The dragon's sheer scale made me take an involuntary step backward. From a distance, it had looked impossibly long but thin—up close; I felt ant-sized standing next to a skyscraper that could move.

  The head alone matched a city block. The serpentine body wound through the water around my rocky perch with matching thickness—hundreds of kilometers of jade and blue scales that rippled with barely contained power. Every movement sent waves rolling across the ocean's surface in rhythmic patterns.

  When that massive head finally leveled itself directly in front of me, hovering meters away, my knees went soft.

  Valor was drowning under the dragon's presence, but the crushing fear I expected never came. The concepts radiating from the creature felt familiar somehow. Protective. An oath-keeper meeting another oath-keeper—a guardian of life recognizing a kindred spirit.

  I glanced down at Red, who sat on the stone with his tongue hanging out, tail wagging at full speed. Apparently, meeting ancient dragons ranked somewhere between "squirrel" and "dinner time" on his excitement scale.

  "Aspirant," a voice resonated through my bones, vibrating my ribs. I couldn't tell if the dragon was actually speaking or if I was experiencing its words the way I felt Red's thoughts. "Not an Interloper."

  The massive creature's lips curved into what could only be called a grin, revealing teeth that would make telephone poles jealous.

  "A dragon," I breathed. "A real fucking dragon..."

  The colossal head jerked back as if I'd slapped it. Those ancient eyes widened with genuine surprise.

  "You know of us?" Gary's familiar voice came from my left.

  I spun to find him standing there in flowing green and blue robes that matched the dragon's scales with suspicious precision. When I looked back at the dragon, it was nodding in perfect sync with Gary's movements.

  "Us?" I asked, though my brain was already connecting the dots at double speed. "Are dragons not well known?"

  "Color me surprised, Ben Crawford," Gary said, grinning with his characteristic mischief. "That a Terran would know of dragons after so long. Your people truly are an enigma." He gestured broadly at the surreal landscape around us. "We can speak safely here for a while, and you may ask any question. We will attempt to help, though remember—you are on a timer to return to Archon Diana."

  "We?" I said, looking between Gary and the massive dragon that was still blocking out half the horizon with its coiled body.

  Gary laughed, the sound carrying genuine warmth. "Forgive me—it's been so long since I've had a real visitor. I've existed as a tower spirit for ages now. It took me longer than I care to admit to regain enough control to manifest my true form and meet you properly."

  I stared at Gary, then at the dragon, then down at Red, who looked remarkably unsurprised by this revelation.

  "You knew something about this?" I asked, scratching behind the dog's ears.

  , Red sent through our bond, his mental voice carrying ancient sadness. .

  “Yeah, I’m not going to pretend I know what that means.”

  Gary nodded approvingly at Red. "Your familiar and our kind share certain similarities. Though he thrives while we dragons have been extinct for far too long. No dragon can truly die, but we exist now only within our towers. Thanks to the Eld..." He paused, visibly catching himself. "The Arcadians."

  I caught that slip immediately. "Elders?" I asked.

  Gary shook his head with visible hesitation. "We call them Arcadians—those who came before. They built the signal towers, and we serve as their anchors."

  "All tower spirits are dragons?" The question came out flat, my brain struggling to catch up with the implications. "And what do you mean, signal towers?"

  "Most tower spirits are, yes," Gary confirmed. "We power them so that life and knowledge may travel the Multiverse through the Astral."

  I stared at him, understanding that I was being given information most people would never hear. Not just secret—protected. "Not many people know about your kind, do they?"

  Gary's smile turned slightly mischievous. "It is not as big of a secret as you would think, though Alan’dara would try to make it so—she can be rather... difficult. Her greed for knowledge knows no bounds."

  The weight of everything I'd learned crashed down on me. "Why am I here?" The question burst out before I could stop it. "Why me? Why show me all this?"

  Gary was quiet for a long moment, clearly choosing his words with care.

  "Because you opened the door," he said finally. "Only an Arcadian could have opened that door. Knowledge of their language and that sort of mathematics has been lost for eons."

  The implication hit me with physical force. "Wait. Are humans...?"

  Gary shook his head, but his expression remained thoughtful. "I do not think so, that would be fascinating, but no. However, I suspect your people are connected to them somehow." His gaze grew distant. "I had hoped you might know more about our long-lost friends. Perhaps in time we might learn the truth."

  Something in his tone suggested he was speaking as much to Red as to me with that last part.

  He refocused on me with renewed intensity. "I brought you here because this is the one place we can speak without causing ripples throughout the Transpiritual System. And because we need to formulate a plan to deal with this Hollowflame corruption. That it found its way so close to a long-forgotten entrance to our realm without detection is..." He paused. "Deeply concerning."

  "That door was some sort of portal into the tower?" I asked, trying to wrap my head around the physics—or lack thereof.

  "It is a gateway—a dedicated entrance designed for only those capable of opening it. If the door is destroyed, so is the gateway. Though if something corrupted made it through with you..."

  "We destroyed the beast's mana core," I said suddenly, remembering the sick wrongness radiating from it. "Felt like the right thing to do. The corruption was... intense. We didn't bother asking questions first."

  Gary's eyebrows shot up in genuine surprise. "Perhaps it would have been better to study it at Sylvarus for research... but I appreciate the forethought. If Hollowflame behaves the way we've observed, it could have caused untold damage to the towers."

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Gary seemed to consider something for a moment, then faded away, leaving nothing behind but the massive dragon still coiled around our rocky outcropping.

  The ancient creature moved.

  The effect was breathtaking. Its colossal body spun through the water with impossible grace, sending torrents of displaced ocean outward in spiraling waves that probably qualified as small tsunamis. Wind whipped around us as the dragon's movements created their own weather patterns. The water directly below our platform churned and bubbled, the level dropping rapidly to reveal just how deep the creature's body went.

  From the swirling chaos, a small blue and green bubble rose from the depths, floating through the wind-torn air. It danced around us for a moment before settling gently in front of me, hovering at eye level.

  It looked similar to the Spirit-Well Dara had given me during my training at Sylvarus's Trial Grounds, but this one was much smaller—about the size of a golf ball. When I reached out to touch it, the bubble solidified into what looked like polished jade with a ripple of sapphire running through its core.

  I expected to feel the same massive reservoir of mana I'd sensed in my other Spirit-Well. Instead, this one felt hollow. Yearning—an empty vessel waiting to be filled.

  The dragon settled back into stillness around us, that enormous head leveling to meet my gaze once again.

  "A Spirit-Well?" I asked, turning the smooth sphere over in my hands.

  "Indeed. An attuned Life and Light Well should complement the spiritually-aspected one you received from Alan'dara nicely. This one is empty, so that you may fill it yourself." Gary's voice came from behind me.

  I turned to find him standing there again, wearing his familiar mischievous smile. "While it might not be immediately useful on your current path, I venture that having somewhere to store aspected mana might prove invaluable for a Runebinder of your particular talents."

  "I can see how it would be useful... magical battery?" I said, storing the sphere carefully. "Thank you."

  "Consider it a reward for preventing Hollowflame from entering our realm. And for keeping my secret."

  "Should I mention any of this?" I asked, gesturing vaguely at the impossible scene around us.

  Gary nodded thoughtfully. "I will inform Elena and Diana of this development—they have been grasping for any information related to what happened while you were at Sylvarus. That your group can destroy this corruption so handily is far more than we had expected... Your friends have questions, and it will be up to you to decide how much to reveal. The winds of Karma shift, Aspirant. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but you are at their center."

  He motioned toward a doorway that had appeared behind me at the very tip of the rocky outcropping. Through the opening, I could see familiar tower corridors waiting beyond.

  As I started walking toward the exit, a sudden realization struck me, and I looked up at the massive dragon one more time.

  "That was you, wasn't it? In the murals? The one who fell to the Shi'an?"

  The dragon's response rumbled through my bones with what sounded almost like pride. "It was a glorious battle."

  He offered no further explanation, and somehow that felt perfectly right. I laughed as I stepped through the doorway and back into the familiar safety of the tower, my head still spinning with everything I'd learned as my aura reasserted itself.

  "Ben! What happened?" Malcolm's voice came from behind, and I turned to see him and Cass lounging on a set of chairs eating fruit and drinking fragrant tea.

  "So it was some sort of secret entrance to the tower, I gathered that," Malcolm said around a mouthful of mango, juice running down his chin.

  "Something along those lines," I said, savoring another sip of the delicious blue tea. I hadn't tasted it since my first day on Ark, and I made a mental note to figure out where I could get more. "Sort of an on-demand gateway into the inner workings from the way Gary made it seem."

  Red sat next to Cass with laser focus, his brown eyes tracking a plate of strawberries balanced in her lap. She casually plucked one from the pile and offered it to him. He accepted it with such delicacy and precision that I couldn't help but chuckle. The contrast between his usual slobbering enthusiasm and this careful berry reception was perfect.

  "And you just somehow knew how to open it?" Cass asked, scratching behind Red's ears as he demolished the strawberry. "Sylvarus thing or human thing?"

  I couldn't help but laugh at how she'd started categorizing the impossible things I did into these two neat buckets. "Human thing. Some mathematics and ancient languages apparently overlap with the Arcadians at certain points."

  Malcolm paused mid-chew, his analytical mind clearly working overtime. "I can understand mathematical overlap… the more I learn, the more I realize numbers are universal constants. But those strange letters representing numbers, and whatever that symbol was... both matching something developed on a world we aren't even sure exists?" He shook his head. "I watched it happen and I still think it's impossible."

  We sat in what felt more like a wide hallway lined with comfortable seating areas than the private meditation rooms I'd grown used to. The semi-public nature made me hesitant to share too much detail about my conversation with Gary's true form.

  "What Gary found more concerning was that something related to Hollowflame had somehow made its way that close to the entrance. If I didn't know better, it sounds like it was trying to get into the tower's spirit realm." I set down my teacup with more force than intended. "And I don't need to tell you what would happen if it succeeded. Cass and I have seen firsthand what that corruption does."

  The memory of Gu Li hit me: Dara's offspring, the magnificent Komodo dragon twisted into a writhing aberration that had torn through Sylvarus's magic academy and the surrounding city. And the Varglid invasion that followed, those nightmarish evolved versions of the goblin-like Glids. It took hundreds of people and half a dozen Grand Master Runebinders, a Rune Warden, and the primordial representation of Light to quell it.

  If Gary was a dragon that powerful, what would have happened if Hollowflame had done to him what it did to Gu Li?

  I didn't want to find out.

  Malcolm sat quietly for a moment, then reached into his mana sanctum and pulled out a roll of paper and a pencil. He spread the parchment across the low table between us and sketched what I recognized as a rough outline of La-Roc Island.

  He drew the central mountain range first, then marked an X about where we would have been when we fell into that snake-filled pit. "We were here," he said, drawing a line south toward the main city with another X. "Give or take, roughly halfway back toward Rainhaven."

  He added a third X closer to the southern coast, near where I guessed Rainhaven would be. "And this is where that spirit realm was where you found Ben?"

  Cass studied the crude map while feeding Red another strawberry. "Close enough, I think."

  Malcolm crossed his arms, his expression growing serious. "That's two significant spirit-related incursions within a few spans of each other in a month. I'm not saying they're connected... but..."

  "And the one near Riverbend," I added, remembering the weird glid-frog hybrids we'd stumbled upon.

  Malcolm marked another X near Riverbend, roughly where the swamp had been, and pursed his lips.

  "You think there's something in the old pathways?" I asked, though I suspected I already knew the answer.

  Malcolm nodded grimly. "Maybe. But we need to get to Sylvarus to prepare for the dueling rounds. We should at least have Elena send some Hunters down where we fell."

  "Oh shit!" The urgency hit me. "How long have we been here? We need to get back to Diana."

  "It's been about four hours," Gary said, appearing beside me on the couch. I twitched only slightly in surprise. "I've already informed Elena about what's happened," Gary continued calmly. "She agrees we need Hunters investigating the Old Pathways. I must admit, I hadn't considered including the nascent spirit realm near Rainhaven in our concerns. There is..." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "Another similar entrance in that vicinity as well."

  I ran my hand down my face, feeling the weight of everything pressing down. "There's a lot going on right now, isn't there?"

  "Sure seems that way," Cass said, giving Red the last strawberry. "Feels like things aren't waiting for you to step out of the kitchen anymore..."

  The silence that followed hung heavy between us. Malcolm stared at his makeshift map, probably running calculations in his head. Cass leaned back in her chair with her arms crossed, that calculating expression on her face that meant she was working through tactical scenarios.

  Red pushed his head into my lap, his warm presence grounding me.

  , he sent through our bond, direct. .

  "Yeah, buddy," I said, scratching behind his ears. "Pack together."

  Gary cleared his throat gently. "If you're ready, I will take you to the Citadel."

  I exchanged glances with Malcolm and Cass. They both nodded.

  "Alright," I said, standing up and stretching. My muscles protested slightly—apparently, standing in a dragon's spirit realm while having cosmic revelations was more physically taxing than it seemed. "Let's go get paid."

  As we followed Gary through the tower corridors, Red trotting alongside me with his tail wagging, I couldn't shake the feeling that everything was speeding up. Hollowflame corruption near ancient gateways. Dragons living as tower spirits. Humans were connected to mysterious beings called Arcadians.

  And me, apparently right in the middle of it.

  My dad had always said that Crawfords found adventure wherever they went.

  Turned out he was more right than he could have possibly known.