I was moving on autopilot. It was a strange sensation, distinct from the cold, digital assistance Tes had provided when I was an infant. This was not an AI guiding my limbs; it was the sheer, accumulated weight of muscle memory and mental exhaustion driving a body that simply refused to stop moving.

  I didn't call out verbally, but my intent screamed into the void of my connection with the ship. The Reaper armor answered. It arrived from its bay on a mag-lev transport rail, the components disengaging and snapping around my body with a series of heavy, familiar thuds. It was a comforting embrace, a shell of crimson steel that held me together when I felt like I was falling apart.

  But I left the helmet behind. I needed to feel the air. I needed to know I was still breathing.

  I walked through the blast doors onto the flight deck of The Aegis. The artificial gravity and atmospheric shields kept the air breathable, but the cold bit at my exposed face, a sharp, stinging reminder of reality that cut through the fog in my mind. The deck was empty, save for the silent, sleeping shapes of the Wyverns and the rhythmic flashing of the navigation lights.

  I needed to clear my head. The tactical maps, the political maneuvering, the weight of a crown I hadn't asked for—it was a noise that wouldn't stop screaming. The only thing better than a walk to clear the mind was a flight. A flight where the ground didn't matter and the sky had no ceiling.

  I was running final pre-flight checks on my thrusters when a shadow moved in the periphery of my vision. It was vast, shifting in the darkness beneath the overhang of the main command tower.

  I didn't need to look to know who it was. The soul-bond we shared was a hum in the back of my skull, and right now, that hum was vibrating with hesitation.

  The colossal figure of Kaelus was lurking in the shadows. He was in his intermediary form—ten meters of coiled muscle and starlight scales—trying to make himself small. He could feel the storm inside me, the turmoil of the decision I had to make, and for the first time in his life, the Dragon Prince wasn't sure if he should approach. He was worried he might break the fragile silence I was holding onto.

  I see you, little brother, I projected, the thought softening the hard edges of my mood. Come out.

  He emerged slowly, his claws clicking softly on the deck plates. He moved with a sheepish grace, his head low, realizing that a thirty-foot dragon cannot effectively hide behind a support strut. His childish nature was still evident in the way he looked at me, scanning my face for signs of anger or sorrow.

  He stopped a few feet away, his sapphire nebula eyes wide and luminous.

  I reached up and patted his snout. The scales were cool and smooth, harder than diamond but warm with the life pulsing beneath them. He leaned into the touch, a low rumble starting in his chest.

  “Do you want to go for a flight?” I asked, my voice quiet in the vast, open air.

  Kaelus’s head snapped up, his hesitation vanishing instantly. Where are we going, Brother? To burn the bad castle?

  “No,” I said, a ghost of a smile touching my lips. “Nowhere in particular. I just want to… escape. Just for a moment. I want the wind, and the speed, and the freedom.”

  He didn't ask questions. He didn't ask about the war or the wedding. He simply lowered his body, extending a wing to form a ramp. I climbed up, settling into the familiar hollow between his shoulder blades, the magnetic locks of my greaves engaging with his scales.

  “Tes,” I commanded aloud. “Disconnect me from the network. No notifications. No tactical updates. No calls from my mother. Go dark.”

  [Acknowledged, Master. Going dark. Enjoy your flight.]

  The HUD in my peripheral vision winked out. The constant stream of data vanished. For the first time in years, there was just silence.

  Kaelus launched.

  It wasn't a takeoff; it was an ascension. We burst through the protective storm clouds that cloaked The Aegis, tearing through the grey mist and emerging into the vast, open cathedral of the night sky. The air was thin and freezing, rushing past my ears with a roar that drowned out everything else. Below us, the storm was a churning sea of grey; above, the cosmos stretched out in infinite, uncaring beauty.

  We flew without direction. North, south, east—it didn't matter. Kaelus was enthusiastic, diving and banking, reveling in the simple joy of motion. To keep the heavy thoughts at bay, I started a conversation about nothing. We talked about the taste of roasted boar versus venison, about Lyra’s terrifying tea parties, about the strange habits of the dwarves.

  You know, Kaelus projected, his mental voice smug as he banked through a cloud bank. I raced that metal bird the other day. The pointy black one. The prototype.

  I blinked, the wind tearing at my eyes. “The Blackbird? The BR-1?”

  Yes. The loud one.

  “Kaelus, that machine is designed to fly at Mach 6. It’s the fastest thing I’ve ever built. You… you raced it?”

  I beat it, he corrected, puffing out his chest mid-flight. Easily.

  I was taken aback. Dragons were fast, yes, but aerodynamics had limits. Biology had limits. “How? At those speeds, the friction alone should have turned the air around you into plasma.”

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  Kaelus turned his head back toward me, a grin full of razor-sharp teeth. Want me to show you?

  It was a rhetorical question. He didn't wait for an answer.

  The rhythm of his flight changed. The physical beating of his wings, which had been driving us forward against the resistance of the air, altered. He wasn't pushing against the atmosphere anymore.

  He was pushing against the fabric of the world.

  Each beat of his wings created a ripple, not in the air, but in space itself. He was creating a slipstream, a tunnel where distance was a suggestion rather than a rule. The roaring wind died down instantly, replaced by a strange, high-pitched hum. The stars above us blurred into streaks of light.

  We were practically teleporting forward in rapid, stuttering jumps.

  See? Kaelus chirped. I don’t fly through the air. I fly through the gaps.

  It was incredible. It was faster than Cygnus, who transformed his body into lightning to traverse the globe. This was raw spatial manipulation applied to kinetic movement.

  And it was… enjoyable. The knot in my chest loosened. The fog of anxiety evaporated, burned away by the sheer adrenaline of moving faster than a fighter jet. I let out a laugh, a sound that was ripped away by our passage.

  My body began to hum.

  It wasn't the armor. It was me. My soul. The sparks of draconic magic that usually lay dormant within me, flaring only during moments of extreme emotion, began to ignite. But this time, it wasn't a chaotic explosion.

  I closed my eyes, feeling the rhythm of Kaelus’s spatial jumps. It was a frequency. A wave.

  My father’s words echoed in my mind, finally making sense. “Don’t force it. Build a bridge.”

  I had been thinking like a soldier, trying to grab the gun and fire it. But magic wasn't a gun. It was a resonance. It was physics. It was constructive interference. If two waves meet at the right frequency, they amplify each other.

  I didn't try to pull power from him. Instead, I matched him. I tuned my own emotions, my own intent, to the frequency of his joy, his speed, his freedom.

  Click.

  It was audible in my mind. A bridge snapped into place.

  Suddenly, I wasn't just riding him. I was him. I could feel the wind on his scales. I could feel the elasticity of space bending around his wings. The mana didn't rush into me in a painful torrent; it flowed in a constant, harmonious stream, filling every cell, every bone, every fiber of my being.

  I opened my eyes. The world had slowed down. I could see the individual droplets of moisture in the clouds we passed. I could see the magnetic fields of the planet arcing below us.

  Static electricity danced across my skin, answering my will before I even formed a command. Sparks of azure light jumped from my fingertips, playing over the crimson armor.

  I could feel myself getting stronger. The resonance was a feedback loop. My capacity was expanding to meet his output, and his control was tightening to match my focus.

  [Alert: User mana capacity increasing exponentially,] Tes whispered in the back of my mind, having reactivated solely to monitor my vitals. [Tier 6 barrier breached. Power levels stabilizing at Tier 8 output.]

  Resonance. The true power of a Dragon Knight.

  It was a temporary state, a union of souls that elevated the mortal to the level of the divine. When my father resonated with Cygnus, he didn't just borrow power; he became a conduit for a Tier 10 entity, wielding the might of a storm king. When the resonance ended, he would return to his natural state—a Pseudo-Tier 10, his body permanently altered and strengthened by the repeated exposure to such power, but still mortal.

  Now, I was experiencing it. My body, usually limited to Tier 6, was being flooded with the essence of a Dragon Prince. I wasn't just holding his power; I was wielding it as my own. For this moment, I was a Tier 8 entity.

  But it wasn't just me.

  Kaelus let out a roar of pure ecstasy. For years, he had been held back. His growth was meteoric, but he had hit a bottleneck. He was a Prince, a potential Tier 10, but he was bonded to a human who was, comparatively, a thimble trying to hold an ocean. My limitations had been his cage. He had been stuck at a Pseudo-Tier 8, powerful but incomplete.

  Now, the cage was gone.

  The resonance shattered his bottleneck. The raw power he had been holding back flooded through the bridge, flowing freely between us. He grew brighter, his scales shedding the darkness of the void and blazing with the brilliance of a supernova.

  He had broken through. He was a true Tier 8.

  I feel it, Brother! He roared in my mind. I feel everything!

  We were a force of nature. We were the storm.

  We flew so fast the sun began to rise in the west, chasing the dawn across the horizon. We crossed the ocean in minutes, the mainland appearing as a dark smudge that rapidly became a coastline, then a forest.

  We descended, not because we were tired, but because the earth was calling to us. Kaelus slowed, the spatial warping fading as we glided over a dense, ancient forest in the unclaimed lands.

  We landed in a clearing, the impact gentle despite our speed. The grass flattened under Kaelus’s weight. The silence of the morning woods returned, broken only by the chirping of waking birds.

  The resonance faded slowly, leaving a warm, tingling sensation in my limbs. I slid off Kaelus’s back, my legs shaking slightly as my boots touched the mossy earth.

  I looked at my hands. They were trembling, but not with weakness. I clenched my fist, and the air around it distorted, a faint hum of power lingering.

  I was permanently changed. My mana pathways had been scoured and widened. I wasn't at Tier 8 anymore—the resonance had ended. But I wasn't Tier 6, either. I had stepped into that rarified air my father occupied. I was a Pseudo-Tier 8. My body was now capable of holding more, enduring more. When I resonated again, the transition would be seamless.

  So this is what it feels like, I thought, looking up at the rising sun filtering through the trees. This is what it means to be a true Dragon Knight.

  But the high was fading, and the cost was coming due. The fatigue hit me like a physical blow. The resonance consumed energy at a terrifying rate. My muscles ached, my eyes felt heavy, and a profound weariness settled into my bones.

  I looked at Kaelus. He was still in his enlarged form, lying in the center of the clearing. He looked just as exhausted, his starlight dimmed to a soft, sleepy glow. He let out a massive yawn, displaying rows of razor-sharp teeth, then rested his head on his front paws.

  Nap time? He suggested, his mental voice groggy.

  “Nap time,” I agreed.

  I walked over to him. I didn't summon a shelter or a sleeping bag. I simply leaned against his warm, massive flank. He shifted, lifting one of his great wings and draping it over me like a blanket of living night. It was warm, heavy, and safer than any fortress I could ever build.

  “We’ll figure it out,” I mumbled, my eyes closing. “The wedding. The war. We’ll figure it out later.”

  Together, Kaelus murmured, already drifting off.

  And there, in a random forest, miles from my fleet and my responsibilities, curled up under the wing of my brother, I finally slept. Not the sleep of a warlord plotting his next move, but the sleep of a boy who knew he wasn't alone.