The Dragon Heir

There were very few things capable of fazing someone like Alexei… according to Alexei himself. The wording mattered, because were was the operative term. He had been trapped in this hellhole with no way out for nearly ten years now, and in that time he had encountered a great many things— far too many— that were not only capable of unsettling him, but of erasing his existence in the most agonizing ways imaginable. Some of them even promised fates worse than death, which felt like unnecessary ambition, but here they were.

The fog surrounding them was one such existence.

Alexei knew better than to think of it as merely a deadly phenomenon, or even a lethal ecosystem that happened to nurture leviathans and other deep-sea nightmares dragged onto land. The fog rose every dusk and vanished at the first hint of dawn, punctual to a fault. Always on time. Never early. Never late.

Where it went afterward, hell if he knew.

What he did know came from the traces left behind by the people who had once lived in this cursed place and died learning its rules. The fog was alive. Not metaphorically. Not poetically. Alive in the way that mattered. That knowledge had become one of their core survival principles, passed down and refined over the years because ignorance here was not punished gently.

Alexei was not especially gifted in direct combat, even though he was a Red Core himself. In a straight fight against his comrades, he was not confident he would win. Unless, of course, he resorted to underhanded tactics. He was rather good at those. Talents came in many forms, after all.

He cut that line of thought short before it spiraled any further. Part of his mind was still counting down, silently begging for the night to end so they could survive long enough to see another sunrise.

If only they had been faster.

If they had reached the valley in time, they could have climbed high enough through the mountain passages to leave the fog beneath them. Fog dwellers rarely surfaced that far up. What they were doing now was nothing short of suicidal. The moment a fog leviathan— or even a pack of common dwellers— noticed them, it would be over quickly.

Alexei prayed fervently that it would not come to that. Lately, it felt as though he had already spent every scrap of luck he had ever been entitled to.

Apparently, his prayers were being ignored.

He flinched as another massive explosion echoed through the fog.

What the fuck was happening in there?

Alexei was certain that earlier, when the fog had shifted and bowed unnaturally, a leviathan had passed nearby, close enough that it nearly brushed against the barrier protecting them. That alone had been enough to turn his blood cold. Then came an explosion powerful enough to make the fog convulse.

Now this was the fourth.

These later detonations were farther away than the first, but the fact that they could still be heard and felt through the fog spoke volumes. Explosions with enough force to disturb the fog at this distance were no small matter. He dearly hoped they stayed exactly where they were detonating now, and nowhere closer.

Because if there was one thing Alexei knew for certain about fog dwellers, it was this:

They did not rely on explosions as they preferred savage methods. And they had the teeth to make them count.

It was also very dark. The oppressive sort born from constant, swirling fog paired with unbroken cloud cover that smothered moons and stars alike. The air was heavy. If Alexei had relied on his eyes alone, he would have been blind.

Fortunately, he did not.

Bio Sense was his greatest asset, at least as far as skills went. It unfurled outward from him, mapping the fogless circle with near-perfect clarity. Anything that lived— or had lived recently enough for nature’s imprint to linger— left behind a trace. Life always carried weight. There was a texture. A kind of pressure that could be felt if one knew how to listen. Tracing it had long since become second nature to him. And so, despite the pitch-black surroundings, Alexei perceived everything. Not through sight, not strictly, but through something close enough that his mind no longer bothered to argue the distinction.

The fog, however, was different.

It blocked everything.

His Bio Sense simply stopped the instant it brushed against the barrier, like running face-first into a wall of ice. Alexei did not even attempt to push further. He knew better. The last time he had tried, the cold itself had answered. One moment his perception had been extended, the next it was frozen solid, locked in place with an absolute, suffocating force.

He still remembered the sensation vividly, even if he never spoke of it. His skill had seized mid-expansion, refusing to respond, as though something vast and indifferent had grabbed hold of it. Then came the backlash. His body had hit the ground hard, muscles spasming violently, consciousness flickering in and out as he convulsed for a full three minutes.

That lesson had been learned once.

It did not require repetition.

Ironically, the skill itself hovered on the edge of a breakthrough. Level nineteen. Just one more. Two years of constant use, relentless refinement under pressure, and survival-driven necessity had pushed it to the brink of Tier Five. Ancestors willing, the next advancement would be monumental. A high-tier sensory skill could easily mark the difference between living long enough to regret your choices and dying before regret ever had the chance to form in this cursed place.

Alexei let out a thin, humorless exhale.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

He was just about to open his system screen when a deep rumble rolled through the ground outside the barrier.

He froze.

Every trace of life within the fogless circle flinched in unison, Alexei included. Then it came again. Monstrous hisses followed, layered over more rumbling impacts. One of them was undeniably massive.

Maybe it was a skirmish between fog dwellers.

Unfortunately, that thought offered no comfort. He could not even whisper reassurance to his comrades. Any sound was an invitation to fate here, and fate here had a habit of answering eagerly. Silence was safer. Silence was survival.

The rumbles grew louder, closer, echoing again and again as whatever conflict this was continued drifting toward them. Cold sweat prickled along Alexei’s spine. His wolf familiar was already bristling, teeth bared toward the fog in silent warning.

He felt Maksim move closer, steel whispering free as his sword was drawn. Maksim was the most gifted among them, gifted enough that it had probably gone to his head. But in this moment, none of that mattered. If it came down to it, they would have to fight.

And that was even worse.

Any noise would draw attention. Even without fog inside the barrier, the dwellers themselves were intelligent enough to find other ways in. Clever enough to kill them regardless.

Alexei prayed, quietly and without conviction, that whatever creatures were out there would finish their battle elsewhere.

He must have jinxed it.

Something massive surged past the barrier, a colossal fin slicing through the edge of it before crashing somewhere nearby. Alexei went pale. That fin had to be at least two meters long.

Then another disturbance came from behind them.

Another from the south.

One.

Two.

Three.

Fins kept cutting through the fog in relentless motion.

And none of them were leaving.

Through his senses, Alexei picked up the sheer, unfiltered horror bleeding off Maksim and the others. It was not subtle. Fear had a texture to it when Bio Sense was involved, a tight, acidic pressure that crawled along the nerves.

It was an entire school.

One of those things alone would have been survivable, barely. Almost a dozen at once was not even a fight anymore, it was a death sentence. More explosions thundered somewhere deep in the fog, but they no longer mattered. Whatever was happening out there had lost relevance. Survival was the only currency that mattered now, and consequences could sort themselves out later, assuming anyone lived long enough to face them.

It did not take long for the fog dwellers to notice the anomaly.

A gigantic, fish-like mouth slid into existence at the edge of the fogless space, split wide into a frozen grin. Rows of too many and too even teeth lined its interior, before it slipped back into the mist as if it had never been there. Alexei reacted instantly. The vines beneath their feet stirred and tapped twice against their boots, the predetermined signal.

The danger was here.

Mana surged. Swords came free. Alexei drew his wand as the terrain answered his will, vines thickening and writhing across the ground in defensive patterns. Everyone stood alert. Not all of them possessed sensory skills like his Bio Sense, but each had something, whatever their class allowed. None were as precise, none as comprehensive, but together it would have to suffice in this absolute darkness.

The first attack came almost immediately.

A massive shape lunged out of the fog, barreling straight toward them. Alexei intercepted it on instinct, durable vines reinforced with Red Core mana snapping upward to bind and deflect. Maksim and his team surged forward in perfect coordination, swords blurring as mana lit their blades in muted glows.

The creature was not massive in the way they had feared, not a leviathan. It screeched instead, releasing a shockwave of frozen mana that rippled outward. Icicles erupted from the ground in violent bursts, nearly impaling one of their comrades before Alexei yanked him clear with a snap of vines. Maksim had anticipated the counter. He was already moving, dodging first and re-engaging without hesitation.

Steel flashed.

A deep gash opened along the fog dweller’s flank.

Then another.

And another.

It flailed wildly, retreating into the fog, only to surge back out again from a different angle, reorienting, probing for weakness. It was dangerous, but manageable.

What was not manageable was the second one.

It emerged with barely a warning, jaws snapping eagerly as it lunged for fresh prey. Alexei uncorked a mana potion and drained it in one motion, forcing his control across the battlefield, vines snapping into place wherever his senses screamed danger. He saved who he could, intercepted what he could, but the balance was shifting slowly.

This was becoming a losing battle.

They would not survive long if it continued like this.

The third nearly sealed it.

One of them almost died when another fog dweller surged in from behind, timing its strike perfectly. Almost. Alexei felt it a fraction of a second too late. He was already turning when it appeared behind him, its maw yawning wide enough to swallow him whole.

Then it stopped.

Not slowed or deflected.

Stopped.

A pressure of alien mana flooded the space around him, yet it was also disturbingly familiar. It was the same signature he had sensed earlier that day. The fog dweller’s jaws hovered inches from his body, trembling and unable to close.

Alexei did not even have time to react before that force multiplied.

Mana condensed, compressed, and intensified.

The fog dweller tried to retreat, thrashing against the invisible grip, but whatever held it did not allow escape. It let out a piercing screech as the pressure spiked, and its head collapsed inward, crushed like overripe fruit.

Silence followed.

Alexei felt his heart miss a beat.

Then another.

Earlier, Alexei had dismissed whoever this mana belonged to as little more than a convenient illusion. A trick. A hoax born from panic. It had helped them, yes, but help alone was not proof. Now, with that force manifesting so close he could feel it press against his senses, he realized just how catastrophically wrong that assumption had been.

This was power. Undeniable, obscene power.

And the real question hit him a second later.

Where in the hell was it coming from?

The thought unsettled him far more than it should have.

The violet force spread outward with casual dominance, seizing fog dwellers by the head and crushing them as if they were nothing more than bloated vermin. One. Two. Three. Five. Seven. The count climbed rapidly. The moment a creature’s head was caught within that grip, even for an instant, it never emerged alive. There was no struggle worth noting, no reversal. Just an abrupt end.

It did not stop there.

Beyond the barrier, deep within the fog itself, movement intensified. Screeches echoed in chaotic layers. Anyone with working ears could tell those sounds were not threats or calls to hunt. They were screams of agony. Whatever this force was, it was hunting them out there as well.

And just like that, they survived.

Alexei should have felt relief. He felt none.

In this world, the unknown was never neutral. An unseen benefactor, especially one this powerful and completely untraceable, was not salvation. It was a liability. A danger of a far subtler kind.

Unless… it was not untraceable.

Life told all tales, if you knew how to listen. And so did the nature of whatever carried it.

Alexei dropped to one knee and hastily invoked his class ability, [Verdant’s Favored], forcing mana through the spell with barely restrained urgency. The sensation that followed was deeply wrong, as if trails were flowing backward through reality itself. His Bio Sense snapped onto the violet force with precision, following it upstream, tracing it toward its source.

For a fraction of a second, he found it.

Then the backlash hit.

Pain tore through his skull like a drill boring straight into his thoughts. His vision collapsed inward, color draining from the world as his body hit the ground hard. He clutched his head, a scream clawing its way up his throat, and only barely managed to choke it off by biting down on his own arm until he tasted blood.

There was… someone… or something horrible standing inches behind him.