Chapter 1

Once, I was the Golden Dragon Princess, loved by my family and cherished by the man I would have died for. Then one accusation shattered everything. My dragon core was sealed, and I was cast into the frozen abyss to repent for a crime I never committed. Three years later, I died alone beneath the endless snow. My body was brought back on the day he was supposed to marry another woman. He stared at my lifeless face, trembling. “Seraphina… please wake up.” 

——

"Move it! You coreless piece of trash! If you don't mine ten baskets of fire crystals today, you can forget about your ration of black bread!"

The half-orc overseer cracked his barbed leather whip, bringing it down savagely on my back.

I had lost count of the years since I was exiled to the Frigid Abyss.

Maybe three. Maybe five.

There is no day or night in the Frigid Abyss—only an endless, howling blizzard and the fire crystal veins that emit a faint crimson glow at the bottom of the chasm.

The whip lashed against me again and again, shredding my thin, coarse prison tunic.

The beads of blood on the lash froze into ice shards in mid-air before they could even hit the snow.

I didn't dodge. I didn't cry out in pain. I simply had no strength left.

I used to be Seraphina, the most noble First Princess of the Golden Dragon Clan on the continent of Oslanth.

My scales once outshone the sun itself, and my dragon breath could melt the hardest permafrost.

But now, I was little more than a walking skeleton, lower than the most wretched goblin.

My Dragon Core was sealed three years ago on a stormy, lightning-filled night—by the order of my own father, the Dragon King Aurelius.

"Seraphina, you have disappointed me beyond words. Not only were you jealous of Elara, but you actually tried to poison Valerius at his coming-of-age ceremony!" My mother, Ignis, cradled the frail Elara in her arms, her face full of heartache.

"If Elara hadn't sacrificed half of her own Dragon Core to draw out the poison, he would be dead!"

"Seal her core and exile her to the Frigid Abyss. You shall not return until you have learned true repentance," Aurelius commanded coldly.

"No, Father! It wasn't me!"

No matter how I pleaded, they wouldn't listen.

I tried to tell them that Elara had planted the poison herself. I tried to tell Valerius that I was the one who had risked my life to save him in the Demonic Beast Forest—that I was the one whose reverse scale had been ripped out in the process, not Elara.

But Valerius only sneered at me.

"Seraphina, you used to be merely spoiled, but I never expected you to become this malicious. Go rot in the Abyss and reflect on your sins. If you miss Elara's Soul-Binding Ceremony, don't come crying to us later."

The Soul-Binding Ceremony.

Counting the days... it was tomorrow.

Trembling, I raised my dulled iron pickaxe and smashed it viciously into the ice before me.

Shards of fire crystal flew outward, slicing my cheek.

I had to mine ten baskets.

Elara had sent word: if I could present ten baskets of the purest fire crystals as a congratulatory gift today, she would plead with Father to let me return to the Sunfire Citadel to attend the ceremony.

I didn't care about the ceremony. I just wanted to go back and ask Valerius to his face—did he really just casually throw my reverse scale away to someone else?

'Cough, cough...' A violent fit of coughing seized me, and I spat out a mouthful of blackened blood mixed with fragments of my own internal organs.

A Golden Dragon without its core couldn't even survive a single winter in this frozen hellish wasteland.

Sheer willpower was the only thing that had kept me alive this long.

But now, even that seemed to be fading.

My fingers were frostbitten a sickly purplish-black, the nails having long since fallen off.

Every swing of the pickaxe was accompanied by the sickening grinding of my own bones.

My strength finally gave out. My grip loosened, and the pickaxe slipped from my hands, clattering uselessly against the ice.

I collapsed right after it.

It was so cold.

"Get up! Stop playing dead!"

The overseer's whip lashed down once more, but I couldn't feel the pain anymore.

I could only struggle to keep my eyes open, staring up at the perpetually gray sky above the chasm.

The Sunfire Citadel must be so warm right now.

The grand hall was surely lit with hundreds of dragon-amber candles, and Valerius would be wearing his favorite silver formal attire.

My breathing grew shallower by the second, and my vision began to blur.

Suddenly, my body felt incredibly light.

I drifted up from the frozen ground, hovering in mid-air.

I watched as the overseer kicked my lifeless corpse.

A second later, the leather whip slipped from his grasp and hit the ice.

"Sh-she's dead? Quick! Go to the Sunfire Citadel and inform the Dragon King!"