Mistress of the Dark.
"And when he opened the second seal, a dragon went forth. It was as black as the void, and its rider was granted permission to take away peace from the earth and to make men slay one another." - Legend of House Calis
Tag - Cin , Makko Vyres
The dragon's wing descended like the veil of a cathedral, a sacred path of flesh and fury laid bare before her. Rain hissed against its hide, steam curling where dark scales met the air like the breath of a dying world. Serina Calis stood at the threshold of myth—hood down, golden hair slicked to the edges of her face, and her eyes gleaming like stars trapped in ice.
She did not flinch.
Not at the dragon's presence.
Not at the sight of the molten iron mask bolted to its skull like a crown of thorns.
And certainly not at him.
Her gaze did not waver as Mykus spoke, serpentine tongue slashing at her dignity, his voice cloaked in the threat of a puppet master who feared he had already lost the strings.
"Your mouth drips prophecy like a leper's wound," she said at last, softly. "All blood and no meaning."
Her voice didn't rise. It deepened, a shade colder, a fraction more final. She took a single step closer to the beast. "You do not command it. You maim it. Bind it. Chain it like a frightened priest shackling a god and calling it worship."
Her hand extended—not toward Mykus, not in aggression, but toward the collar. Toward the handles. Toward destiny.
She did not yet touch.
"You may have summoned this creature, Dragonmaster. You may have shackled its flesh. But its soul is not yours."
Her eyes turned slightly, catching Mykus in their periphery like a knife reflecting moonlight. "And neither is mine."
Then it came. The voice.
I am mine, Leech.
It was not a roar. It was not defiance. It was something purer—a pain-spoken truth hurled like a stone from the bottom of a well. Her breath caught, just slightly. A chill rippled through her body not from fear, but from recognition.
She stepped forward again.
Only now, so close that the heat of the drake's broken soul warped the air around her, did she lift a hand to the iron collar.
Not to grip the handles.
Not yet.
Instead, she placed her fingertips between them. A gentle press. No force behind it. No claim.
Just contact.
"I am not here to own you," she murmured aloud to the beast. "And I will not beg you to be tamed."
Her voice dropped to a thread.
"But know this—if we ride together, if we burn this world to embers side by side, they will write legends that even your scars will not remember. You and I… We will not be tools. We will be symbols. And symbols do not ask permission."
The air trembled again. Her cape fluttered behind her like torn silk caught in a storm. Every line of her form, every angle of her armor, radiated elegance sharpened into weaponry.
Then she turned—just enough to let her voice carry.
"Mykus Cowl. You can have your jealousy. You can even have your rituals. But from this moment forward…"
She placed her hand on the handle.
"…the dragon has chosen me."
And with that, Serina climbed.
One step at a time, up the black wing, past the burned scales and seared runes, toward the iron-clad neck of a creature that should never have existed.
To ride a wounded god into battle.
To make history tremble.
To become the myth she was born to be.
Dominick von Ascania
The battlefield crackled with thunder and fire, a hellscape of loyalties shattered and born anew. Amidst the charge of iron and flesh, beneath the beating drums of revolution, a shadow moved—not with haste, but with purpose.
She was dressed not in armor, but in something older, something truer to her role. A skin of shadows, draped over lean muscle and ancient cloth woven with whisper-sigils. Her face was veiled, her eyes lined with kohl like funeral rites of forgotten empires. Where she walked, torches guttered. Rain curved around her. The Force avoided her like a living thing.
Nyssa Vel, Praeceptor of the Manus Obscura. Agent of Atramentum. Servant of the Corruptor of the Light.
She did not fight. She did not scream. She simply appeared—at the edge of the chaos, just off Dominick's path.
Waiting.
She had watched him, this son of nobility, this would-be liberator drunk on justice. A man who charged not for crown or cause, but to end the very game both sides played. A dangerous thing. A useful thing. And Serina had plans for dangerous men with clean ideals.
The moment came.
Dominick, blade raised high, surged forward amidst the clamor of his men. His current sword—a loyal, stalwart thing—clashed against the air, hungry for a tyrant's blood. But it would not do. It was a farmer's revolt in steel. What Serina intended for him demanded something darker.
"Heir of ash…"
The words bit, not into the flesh, but into the soul.
She was there, between heartbeats, at the edge of his path. She moved with no sound. No weight. Her presence crawled across the senses like frost over grave-soil.
From her robes, she unwrapped a blade.
A blade not made so much as bound.
It pulsed with a cold beyond weather. The runes down its length screamed in silence. And even in this battlefield of fire and fury, a hush came over the land.
She raised it—offering it like an executioner offers peace.
"It was waiting for thee," she rasped. Her voice was a cavern—hollow, and full of teeth. "Hungering, dreaming… in ice and death, it slumbered. Not for a king. Not for a tyrant. For thee."
The pommel's eye pulsed. Something within stirred. Something old.
"Thou seek to end the throne," she continued, breath cold against the air, "to burn the yoke, to sever the hand that feeds itself. But thou wieldest a child's blade. It knows not the truth of endings."
She stepped closer.
"Take this sword… the blade of undoing… the fang of the forgotten. Speak thy justice through it, and the world shall hear naught but silence and fire."
Lightning split the sky. The blade glowed brighter. Frost climbed her sleeves.
Then, one last whisper:
"But beware, child of chains… for it will not obey.
It will only… suggest."
No promise of glory.
No lie of peace.
Only power. Laid bare. Waiting to be used.
And deep inside the crystalline pommel, something watched Dominick. Not with malice.
With hunger.
