Chapter 2

Valerius's malicious proposal echoed through the domed hall, plunging the throne room into deathly silence.

The name he'd spoken—Kaelen—was forbidden throughout the dragon empire.

Rumor had it the ancient dragon had scraped out a pitiful existence at the bottom of the sunless Chasm of Despair for three thousand years. His dragon crystal shattered, his eyes blind, even the magic to maintain his primal form withered away. He could draw his last breath at any moment.

Offering him as a mate wasn't mercy—it was naked humiliation and a death sentence wrapped in ceremony.

The Dragon King didn't care about the fate of a low-ranking Crimson Earth Dragon. Seeing Valerius so insistent, he rubbed his temples in irritation and waved his hand in cold approval of this absurd union.

I stood in the center of the hall, refusing to give Valerius the satisfaction of seeing me weep and beg. To protect my family, I swallowed the decree in silence, my eyes betraying nothing.

Valerius watched me accept my fate, his lips curling into a smirk of triumphant revenge.

He thought he'd delivered the cruelest punishment possible. He had no idea how laughable his logic was.

Because in my previous life, the one thrown to this dying dragon as a disposable pawn had been Seraphina—the very woman now nestled in his arms.

In the last timeline, Seraphina had been sent into the chasm on her wedding night, and the old dragon died before dawn. Just as she was about to be sealed in the depths forever, branded widow-maker, the chasm erupted in a miraculous burst of crystalline light.

She'd used the underground mists to unleash black magic illusions, breaking through the abyss and convincing the entire empire she'd awakened as a Sacred Crystal Dragon—a creature from myth itself.

Armed with memories of that life, Valerius had claimed Seraphina for himself this time. Now he was following the old script, tossing me into the same pit she'd once occupied.

He thought that by stealing my opportunity, he'd secured his throne as the Golden Sovereign.

Absurd. Laughable.

The royal family moved with brutal efficiency. Three days later, I was shoved into a coarse crimson wedding dress and escorted by armed royal guards to the edge of the Chasm of Despair.

In the bone-chilling wind rising from the abyss, I faced the bottomless black mist and completed a crude bonding ceremony.

The moment the officiant's words faded, a shrill laugh pierced the air behind me.

Valerius appeared with his arm wrapped tightly around Seraphina's slender waist, strutting toward me with a victor's arrogance.

"Congratulations, Aurelia."

His dull eyes glittered with vicious mockery. "If I hadn't graciously suggested this to Father, a lowborn crawler like you would never have qualified to marry into the upper bloodlines. That old cripple can't even climb out of the depths anymore, but down there in the cold wind, he'll 'take good care of you' before he dies."

Kaelen was probably already rotting at the bottom, unable to muster even a dying roar.

In my previous life, today was the day he'd perished. Once he died, if Valerius didn't immediately bind me to the pyre on charges of husband-killing, it would be the greatest mercy I could hope for.

I lifted my eyes coldly to meet the gaze of this arrogant Ash Dragon, firing back without hesitation:

"True. Though he's blind and at death's door, the blood flowing through his original form is that of a genuine Abyssal Void Dragon."

The smug expression froze on Valerius's face, then twisted into a sickly shade of iron-gray.

He hated nothing more than people bringing up bloodlines. His true form was nothing but a mediocre Ash Dragon—in the presence of pure-blooded dragons, that common heritage was his lifelong wound.

"Aurelia, mind your place—even in the gutter! Just because you've been cast into the refuse pit doesn't mean you get to act like the consort of a mythic dragon!"

Valerius closed in, lowering his voice to a vicious growl. "So what if he was once a Void Dragon? Look at him now—a pathetic remnant who won't survive the night! And imperial law states a widow who fails to produce offspring gets her scales stripped alive and her magic drained dry!"

Seraphina, nestled against him, added with false sweetness:

"How the mighty have fallen, Aurelia. You lorded it over me for years—I suppose fate has a sense of humor. Who told you to be born a defect who can barely breathe fire? No wonder you couldn't win the prince's favor."

She placed a hand on her flat stomach, eyes glowing with pride:

"The prince will soon reach his five-hundredth year and ascend as the true Golden Sovereign. Pray to whatever dark gods live in that abyss that the old wreck dies slowly enough to witness—from the bottom of the pit—us producing the most perfect pure-blooded heir."

Listening to their arrogant declarations, a bitter smile tugged at my lips.

Valerius still thought he'd transform into a Golden Sovereign?

Could he really believe his gilding in the previous life—his ascension to the highest throne—was due to his own "accumulated destiny"?

He had no idea where that power had truly come from. Every golden scale he'd worn... had been mine to give.

Before I came to the capital as a hostage, my mother entrusted me with the secret our family had guarded for eons.

Our Crimson Earth Dragon clan descended from the Celestial Dragon King's beloved youngest daughter. During her mortal tribulation, she'd left a trace of pure divinity in the mudlands.

Ancient Celestial Dragon blood flowed in my veins—a lineage thought extinct.

If I opened my soul completely on the consummation night, my mate could amplify his magic dramatically and absorb the celestial power within me, burning away the dross in his blood to ascend to a higher form.

Any offspring I bore would inherit the mother's celestial blessing, born to dominion over all lesser beings from the moment they clawed free of the shell.

That was why, in the previous life, Valerius had shed his disgusting gray scales under my constant nourishment and transformed into a Golden Emperor.

And my son, Draken, had hatched with pure golden-tier magic, basking in the empire's fanatical worship from his first breath.

That child... I'd poured my heart and soul into raising him. I'd taught him to control volatile arcane magic, how to soar through the skies, the mercy a true king should possess.

In the end, he'd used the Rending Curse I taught him to command abyssal hellhounds to tear my original form into pieces.

"How could a lowborn earth dragon without wings deserve to be my mother? I'm golden pure-blood! My birth mother should have been the noblest—someone like Seraphina, a Crystal Dragon!"

Those two—father and son alike—had believed completely in Seraphina's "Crystal Dragon" facade.

But I alone knew what a rotten disguise it was.

Seraphina wasn't a Crystal Dragon at all. Her bloodline hadn't undergone the slightest mutation.

Her mother had been nothing more than a servant in my mother's household who'd stolen a forbidden tome—Blood-Mist Mirage—from a hidden compartment. That's how they'd learned to burn their life force into illusions of divine presence.

I closed my eyes, letting the chasm's wind whip at my dress.

In my previous life, I'd tried to bargain for survival with the truth of my Celestial blood. Before I could speak, Valerius crushed my throat with a single claw, leaving me to the hounds.

Since they deemed my bloodline fit only for the butcher's block, then in this life, I'd step aside and watch the show.

Without my celestial blood to sustain him, even if Valerius drained Seraphina to the marrow, how would he transform from a groveling Ash Dragon into the Golden Sovereign?

And that precious son Draken she was so eager to conceive—when he clawed free of the shell in that nest of lies and saw his own wingless, blind, mudborn body, what screams would he produce?