"Nacreous, it's time for school!" he heard a voice call from outside his door. A few knocks rang out from the door, jolting him awake. "You don't want to be late! The school year just started!"

He pushed himself to sit up in his bed. He felt like closing his eyes and returning to sleep, but his mother would probably be angry with him if he did. Besides, the rays of light that shone through his window destroyed any chance of that, regardless of the consequences.

He pushed his plain blue blanket off him before it tumbled to the floor — a mess his mother would have to clean up later. "Are you getting up?" she asked once again. "A four-year-old dragonet needs to learn as much as he can!"

"I'm awake, I'm awake," he said. He jumped out of bed and his talons hit the cold hardwood floor. One of his legs got caught in his blanket, causing him to tumble forward into his shelf which contained many different series of scrolls. Thankfully, he managed to catch himself mere milliseconds before his head smashed into the shelf, averting a disaster that would likely get him a talking-to after school.

"What was that?" his mother yelled. "Actually, never mind! I'll clean it later! There's breakfast on the table whenever you're ready! I woke up late today, so hurry!" It wasn't abnormal for his mornings to go like that — his mom was late often. Nacreous looked over at the sundial on his windowsill to see that school was only thirty minutes from starting — something far off his regular routine, even for being late.

Quickly, he grabbed a scroll from his shelf at random and stuffed it in the scroll satchel that was lying on his dresser before running into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He looked in the mirror and saw his almost perfectly bright red scales smiling back, shiny as usual.

It wasn't long before he was downstairs, filling his plate with eggs, bacon, and toast, before stuffing it all down his throat; he knew if he had to eat breakfast at school, a particular few dragonets wouldn't like it, to say the least.

"Alright, Nacreous, let's go!" his mother said hurriedly. Nacreous didn't hesitate, jumping off the kitchen chair and sprinting to the door, leaving behind the dirty plate, sitting forgotten on the table. Before they headed their separate ways, his mother spoke up. "Don't forget to make lots of friends at school! Have fun, Cloud Jumper!" she said before quickly taking off, disappearing into the sky towards her job.

Friends… Nacreous thought to himself. It was something he was in a severe lack of. In fact, he would go as far as to say that his mother and father were his only friends, if anyone would even consider parents being that.

Not letting himself dwell on it any longer Nacreous leaped into the sky, restlessly pumping his wings until he found himself at the doorstep of his school. Landing a bit awkwardly, he sprinted through the front doors keeping in mind he had little time to spare. His scroll satchel bounced off of his chest noisily, announcing to everyone that the reject of the school was, once again, late.

As he glanced above his homeroom's door, he noted the iron plaque, reading "Ms. Alder" in big black letters. Entering the classroom, he looked around to see that Ms. Alder hadn't begun taking attendance yet.

Phew, Nacreous thought, letting out a sigh of relief. Thankfully, Ms. Alder didn't care when he got there as long as he was there before attendance, giving him a bit of time to find a seat away from everyone. Walking through the classroom, though, the teacher's eyes weren't the only ones he felt glued to him as he walked to a random seat in the back of the classroom — his eyes flickered to one group in particular before he tore his gaze away.

Different tribes sat around the room, although it was mostly SkyWings. It was to be expected since they were living in the Sky Kingdom, not Possibility or Sanctuary.

Almost as if Ms. Alder was waiting for him, she began taking attendance, calling out names left and right to exclamations of "Here!" until everyone was accounted for.

"Everyone, I'll be right back," Ms. Alder said. "If I find out you misbehave while I'm gone, you're going straight to the principal's office. You won't be cut any slack, even if this is only the fourth day of school." And as she walked out, Nacreous twisted the cap off of his scroll satchel hoping that the scroll he had picked out wasn't one further in a series he had yet to finish. But when he took it out, the scroll was anything but.

In fact, the scroll he pulled out was one he had read many, many times before, and for good reason — never, though, did he want to bring it to school with him. Especially not with the dragonets around… he thought, remembering the countless scrolls that were burned into nothing but ash.

He quickly began wrapping the scroll up, but he knew it was too late as his eyes locked with a certain SkyWing; the only thing that could save him then was luck.

As Nacreous began to straighten in his seat, a familiar feeling of dread filled his chest. "Oh, if it isn't my best bud, Nacreous," the other SkyWing began as the distance between their claws narrowed to a mere few inches. "What do you have there? Can I see it?" He reached out a talon expectantly, waiting for Nacreous to reluctantly hand over the scroll for him to burn into. But Nacreous didn't plan to — this scroll was far too important to him to give up so easily.

"N-No," Nacreous said. They were the only words he could manage to choke out before his heart leaped through his chest and stitched his mouth shut.

"Awww, but we're friends, aren't we? Best friends even? And what do best friends do for each other?" he asked. He was having fun with this, Nacreous just knew it. He was having fun watching each twitch and tremble of terror run across his face after every mocking word. "They share!" The SkyWing snatched the scroll right out of Nacreous's talons. Nacreous let it go. If he hadn't, it would've surely been ripped in half.

"No! Give it back, Kasai!" he demanded, his intonation closer to begging than demanding. It was only when he looked up at Kasai's enraged face that he'd realized his mistake.

He didn't know exactly why Kasai hated him so much. Maybe it was because he was in a higher grade than he should've been for his age, and Kasai was just jealous or something. But one thing was for sure, and that was that he'd never stop until Nacreous moved away.

"What did you just say to me?" he asked. Bits of smoke rose from his nose as his glare shot red-hot daggers through Nacreous, pinning him to the wall before painfully cauterizing the wounds.

When his fight or flight instinct arose, he chose fight and quickly snatched the scroll back before putting it back in his scroll satchel and sealing it shut. A talon blocked the lid off, securing it in its place. If it was any other situation though, Nacreous would've let him keep the scroll and burn it and do whatever. But that scroll wasn't just any scroll he could buy from the store again.

He tried to open his mouth to say something back, but his muscles tensed and he refrained. Without hesitation, Kasai's talons clenched into a fist before meeting Nacreous's jaw, sending him tumbling to the floor. Nacreous looked around to other dragonets staring at him, he knew not a single one would dare intervene. Kasai would indiscriminately do the same thing to them if they even looked in his general direction.

He was only saved from another whack when Ms. Alder walked through the doors, nearly catching Kasai in the act of doing it again — he was only saved by another teacher distracting her with small-talk. His talons shuffled backwards as he walked away, taking the opportunity.

"After school, you're going to see what happens when you talk to me like that," he whispered threateningly. "And if you fly away, it'll only be twenty times worse tomorrow."

Quietly and calmly, he went back and sat down in his seat, staring Nacreous in the eyes all the while as he lay there.

"Nacreous," Ms. Alder asked. "Are you alright? Did you fall?" Nacreous looked over at Kasai, finding his eyes were as threatening as ever. It almost felt as if he was playing his lips like a puppet just from his glare.

"Y-Yes, I'm alright," he managed to force out. He wasn't just shook from the events of what had just happened, but also from the definite beating he'd get after school. Regardless It was worth it because the scroll he had tucked in his scroll satchel was more valuable than any beating he could take. After all, there was no way he could replace it — it was a one-of-one. He wished that was the only reason he wanted to keep it safe, though.

The rest of the day felt like it passed in a blur — from first period to second, third, all the way to seventh. It was certainly still hard to get the hang of even though his mother insisted that he started when he was only three despite his peers being a year older.

Nacreous's talons shook as he watched the sundial's shadow on the windowsill hit three. A wind-up alarm rang through the room and the dragonets Nacreous wished he knew the names of quickly stood up and walked out through the door. All except for him as he stayed sitting in the chair with his tail tucked against his side, waiting for his impending doom.

"Everything alright, Nacreous?" his history teacher asked as he began picking up all the scrolls he used to teach about the Dragonets of Destiny two hundred years ago.

"Y-Yeah," Nacreous stammered, sliding his books underneath his chair. He packed everything away for the next time he'd be entering the room.

"Alright, hurry home now before your mother gets worried," the teacher said before picking up his own bags and walking through the door, his day over. Unfortunately, Nacreous's was far from.

Nacreous followed behind, briefly hesitating. It'll only be worse if you run, he told himself. Just get it over with and then you can go home. You'll feel fine tomorrow…

With a big huff, he walked through the door and out into the hallway. Hundreds of dragons passed by him, eager to go home. But he bet none of them were knowingly walking themselves into a beating.

Nacreous was smaller and younger, a star student that never gave any teacher an issue — an easy target for someone like Kasai. He wished he was bigger so he could show Kasai that he wasn't weak. But I am weak, he thought. I can't fight, I can't be intimidating, moons, I can't even speak without stammering! I'm nobody…

Before he knew it, he found bright sunlight blinding him as he opened the front doors. By the time he had finally gotten out to go home, most of the dragonets were gone, leaving. He didn't have much time to think about who would see Kasai before a slam sent him tumbling to his side, winding him.

"That's for earlier, Nacreous!" he heard through his struggling gasps for air. As he fought to refill his lungs, Kasai's talons were around him, tugging on…something.

It took him a few moments to realize what exactly Kasai was trying to grab before he realized.

My scroll! He tried to scream out for help, but it was no use — all that came out . His only option was force. But his struggles only ended in a kick to his stomach. And then another. And another. And another. Each kick caused him to spit up more and more blood, staining the pavement the color of his scales.

Nacreous, in a daze of pain, didn't even realize Kasai was holding his scroll in front of his face until it was too late. Black dots threatened to fill his vision, but he fought to keep consciousness and reached his talons desperately forward to grab it away. "K-Kasai…" he managed to cough out through difficult, bloody breaths. His mouth tasted like iron and it felt as if his ribs had been broken into a hundred different pieces.

"Oh, do you want this?" he asked. "Well, I'm not too big of a fan of scrolls anyways, so you can have it back." He held the scroll out in front of him so Nacreous could see before one tiny flame left his mouth. The scroll was burnt to ash before he could count to three. A smile grew across his face. This was funny to him. "You have no power, Nacreous," he began. "You're a loser — a nobody! Nobody knows you're alive and nobody will miss you when you're gone. Nobody will know your name. Ever. The only reason I know it is so I can know who I'm beating down."

Those were the last words he heard Kasai say before the black dots from before crowded in his vision like a million dragons storming into a store on opening day. He didn't remember anything after that.

He had to walk himself home that day due to his injuries — nobody passing bothered to help him as he was unconscious. Dragons had to have seen him, right?

Generating enough force to take off was out of the question; his ribs ached and the taste of blood still lingered in his mouth. Not a single dragon saw a dragonet lying on the pavement, bloodied and beaten, and thought to help out. And Nacreous drew that all to only one conclusion.

Nobody cared.

About his feelings.

About his pain.

About him.

Alone. He was alone.

As he stumbled through the doorway of his house, he and his parents both locked eyes. Dried blood sat below his lip from earlier, and his parents already looked panicked, wondering where he'd been.

"Nacreous!" his mother shouted worriedly before running over to him. "What happened to you?! Are you alright?!" He let her talons roam freely over his injuries, inspecting each cut and bruise. Her head darted back to his father, who was staring at him in shock. She looked back at him but he refused to look her in the eyes, avoiding her gaze altogether. "Who did this to you?!" she asked, directing her attention back to Nacreous. "Mammatus, hurry and get me some rubbing alcohol and painkillers!"

His father quickly hurried away, unsure of what else to do. A few moments later, he emerged from their kitchen with a box of cotton swabs, rubbing alcohol, and a bottle of capsules. His mother quickly grabbed it and wet a swab before lightly pressing it against a cut on Nacreous's lip. "Nacreous," she said calmly but sternly "Tell me who did this to you." One shy tear dripped down her face, despite her attempts to hide it. "Tell me!"

The room fell silent for a few moments. "Grandma's scroll is gone," was the only thing he could say as tears threatened his eyes, begging — no — screaming to be let out.

"Never mind the scroll, Nacreous," she said. "I want to know who did this to you right this second." Her tone was aggressive, but not unjustly so. Her motherly instincts must've been kicking in, wanting revenge on whoever would've done this to her innocent dragonet.

Silence filled the room and Nacreous refused to stare her in the eyes. But that was the only answer she needed to hear before pulling him into her warm embrace.

It almost would have felt good if it weren't for the pain in his ribs. The warmth of her scales against his cuts and bruises made them feel healed again. But more importantly, it reminded him that he wasn't alone after all. Dragons did care, and he didn't know how he'd been so blind to that before. That thought alone made him uncontrollably burst into tears and he gripped her back as he hugged her, crying into her shoulder. "I'm sorry…" he wept.

"Shhhhhh," she began. "You have nothing to be sorry for, Cloud Jumper. You have nothing to be sorry for."

He sobbed into her shoulder while she held him tight, embracing him when nobody else would. "H-He burned Grandma's scroll," he managed to choke out. "I-I didn't mean t-to bring it and t-then he started k-kicking me and-"

"Shhhhhh," she said again. "It's not your fault, Nacreous. You shouldn't have to be scared of bringing a scroll to school."

"Arcus," his father said from the doorway of the kitchen. "Can we talk for a moment?"

She pulled away and looked Nacreous in the eyes. "I'll be right back, okay? Tonight we can go out to eat wherever you want." She kissed him on the cheek before letting go and turning around to face his father. She walked upstairs with his father, most likely to talk about what had just happened to him.

He took a spot at the dining room table and sat with his talons folded in front of him. Flashbacks of what had happened zipped through his mind. Each kick and the pain that followed, the feeling of blood being forcefully spit up through his throat, but most importantly, the smile on Kasai's face as he burned the only scroll that ever had meaning to him was engraved into his mind. His grandma's scroll; the scroll he could never get back. It was the only thing she left behind before she died, and Kasai destroyed it.

Tears fell from his eyes. His parents were the only ones who cared about him, and nobody else. His parents were all he needed, after all. He didn't know what a friendship felt like, and he knew he probably never would.

Later that night when he was supposed to be sleeping, he was instead staring at the ashes of the scroll he managed to collect, his chest wrapped with bandage from the healers he visited. A candle lit up the room, flickering its light all across the walls. Silent tears ran down his face as he thought about his grandma.

She was a writer and a very popular one at that. Nacreous didn't know it at the time, but she was the reason they were able to afford nice things, get a nice house, and move to a nice town. She would bring Nacreous to the park and buy him expensive presents on his hatching day, like the collection of scrolls he had. In fact, she was the reason he was into reading in the first place.

It was the only thing of her that was left. And now, it was burned to nothing, because of Kasai. Just the mention of his name made him angry, and his talons slammed against his nightstand as he leaned over the ashes. "Why?" Nacreous asked himself, angry. His words were muffled through his quiet sobs. "Why are dragons so mean? Why did he have to destroy it?" he sniffled. "And why won't this scroll just GO BACK TOGETHER?!"

That's when it happened. The ashes began moving, almost as if they were dancing. One piece of ash lifted into the air, and at first, what he thought was the wind was quickly proven false when another piece followed. And then another, and another, and another, until the ashes looked as if they were piecing something back together.

Nacreous fell backward when the top edge of a scroll took shape, and then the corners, and sides, until an entire scroll had formed and was floating mid-air before it fell back down onto his nightstand. He stood back up with shaky talons and grabbed it.

He read the first words of the scroll, and there was no mistaking it. It was his grandma's scroll. But how…? Nacreous asked. Did I do that? But I couldn't have… It just wasn't possible. SkyWing Animi were extinct, so how was Nacreous one? Unless they aren't… he wondered.

Millions of questions ran through his mind at the same time. "N-No…" he denied. "I-I can't be…" That's when he realized that there was only one way to truly test it.

Still shaking, Nacreous placed the scroll in the middle of his bed and walked to his doorway which was parallel to the center of his bed. He lifted one talon in the air like he'd read in scrolls a million times before and said one singular word.

"Come."

Almost immediately, the scroll lifted from the center of the bed into the air and obeyed his commands. Just a few moments later, he was holding the scroll that was once across the room with just a single word. He stood there in shock, unknowing of what to do next.

His first thought was to get revenge on Kasai, but that thought was quickly drowned out with fear. Because with magic came a cost, and that cost was his soul. Every spell he did would chip away at him slowly until it was completely gone. Nobody could find out about this. Nobody. Not his mother, not his father, not Kasai, not the queen, nobody.

If they did, he knew the consequences.

Death.

To him. To his mother. To his father. To everyone related to him that was out there. Queen Phoenix was known for her distrust of animus dragons, and that's why they weren't allowed in the Sky Kingdom. And if one was caught, death was ordered upon them — it had already happened once before when he was one, and he wasn't going to let it happen again with him.

Nobody can know. Nobody can find out. I have to hide this, he thought. He could never use his magic again, not beyond what he had just done. Nothing good came from it. Unlimited power and the tradeoff was his soul and possibly death.

He had to act like it didn't exist, for the cost was far too great. Not just for him, but for his family.

Author's notes: Hello! I'm really excited to be posting the first chapter of this! It's a story I've been working incredibly hard on for the last six or so months, and I'm hoping everyone will like it as much as I'm hoping they will.

From here on, Nacreous Falling will be updated every week at 6PM-7PM EST with a new chapter. If you want further updates on this you can join my Discord server (my Discord username is Amisgal). If you add me, I can send you an invite. (PS, I'm looking for a proofreader if anyone's interested. You'd have to be willing to put in revisions for a chapter within the span of a week consistently, so just know that before being interested)

Anyway, I have many big plans for this story, and I'm hoping you'll stick around to see how the plot unfolds. And as someone who knows what happens later, I know it will get pretty intense, to say the least...

One last thing, I'd like to give a big thanks to Arkaiid for helping me out with proofreading. I'll be crediting her at the end of each chapter.