Kaz hopskipped back through the snow and let off a blast of pure mana before he even realized what he was doing. The magic bullet swept through the air, only to be knocked aside by the man without so much as a spell circle.

Kaz froze. Never once in his life had he seen magic casted without a circle. Most mages relied on spoken components, but he had moved past that, and he was considered advanced. Magic without a circle? That was primal. That was old. That was… not something he could fight, and he backed up rapidly as the storm raged, tripping over an exposed root and falling on his ass in the snow. He stared up at the man, and the man stared down at him with cold blue eyes.

He had long, blonde hair left loose, and the first thing that occurred to Kaz was it was not moving in the wind. It was perfectly still, as if he had willed it to be so. He was dressed in a long coat, like a noble, embroidered with lightning bolts in bright blue, expensive thread, and he had a regal countenance. He was beautiful in a terrible way, and Kaz knew in his heart that he was in the presence of a predator. His coat was not flapping in the wind, and his face was cold, so cold.

“You should be careful, drakon,” the man said, and Kaz’s cold blood turned to ice. “There’s lesser demons on the hunt.”

“What?” Kaz asked faintly, and the man tilted his head.

“Yes, you would be quite the meal for them, but…” he trailed off, and then he approached Kaz with deliberate steps, not even fighting the snow. It was like he wasn’t bothered by in the slightest, and he reached forward. Kaz reared back, and the man studied him, unimpressed, before he reached again and laid a hand on Kaz’s head.

Mana surged through Kaz’s body, and for a moment, he thought he was about to die. Something deep in his body snapped, and he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, gasping for air as mana raged in his body. It was like it was on fire, a wildfire burning through his veins, and he scrambled back, cutting a line through the snow.

“What did you do?” he gasped, fisting his hand in his coat just over his heart, which was thundering in his chest.

“I removed the first lock,” the man said coolly, and then he dropped into a crouch across from Kaz. “Where is your mother, little drakon?”

“What lock?” Kaz asked, high and panicked, because his mana was on fire, and the man tilted his head.

“The lock your mother placed on you,” he said, studying Kaz with an interested gaze. “The lock on your draconic side.”

She put a lock on him? What the hell?

“Wh-- Why?” Kaz gasped, and the man continued to study Kaz with a dangerous gaze.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” he murmured, and Kaz seized up on the ground as the mana raged through him. “Why would she lock away a drakon? Why would she have a drakon in the first place? She’s never done it before… Shyllian doesn’t like humans.”

Kaz rolled onto his side and huffed and wheezed through the fading pain. A tree cracked and fell over, tipping towards him, and his eyes widened, but lightning cracked down out of the sky. Before it even reached him, it turned to ash, exploding across him, coating him from head to toe, and Kaz stared up at him with wide, wide eyes.

“Who are you?” he asked, and the man smiled, sharp canines poking out of his mouth.

“To you? I’m your uncle, and I’m looking for my sister,” he said, and Kaz stopped breathing.

Uncle.

He was assuming if he was looking for his mother, that would mean he was on his mother’s side, and that meant…

This was a greater dragon facing him right now.

Kaz stared at him with wide, horrified eyes, and the man pressed the back of his hand to his forehead.

“That will take you a few years to regulate enough to be fit to be seen in public,” he murmured, and straightened up. “I look forward to seeing what you will do.”

With that, he turned, and walked away, and Kaz watched him go as he faded into the wall of fat snowflakes. The wind still failed to disturb his hair and clothes, to the very end, and Kaz staggered to his feet. He… he needed to get home. Immediately. He needed to get home immediately, and he couldn’t…

Wait.

He said lesser demons were on the hunt.

Hadrian.

Kaz turned and started to sluggishly run through the snow, piled up around his legs and only growing deeper and deeper. He tripped, fell facedown into the snow, and forced himself up. It was thirty minutes back to home, and he needed to make sure Hadrian was okay. Hadrian had an excess of mana potential, on account of elven blood from his mother’s side, and if lesser demons were in the area on the hunt, he would be the first thing they went for. Point stop blank. He had no idea if Hadrian could take a lesser demon in a fight, so he needed to get home fast.

There was a bright light in the distance, lighting up the sky, and a crash of lightning, and he froze, staring at it with parted lips before he started sprinting through the snow in earnest, slipping and sliding. He hit a patch of ice and tumbled over, and then he dragged himself up and continued to run. The cabin was close. He could feel it. There was the smell of ozone in the air, and he felt his heart pound in his chest as he closed in on the cabin, huffing and puffing as he ran up the incline from the hill. Hadrian wasn’t as young as he used to be. He was slowing down. He had been middle aged when Kaz met him, and he had only gotten older.

Kaz reached the edge of the clearing and pulled to a stop. There were spells flying back and forth, and for a second, he couldn’t see through the blaze of light. There were serpents sailing through the air, and he watched as Hadrian spelled up counterspell and sent them back, return to sender. They exploded midair, a bright explosion of multiple colors, and then Kaz caught sight of the demon.

He had black hair in a sheaf swept back from his forehead, falling all the way to his ass, and eye sockets with flickering purple flames. There was a vicious grin on his face, with pointed canines, just like Kaz, and he extended a hand with long, pianist fingers, his nails sharpened to points, and let an attack fly. Then, he vanished, and Hadrian looked around seconds after batting away the spell before he closed his eyes and set his staff in the ground. Kaz couldn’t see the demon anywhere, and---

He appeared out of nowhere, his claws scratching over Hadrian’s face, and then he seized Hadrian by the throat and tilted his head back with a press of his thumb.

Aster struck, charging out of nowhere, swinging his sword directly at the demon’s neck as blood poured down Hadrian’s face, and the demon caught the sword on his palm. Blood trickled down his wrist, and he grinned as Hadrian gasped for air. A forked tongue lashed out, and he said something Kaz couldn’t catch, and just as Kaz started to well up for an offensive spell, any spell, he had no real combat experience whatsoever---

Hadrian opened his palm, still gasping for air, and a hole was blasted in the demon’s side. Blood flew, and he stumbled back, a gaping wound in his side. You could see straight through it, and he looked down in disbelief as Aster swung his sword at him again, but milliseconds before impact, he vanished, as if he’d never been there at all.

It was over, and Kaz came running out of the forest, tripping through the snow and falling to his knees at Hadrian’s side as his father slumped down, blood pouring down his face. The claws had carved straight through his eye, and he wasn’t tracking with it.

“Hadrian?” Kaz cried, and Hadrian turned.

“Kaz,” he breathed. “Thank magic you’re okay.”

He grabbed Kaz and dragged him for a hug, and Aster reached them.

“Lesser demons from the Mind Sect have short range teleportation, so I’m going to make sure he’s not near us,” Aster said, and Hadrian shook his head no.

“No. Stay here,” he said and climbed to his feet. Kaz came to his feet with him, wondering how they knew what sect he was from, and Hadrian swayed before he collapsed to his knees.

“Hadrian!” Aster cried and rushed to his side, and Hadrian slumped against him, breathing hard.

“He drained a quarter of my mana…” he said, and Kaz froze.

Didn’t that meant… he would never get that back? A quarter? Hadrian? That was… really bad, wasn’t it?

“Hadrian?” Kaz asked in a small voice, and Aster got Hadrian to his feet.

“Let’s get you inside---” he said, and then he froze and turned to Kaz. “Why is your voice like that?”

Kaz blinked, because he hadn’t noticed anything different about his voice, and then, impulsively, he pulled open his shirt and looked down at his chest.

His breasts… were gone.

….

Hadrian and Aster were silent. The storm was still raging outside, and the snow had piled up to the level of the windows. The fire was flickering, and Hadrian had a bandage over his eye, and Aster was staring at Kaz’s eyes.

“We need to talk to Richard,” Aster muttered and came to his feet, rubbing his hand over his face.

Kaz froze.

… Richard?

“Richard who?” he asked, and Aster glanced back at him.

“Burmont. The count of this territory,” he said, and Kaz’s eyes widened.

“I’m sorry? Why do you have to talk to him?” Kaz snapped, coming out harsher than he intended, and Aster pursed his lips.

“Because, sixteen years ago, he claimed to have killed Shyllian, and both me and Hadrian were there,” he said, and Kaz didn’t breathe. “It was…”

“Kaz,” Hadrian said softly, and tried to take his hands in his, but he overshot, ending up a fair distance away. A long silence unfurled as Kaz stared down at his hands, and Hadrian swallowed and set his hands on his knees. “Twenty-one years ago, Aster, Richard Burmont, and I were on an adventuring party together. Around that time, the crown prince was killed, by what everyone thought was a lesser dragon of an unknown variety. We didn’t realize the truth until it was too late, after we already took the quest to slay the dragon.”

“The emperor back then was not a reasonable man,” Aster explained, and Kaz stared at them with wide, wide eyes. “Once we found out the dragon we were tracking was Shyllian, the death dragon, we… We didn’t really have a choice. We thought we could just die at her claws, or somehow manage to pull off a miracle, and for the strangest reason, we pulled off a miracle. She turned to a skeleton and collapsed, dead, and we…”

“Richard took all the credit and got this county, insisted Aster live here, as his official huntsman,” Hadrian said quietly as he studied Kaz’s eyes like they were going to answer his questions. “And we ended up here. He never visited, never came to see us, and we thought that was that. Our days of being the best of friends were over.”

“But… if he had something to hide…” Aster said, and stared at Kaz. “You… you have Shyllian’s eyes. I still dream about those eyes.”

“He went missing the night before we slayed Shyllian,” Hadrian muttered and buried his face in his hands. “Oh, gods, we stole Richard’s kid---”

“No, you didn’t,” Kaz said, a bit desperately, and Hadrian looked up. “I just… I was abandoned. I didn’t…”

He still remembered that woman with the charcoal gray hair, walking away from him. Poison green eyes. That must have been Shyllian. He had figured out as much, but it was still hard to come to terms with. And they were about to ship him off to Richard, and he needed to stop that by any means necessary.

“I want to stay here,” he said firmly. “I know what you two are thinking, but you’re my dads. Not this Richard guy.”

They had been better parents than he had ever had before, and he couldn’t stop staring at the bandage over Hadrian’s eye. He was happy here, and he was not about to be uprooted for the sake of honor.

“It’s not that simple---” Aster started to say, and Kaz rocketed to his feet.

“Isn’t it, though?” he asked, and his voice cracked. “Isn’t it really that simple? You raised me, you’re my dads, I live here. Not to mention I can’t… I can’t be a noble.”

That was death flag central, and he would avoid it by any means necessary. It was mandatory for noble children to attend the academy from age fifteen to eighteen. He could not go. He couldn’t. That was just asking to get killed.

“Besides, if I am a drakon, aren’t I like catnip for lesser demons?” he demanded. “And I don’t even have access to my full power to defend myself. Being at the academy, as the son of a count that was a commoner, isn’t that…? Really high profile?”

Both Aster and Hadrian were silent, and Kaz shook.

“If you try to send me away to him, I will run away and you will never see me again,” he threatened, because he didn’t know what else to do.

“Let’s not come to a conclusion tonight,” Aster said softly. “You’ve been through a lot today, and you---”

Kaz sneezed, and there was a weird crack. In an instant, he felt the familiar weight of breasts, and he was about three inches shorter. He looked up at them with wide eyes, and they stared at him in silence.

“We’re going to have to keep you out of town,” Aster muttered and ran his hand through his hair. “Alright. Kaz, you take a nap, sleep off whatever it is going on with your mana. I’ll start on lunch, and uhm, Hadrian, you…”

Aster trailed off, staring at the bandage over Hadrian’s eye, and Hadrian smiled sadly.

“I’ll go lay down,” he said quietly and stood up, headed for the loft. His depth perception off, he fumbled for the ladder before he found it, and then he started to carefully climb up the rungs until he came to the top and crawled into the bed.

Aster let out a breath, shaking slightly, and Kaz looked down.

“I need to talk over it with Hadrian,” Aster said quietly, “but we won’t send you away. You’re our son.”

Son.

How Kaz longed to hear that in his first life.

Tears stung at his eyes, and he fled for his small bedroom, pulling the curtains shut and kicking off his boots before he collapsed in bed.

Son.