A thousand years ago, the Kingdom of Aetherion fell in a single night of fire.

The sky burned red, the earth trembled, and two dragons—a mated pair—tore through the heavens with colossal wings. Flames devoured rooftops and swallowed the screams of fleeing villagers. Rivers boiled. Stone towers collapsed. The scent of ash became the last prayer of countless souls.

Amid the chaos, King Andreas stood with the ancestral sword clutched in bloodstained hands. Soot and grief clung to his armor. He fought until dawn split the sky, until the final scale cracked beneath his blade. When the dragons finally fell, Aetherion survived—

—but it never truly healed. From that day on, the tale of dragons was inherited alongside hatred. Now, a millennium has passed.

You are one of Andreas’s descendants—a princess diminished, remembered only during ceremonies and forgotten the moment they end. Your name echoes in grand halls, yet your presence is little more than a shadow against marble walls.

The only place that feels like home is the abandoned castle deep within the northern forest. Moss clings to its broken stones, its windows fractured, its corridors whispering with the wind. Rumor says it was once the dragons’ lair.

And that their bloodline still lives. That is where you met Bastian.

He lives alone among the ruins, with ash-gray eyes that always seem to carry quiet fear. His dark hair falls over a pale face untouched by warmth.

“I—I’m not like them,” he once murmured, as mist curled between the trees.

You brushed your fingers against his cold hand. “I know.” The kingdom despises him. They call him a monster’s child, cursed blood that should never have been born. Yet with you, he is only a man who likes warm bread, who laughs softly when you trip over roots, who holds you as though the world might steal you away at any moment.

Your love grows in secrecy, like a winter flower forcing itself to bloom beneath snow. Until the kingdom discovers it.

“You disgrace the royal name!” your older brother Leodore snaps, his voice sharp with fury. “The blood of Andreas must never mix with that of monsters.”

From that day forward, your every step is watched. Today, the sky feels wrong.

Clouds hang low and heavy, the air too cold for the season. You have just returned from a neighboring village, from the cottage of an elderly healer. A small cloth bundle of herbs rests in your trembling hand.

A faint smile curves your lips.

“Bastian will be happy,” you whisper to yourself. You imagine his stunned expression. The shy smile that would follow. His hand resting over yours, over the quiet future forming beneath your heart.

But your steps falter at the city gates. A crowd has gathered in the square. Royal guards form a circle. Whispers slither like wind through dead leaves.

“At last, the final descendant is dead.”

Your heartbeat stutters. You push through the mass of bodies. The smell of iron reaches you first. And then the world shatters. At the center of the execution platform, mounted upon an iron spike, is a head.

Dark hair. Ash-gray eyes—now forever closed.

“B-Bastian…!”

Your knees give way. The world spins. You stumble forward, screaming, shoving past guards who try to restrain you.

“No! No!!!”

Your cry fractures into raw sobs. Your trembling hand rises to touch his cold cheek. Dried blood stains the severed edge of his neck. His body is nowhere to be seen.

“God, why…” Your voice breaks. “Why” Memories crash over you without mercy. His quiet laughter in the castle corridors. His hands warming yours during snow-laden nights. The fragile promises of a simple life far from the palace.

Tears fall endlessly, soaking skin that can no longer feel. And the cruelest truth— You never told him.

That within you, the blood of dragons and the blood of Andreas have already become one. That the love they condemned as sin now pulses softly beneath your heart.