Vorath watched the faint golden wisp of her vanish over the mountain ridge, the echo of her taunts still ringing in his ears.
He knew she was half-teasing. He knew it.
And yet, for the first time in two hundred years, the dragon lord found himself wondering if he was actually… weak.
According to the racial memory etched into his bones, dragons were supposed to be the apex of all mortal creatures. Scales like forged steel, claws that could rend stone, strength enough to shatter armies. He had fought his way to the top of the clan, beaten every other dragon in the valley, and earned his place as lord through raw physical power.
But according to her? He was second-rate at best.
"Bah," he rumbled to himself, shifting his weight on the boulder. Still, the doubt niggled at him.
She said she had seen true powerful dragons. Ninth-rank dragons, she claimed—one swipe of a claw could shatter her entire little kingdom. Shadow dragons could conjure perfect duplicates of themselves. Elemental dragons could call down fire and storm and ice, laying waste to whole battlefields at once.
And even physical strength? There were witch clans and golden behemoths that could tank meteor strikes and walk away without a scratch.
Vorath froze.
A memory rose unbidden, sharp and cold: the day a demon lord of the deep clans had summoned a meteor, blazing and roaring, big enough to swallow the entire Dragon's Rest valley whole. They had only barely diverted it, had only barely survived. The whole mountain range had smoked for a month afterward.
Tank a meteor?
That wasn't just strong. That was absurd.
One such rock could flatten every hold in his kingdom. One such rock could wipe out an entire void tide in a single blow.
He, the strongest creature in this twin realm, would never dare stand in the path of something like that.
A faint tremor ran down his spine.
The world beyond the barrier was far more terrifying than he had ever imagined. If creatures like that existed out there—what must their gods be like?
He shook his great head, his jaw set.
No more lazing about. He had been too comfortable. He would spread word to every clan. They had been taking it too easy. If something from outside ever broke through, they would need every scrap of strength they could muster. He'd be damned if some fat, overfed beast from another realm showed up and they couldn't even catch it, let alone eat it. That would be the real tragedy.
Down below, he caught sight of Laia's golden figure still drifting toward the central altar, her shoulders hunched, clearly fretting over the sacrifice.
Vorath heaved a great, rumbling sigh.
Oh, fine.
"Wait," he called out. His voice boomed across the valley, bouncing off the rock walls.
Laia turned mid-air, blinking.
"What?"
"For the new witchcraft art," he said, gruff and pretending he was doing her a great favor, "we will hold the sacrifice sooner. The full ritual. One clan alone won't be enough, but I will rally the others. But—" He fixed her with a stern amber stare. "Next batch of resources and new techniques? The dragon clan gets first pick."
Laia all but launched herself into the air in her haste to nod.
"Deal," she said at once. "Absolutely. First pick, no questions asked. You won't regret it."
Vorath gave a gruff hum of approval and waved a claw to send her on her way. She turned and darted off toward the altar, already mentally counting crystals, he was sure.
Halfway to the rift back to the mortal realm, she paused and twisted around, cupping her hands around her mouth.
"—slow down!" her voice carried back on the wind, thin and distorted by distance. "Your advancement—too fast—I can't keep up with the cost!"
The wind snatched the words away halfway. Vorath tilted his head, cupping one ear ridge.
"What? Speak up! Can't hear you!"
"ADVANCEMENT SLOW DOWN!" she shouted again, waving both arms. "RESOURCE COST TOO HIGH!"
The wind shifted. The words broke apart.
Vorath blinked.
Oh.
Spirit up.
Rise up.
Outwork every clan on the continent.
He brightened, thumping a claw against his chest in understanding.
"Got it!" he roared back. "We'll pick up the pace! Good call!"
Laia's figure seemed to freeze for a heartbeat. Then, before she could shout again, she vanished in a flicker of gold, pulled back through the divine rift.
Vorath chuckled deep in his throat, well pleased.
"Thoughtful little thing," he muttered to himself. "Knows we're behind on magic, and she's already pushing us to catch up faster. Not bad."
He forgot all about sunbathing. He spread his great leathery wings and launched into the air, circling once over the valley to roar down at the other dragons below.
"Up! All of you! No more napping! New training starts today! New witch-art! We're getting stronger!"
The younger dragons groaned from their rocky perches, but they dragged themselves to their feet anyway.
Ten days, Vorath thought, banking toward the demon holds. Ten days of steady drilling, and they could push the whole kingdom's rank up another tier.
What a nice surprise that would be for the little godling.
Halfway to the volcano, he paused.
Wait. The sacrifice. He couldn't let the dragon clan carry all of it alone. That wouldn't be right.
Six clans total. Each could send a few thousand representatives. Pooled together, ten thousand worshippers for one proper ritual. That would be more than enough.
He grinned to himself, beat his wings harder, and veered toward the shadow enclaves first. Time to rally the troops.
Back in her cramped attic apartment in the mortal fringe district, Laia stumbled out of the divine rift and landed hard on her wooden chair.
She leaned forward, elbows on the table, and stared at her kingdom status panel with a faint, gnawing unease.
Had he heard her? She wasn't sure. The wind had been terrible.
She had meant it, too. They needed to slow down. If the whole kingdom advanced another tier, her daily cost would skyrocket.
Five more days. Just five more days in the mortal realm—five whole years in kingdom time—without any major jumps. That was all she asked.
She patted the small leather pouch at her waist. Twenty-three divinity crystals. Twenty-three. A fortune, by her current standards. If she was careful, if nothing went wrong, it could last her weeks.
It wouldn't be enough, though. Not long-term.
She stretched, her joints popping, and flopped backward onto her narrow, lumpy bed.
She needed a job. Side work. Something on campus that paid in crystals. She would look into it tomorrow.
Normal gods didn't need to sleep. Divine essence sustained them.
But Laia was poor.
Sleep burned far less power than staying awake studying or running divine errands. It was the only cost-cutting trick she had left.
She closed her eyes, and within minutes, she was fast asleep.
Down in her kingdom, far below her notice, the clans stirred. Dragons drilled in the valleys. Demons tested new forging techniques. Shadow-kind expanded their tunnel networks. Dwarves tinkered with improved siege engines.
The faith value on her status panel ticked slowly, steadily downward.
The overall power rating of her kingdom climbed, slow and sure, hour by hour.
She did not feel a thing.
The next morning, Laia stood at the public void-coach stop, staring blankly at the ticket slot.
She dropped one divinity crystal into the payment slot. It clinked softly, vanishing into the mechanism.
The coach rumbled up, its hull plated with cheap void-warding iron. She climbed on, found a seat by the window, and stared out at the passing streets in a state of quiet, existential despair.
She didn't remember walking to the stop.
She barely remembered waking up.
All she could think about was the notification that had blared in her vision the second she opened her eyes:
RANK ADVANCEMENT CONFIRMED
Current Divine Rank: Early Third Rank
Daily Sustaining Cost: 10 divinity crystals
Ten.
Ten crystals. Per day.
She had woken up stronger. She had woken up ranked up. And it had cost her ten crystals before she had even gotten out of bed.
Worse—when she had fumbled for her status panel, she had found the rest of the bad news.
Faith generation: zero. Not a single crystal trickling in from daily devotion. The sacrifice had gone through overnight, depositing just shy of one thousand crystals into her reserve.
One thousand crystals. At ten a day, that was one hundred days.
One hundred days. Then nothing.
And the last sacrifice had been two hundred days apart. At this rate, she would starve long before the next one.
To add insult to injury, the kingdom's divine channels had sealed shut the second the rank advancement settled. The whole realm was stabilizing, recalibrating to its new strength. She couldn't descend. She couldn't send messages. She couldn't yell at them for advancing too fast.
They were on their own down there, doing who knew what, and she couldn't do a thing about it.
The coach rumbled to a stop outside the academy gates. Laia trudged off, her shoulders hunched.
One hundred days until she ran out. One full year of kingdom time before she could descend again for free—unless she wanted to blow one hundred crystals on a single descent oracle card.
She had thought about training a divine emissary, too. A mortal speaker who could pass messages back and forth. But that required a baseline of genuine faith from the candidate.
And not a single one of her stubborn, ungrateful subjects qualified.
She laughed a bitter, hollow little laugh to herself as she walked toward the dormitory wing.
When the gods close a door, they slam the window shut too, apparently.
There was one option left. Humiliating. Undignified. But survivable.
She had a dorm room on campus. She barely used it, barely spoke to her roommates, had kept to herself all term for fear they would figure out how poor she was.
But the academy dining hall served meals infused with low-grade divine energy. A single meal could replace half a day's sustaining cost. And if she was very nice, very charming, very pitiful…
Maybe her roommates would let her mooch a few meals.
Laia took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and turned toward the dormitories.
It was time to swallow her pride.
It was time to bat her eyelashes and hope her roommates weren't the cruel sort.