like a dog at the smell of stew, then sat up straight, acting saintly. Lilith rose, wounded pride tight as a knot, big white eyes shining with tears toward Tartarus across the table.

“What’s wrong?” Tartarus hurried over, brushing away her tear-tracks with a soft spell, the touch light as mist. Her voice gentled like warm tea. “Did Typhon bully you?”

“No, I…” Lilith didn’t know how to say it. She couldn’t admit she cried because she got tossed and bonked. Falling from twenty-plus meters and only crying a little could even sound tough. But as a “grown man” in spirit, she refused to cry for such a foolish reason.

“Alright. Come eat first.” Tartarus lifted the sniffly girl with her tail and set her at a small table in the corner, a cozy nook like a lantern’s pool of light. When Lilith sat steady, the dragon yanked back Typhon’s bowl with a tail-flick and gave the small Silver Dragon a stern look like a winter sky. “You only get half tonight.”

Guilty as a pup caught chewing shoes, Typhon watched Tartarus with wide eyes, hands still as stone, tail stiff behind her like a flag pole. She quieted like a chick under a hawk’s shadow.

“Food now, scolding later,” Tartarus said, a quick glance pinning Typhon. The little dragon shrank, then watched in silence with her mother as Lilith ate, both gazes steady as twin moons.

Tartarus’s cooking was delicious. Maybe her skill was a spice, maybe the ingredients of the Dragon Territory were simply better, or both threads braided together. But with mother and daughter staring like statues, Lilith lost the joy of tasting. She ate two rushed bites, then put down her chopsticks and looked at Tartarus.

“Good. Time to talk business.” Tartarus cleared the dishes and sat straight, posture like a mountain. “Little White Dragon, do you remember the dragon breeds I told you about?”

“Of course,” Lilith said. Her grades weren’t great back then, but she wasn’t so dull as to forget a handful of types. She just didn’t know why Tartarus raised it now. “What’s wrong?”

“Lilith, you are the White Dragon outside the five breeds. Beloved of magic and wisdom, you can learn spellcraft from every dragon,” Tartarus said, words flowing like a river teaching the shore. “As the youngest newborn of our clan, we are obliged to find you a mentor. They will guide you on the road of magic. With a method you’ve never heard, they’ll help you meet the world anew. They’ll tint your soul with their color, granting power you never imagined, breaking the cages humans left in you.”

“Little White Dragon, even for you—favored by magic and wisdom—you can only learn one or two paths in this life. Choose carefully.” Tartarus’s smile warmed like a brazier in winter, a mother soothing her young. “Tomorrow Typhon and I will take you to visit each breed’s leader. As my child, you may apprentice to them directly. That is your privilege.”

“But it’s late. You and Typhon should sleep.” She rose, her voice as soft as falling snow. “At dawn, we’ll ride the first wind to meet the Earth Dragons’ leader. She’ll like you.”

Lilith nodded and followed Tartarus toward her room, footsteps light as feathers on old wood.

There were no human beds in the dragon nest, only stone warmed by dragon breath. Tartarus conjured a little room and a plush bed, soft as cloud-moss. Long deprived of any mattress, Lilith melted into it and slipped into dreams.

At dawn, Lilith's eyes fluttered open, like petals touched by dew. She propped herself on the soft pillow and rubbed the mist from her eyes. Half-asleep, she edged to the bedside and let her toes fish for slippers. No slippers answered; instead, her foot met something damp and slick, a cold squish. Curiosity snapped her fully awake—then her scream knifed across the entire Dragon Territory.

“Typhon?! You—I—you—how did you get so small?” She jerked her foot up and saw a little Silver Dragon, dog-sized. He was curled by her bed, sleeping in bliss, tiny snores like purring rain. Woken, the small dragon opened violet eyes; Typhon lifted his head and yawned wide. Clambering up, he said, “Good morning, little Silver Dragon.”

Fear crashed in before thought. “How are you in my room, and why are you that small?” Lilith hugged the quilt, eyes locked on the tiny dragon in the narrow space. If Typhon lunged here, she had no way out, like a rabbit in a snare.

“Oh, don’t be scared, my dear sister. You should know Silver Dragons can shrink or grow as they please.” Typhon’s wings gave a careless flap, like fans waving away worry. “As for being in your room—Mom banned my dinner last night. I got hungry at midnight and sneaked in. White Dragon magic is the tastiest food. The trickle you shed in sleep makes a perfect snack; nibbling, I dozed off.”

Lilith’s face twisted like a crumpled emoticon. Fear crawled over her skin; she tucked her little head under the quilt, trembling. It was just a joke, and Typhon really meant to eat her. Now it’s only the magic leaking from sleep, but who knows what comes later.

“Awake yet, you two little ones?” Thankfully, Tartarus stepped in, a door of rescue for poor Lilith. “Come eat—we’re off to meet the leader of the Earth Dragons. There’s plenty to do today.”

At the word, Typhon bolted from the room like a silver streak. Lilith followed, keeping to Tartarus’s shadow like a leaf behind a boulder. Slowly, she shuffled toward the table, nerves pinging like raindrops on stone.