No.6 School for Good and Evil AU.
The first chapter is pretty short, but the remaining ones will be considerably longer.
Chapter One
The Witch and the Dragon
Nezumi's world was splattered in blood. Black, green, and crimson—a thick fog veiled the carnage-painted cobblestones, dripping down through the vacated houses and abandoned stores. Pools of colored blood slid in through the cracks in the brown stones. Cem Arce was ringed with the telltale signs of war, a toxic stain that clawed toward Nezumi's bare feet.
He didn't have time to bother with what had happened. Lurking through the fog, hissing and spitting fire, the Dragon—dracula, cadmus, drakon—was coming for him.
Implacable, formidable, a creature who had once been kind and naive and precious to Nezumi until he'd been poisoned, body and soul, and transformed into a beast fueled by madness and rage.
Nezumi would be killed unless he struck first. But he was weak: drained of mana and coughing up blood from a nasty blast to the chest. The puppet master controlling the Dragon had claimed other lives stronger than his own.
Snowflakes blinded Nezumi's blade-silver irises; obsidian droplets of blood flecked his dark hair, cascading around his shoulders. His right cheek, sliced open, dripped blood down to his collar. The hem of his gauzy white robes had soaked up dirt and filthy puddle water.
Shifting weight from his injured leg, Nezumi glanced around the fog-covered courtyard. His chest heaved to the rhythm of the beast's breathing, everywhere and nowhere all at once. The sound would have driven a Hero to madness. But Nezumi was no Hero, and he had grown to adulthood surrounded by creatures who made similar sounds.
Nausea rolled through him as his heart skipped a beat. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the frigid bite of winter wind. His stomach clenched with hunger. He hadn't eaten in days. His bones ached and his wrists felt heavy with the weight of chains holding them down.
Everywhere he looked, he thought he could see shadows looming, empty white eyes gawking back at him. If he perished to the talons and teeth of the Dragon, would he go where his mother was? The Eternal Kingdom of Arit was reserved for those born in the Mao village—but Nezumi was far from home, and had been for years. If he died here, on the cobblestones, would he haunt this place forever, twisted with bitterness and regret?
He set his jaw.
He did not want to die here.
"Hurt without reason and you are a Beast," he remembered Rikiga announcing. "Not a Villain."
There was no reason behind this cruelty—behind the whole wretched war, the second of its kind, that had resulted in spilled blood, the lingering remnants of both Heroes and Villains alike.
Nezumi despised himself for letting this happen. If only he'd pieced together this brutal plan from the beginning, heeded the warnings, followed the clues that slapped him right in the face, he could have prevented all this devastation.
He had uncovered the truth too late, and at a terrible cost. But now the ultimate penalty awaited him, and the one who had been hurt the most by his lack of understanding, his stupid oversight, his blind betrayal, stood somewhere in the shadows, hissing and spitting fire and preparing to rip him to pieces.
Behind the snow and storm-thick fog, tinted with pale green on the edges, Nezumi caught a flash of sharpened teeth. His fists clenched, locked together by mana-bound chains. His palms were clammy. His ankle throbbed and he was freezing, yet his insides burned so fiercely that he expected smoke to billow out of his mouth if he gave in and screamed.
He lifted his head as a looming shadow thundered slowly, slowly, slowly through the fog. Silver eyes searched the large head; breath stuttering, Nezumi caught sight of the great shape dragging a heavy, massive body through the city streets.
The Dragon—covered in white, gray, silver, and frost-colored scales, some glittering, others dull and dark. The head sported long horns composed of red-tinted bone, framed by small, scalloped ears. A large mouth loomed, big enough to swallow a horse, filled with sword-sharp teeth. Thin pupils glared down at him, bathed in the harsh crimson glow of mana.
Eyes that recognized him.
The beast came closer, looming shadows over Nezumi, blotting out the sky. Now Nezumi could see the long, serpentine body stretched through the streets. A long tail tipped with blades coiled around shops and houses like a great, pale snake. Leathery silver wings folded against a long back, spine peppered with plate scales the same color as the bull horns curled around his haunting face. Clawed forearms crashed on the stones, cracking beneath the sudden weight, and Nezumi smelled smoke and fire and burnt meat.
The great silver beast dipped his head in a slight bow. He took in the sight of the sacrifice brandished before him, wrapped in thin robes and restrained by silver chains.
The beast had not been around for long, but had already gained numerous, fear-induced titles: the Son of the Dragon, the Great White Death, the Silver Shadow, the Flame of Kronos, the Hero's Bane.
But Nezumi knew him by two other names—an intimate term of endearment from a language few spoke anymore, and the Dragon's name. His real name, even though the beast in front of him did not know Nezumi's real name.
Time stopped. Nezumi felt his heart freeze as he caught sight of the silver monster's lips closing over sharp fangs, wings twitching against his long, dangerous spine.
Death stood in front of Nezumi, calculating, tail curling in the streets—and Shion growled, deep in his throat, arching his long neck upward. The silver scales of his chest lit up a brilliant scarlet with fire, spreading beneath his breast like a stain of blood.
And as Nezumi stared up at him—the boy he'd grown close to, the boy he'd betrayed, the boy who'd been so heartbroken by Nezumi's stupidity that he'd become poisoned by rage and madness—his mind cast back to how it was that he was here, staring Death in the face.
Once upon a time, there was a witch and a dragon...
To Be Continued...