Location: The Shadowed Spire → The Forbidden Catacombs → The Chamber of the Last Egg
Time: The Forgotten Hour → The Hour of the Hollow → The Hour of Reckoning
I. The Spire's Whisper
The crown pulsed in Lysander's grip like a living heart.
Black coral, cold as the deep and carved with glyphs that swam beneath his fingertips, seemed to whisper to him in a language older than Valyria. The weight of it was more than physical—it was the weight of promises made in blood before the first dragon took flight.
Maelora watched from the doorway, her mercury eyes reflecting the dim glow of the chamber. "Put it down," she said, her voice uncharacteristically hollow. "That crown isn't meant for mortals."
Lysander turned it over in his hands, watching the way the shadows coiled around it like loyal serpents. "Neither was the shadowkin."
The System flickered in his vision:
"Artifact Analysis: Crown of the Abyssal Throne"
Purpose: Dominion over shadow-touched creatures
Cost: 1 mortal memory (per use)
Warning: Prolonged use may result in hollowing
A sound echoed from below—a wet, skittering crawl, too many limbs moving in unison.
Hah'dra's spawn were growing bolder.
II. The Descent
The catacombs beneath the spire were not carved—they were eaten into the earth.
Walls bore the scorch marks of dragonfire, but the stone itself was pitted and grooved, as if something had gnawed through it. The air grew thicker with every step, until breathing felt like drinking liquid shadow.
Maelora's bloodfire sputtered in her palm, casting erratic light over the frescoes that lined the passage:
Dragons with too many eyes circling a black sun
Merlings with human faces bowing before a throne of coral
A figure in a crown of fangs holding a shadowkin egg above a volcano's mouth
"This isn't history," Maelora whispered. "It's prophecy."
Lysander's shadowmark burned in agreement.
Then the walls moved.
Hundreds of pale, spindly limbs slithered from cracks in the stone, grasping at them with bone-white fingers. The spawn had found them.
Lysander reacted without thought.
He clenched the crown.
And the world shattered into darkness.
III. The Hollow Hour
When the shadows cleared, the spawn were gone.
In their place stood figures of smoke and memory, their forms shifting between dragonlord and merling, their eyes the same pearl-black as the Drowned King's.
"The First Shadowlord," they whispered in unison, their voices the crackle of burning parchment. "You return to us broken."
Lysander's head throbbed, a memory not his own surfacing:
A man in a coral crown standing before the Fourteen Flames
A pact sealed in dragonblood
A betrayal—the first shadowkin ripped screaming from its host
Maelora staggered, her bloodfire guttering out. "Lysander—"
The figures turned as one. "She does not belong here."
One lunged, its smoke-fingers plunging into Maelora's chest.
She didn't scream.
She sang.
The note was pure and terrible, the same conch-shell language Hah'dra had used. The smoke-figures recoiled, hissing, as Maelora's skin split open—revealing bioluminescent veins beneath.
"You forget," she gasped, blood dripping from her lips. "I am more than priestess."
The System blared a warning:
"Genetic Anomaly Detected: Hybrid (Human/Merling)"
Then the ground gave way.
IV. The Last Egg
They fell into liquid fire.
Or so it seemed—until Lysander realized the molten gold surrounding them was not lava, but dragonscale.
The Chamber of the Last Egg was the belly of a living dragon.
A dragon the size of a mountain.
Its ribs arched overhead like cathedral vaults, each one carved with names in Valyrian script. Between them pulsed veins of glowing magma, feeding the colossal heart that hung suspended above the altar.
And on that altar sat the egg.
Not black like the others.
Gold.
And cracked.
The System's message flashed urgent red:
"Warning: Egg Hatching Imminent"
"Entity Classification: ???"
"Recommendation: Immediate Destruction"
Maelora crawled to her knees, her true form now half-revealed—gills fluttering at her throat, fingers webbed with translucent membrane. She reached for the egg.
Lysander was faster.
His shadowmark flared, tendrils of darkness lashing out to wrap around the egg—
—just as something stirred inside.
A hand, small and perfect, pressed against the inner shell.
Then the Drowned King's voice boomed through the chamber:
"MINE."
The dragon's heart stopped beating.
And the egg hatched.