Rael talked for a long time.
Not nervously.
Not quickly.
Like a man who had been carrying information for years and had finally found the right person to give it to.
They sat in the shadow of a collapsed building.
The anti-dragon runes keeping the area quiet.
Muted.
Like a pocket of calm inside a war zone.
Kai listened.
Lyra listened.
Victor sat against the wall with his arms crossed.
Watching Rael the way he watched everything.
Carefully.
Without judgment.
Forming conclusions he wouldn't share until he was certain.
Drakar lay behind Kai.
The bonded dragon's chin resting on the broken ground.
Golden eyes moving between Rael and the shadows.
Never fully relaxed.
But not threatening either.
"The Dragon Hunters organization was founded four hundred years ago," Rael began.
"Originally by a group of hunters who discovered that corrupted dragon bloodlines existed."
Kai frowned slightly.
"Corrupted how?"
"Dragon energy that bonds with a human host incorrectly."
Rael looked at his own hands.
"Instead of awakening — it consumes."
"The host loses control gradually."
"Becomes dangerous."
"To everyone around them."
Kai absorbed that.
"And you hunted those carriers."
"Yes."
"Because no one else could identify them."
"Normal hunters couldn't detect the difference between a legitimate awakening and a corrupted one."
He looked at Kai.
"We could."
Lyra spoke carefully.
"That's not what I was told when I joined."
Rael met her eyes.
"I know."
"What were you told?" Kai asked.
Lyra was quiet for a moment.
"That all dragon bloodline carriers were dangerous."
"That Sovereigns especially needed to be monitored."
"Confirmed."
"And reported."
She paused.
"They made it sound like protection."
"Like we were preventing disasters."
Rael nodded slowly.
"That's what the organization became."
"After the leadership changed."
"About eighty years ago."
Victor spoke from the wall.
"Changed how?"
Rael looked at him.
"Someone new took control."
"With different goals."
"They kept the original mission as cover."
"But the real purpose shifted."
Kai crossed his arms.
"To what?"
Rael was quiet for exactly two seconds.
The kind of pause that means what comes next is significant.
"To ensure no Dragon Sovereign ever reached full power."
The silence that followed was complete.
Even the wind through the ruins seemed to stop.
Kai looked at the map in his hands.
Then at Rael.
"Someone in your organization has been suppressing Sovereigns."
"For eighty years."
"Yes."
"Who changed the leadership?"
Rael looked at the scar in the sky.
"That's the part I don't fully know."
"I know it wasn't human."
Kai went still.
"Not human."
"No."
Rael looked back at him.
"The current leader of the Dragon Hunters organization—"
He paused again.
"—has never been seen without full armor."
"In eighty years."
"Not once."
Kai let that settle.
An organization hunting dragon bloodlines.
Controlled for eighty years by something that never showed its face.
Something not human.
The system flashed quietly.
[Cross-referencing archive data]
[Previous Sovereign's records — Dragon Hunters mentioned]
[Note: Organization infiltrated prior to final battle]
Kai read the message.
Looked up.
"The previous Sovereign knew."
Victor straightened from the wall.
"Knew what?"
"That the Dragon Hunters were compromised."
Kai looked at the archive data appearing in his system.
Brief fragments.
The previous Sovereign's memories surfacing again.
A warning he had recorded but never finished.
"He tried to warn whoever came after him."
Kai touched the container the map had come from.
"This was part of it."
Rael nodded.
"The original founders hid things."
"For the real Sovereign."
"When they realized what the organization had become."
"They couldn't fight the new leadership directly."
"So they hid what they knew."
"In pieces."
"Scattered."
"Waiting."
Kai looked at the map again.
The locations marked across the world.
Each one a dot.
No labels.
Just positions.
"What are these locations?"
Rael leaned forward.
Pointed at three dots close together in what looked like a mountain range far north of Blackridge.
"Those are suppression points."
Kai frowned.
"Suppression of what?"
"Dragon energy fields."
Lyra's eyes sharpened.
"Someone built suppressors into the landscape?"
"Yes."
Rael traced a line between several dots.
"They form a network."
"Across the entire world."
"Whoever built them wanted to ensure that if a Sovereign awakened—"
He looked at Kai directly.
"—their power would grow slower than it should."
Kai stared at the map.
Then at his own hand.
The Sovereign Flame burning steadily.
"How much slower?"
Rael answered carefully.
"The network has been active for eighty years."
"Our estimate is that without it—"
He paused.
"Your awakening should have reached one hundred percent within the first week."
Kai went completely still.
Lyra's platform dipped slightly.
Victor uncrossed his arms.
"One week," Kai said.
"Yes."
"Instead it took—"
"Thirty chapters of near-death experiences," Lyra finished quietly.
Kai looked at her.
She looked back.
Both of them understanding something simultaneously.
Every battle that had nearly killed him.
Every time he had been called insufficient.
Every time the system had shown him percentages climbing painfully slowly.
Not because he was weak.
Because someone had been slowing him down deliberately.
"The suppression network," Kai said.
His voice completely even.
"We need to destroy it."
Rael nodded.
"Yes."
"But there's a problem."
"Of course there is."
Kai looked at the map.
"The network is monitored."
"If you destroy one node—"
"The others activate a secondary function," Lyra said suddenly.
Everyone looked at her.
She was staring at the map.
Reading something in the rune patterns around the location dots.
"It's not just suppression," she said slowly.
"If triggered—"
She traced the connecting lines between dots.
"It becomes a weapon."
Kai frowned.
"What kind of weapon?"
Lyra looked up.
Her violet eyes carrying something heavy.
"The kind that doesn't target enemies."
She looked at Drakar.
Then at Victor.
Then at Kai.
"It targets bonds."
The Sovereign Resonance skill pulsed in Kai's system.
Once.
Like a warning.
Kai looked at the three people around him.
The three bonds that had unlocked Sovereign Resonance.
The three connections the previous Sovereign had never had.
The three things that made him different from every Sovereign before him.
And someone had built a weapon specifically designed to destroy them.
Not him.
Them.
Drakar raised its head slowly.
Golden eyes finding Kai's immediately.
Kai held the dragon's gaze for a moment.
Then looked at the map.
"Then we don't destroy the nodes."
Victor raised an eyebrow.
"What do we do?"
Kai rolled the map carefully.
Stood up.
"We find whoever built them."
He looked at Rael.
"The leader of your organization."
"The one who's never shown their face."
Rael met his eyes.
"Finding them won't be easy."
"No," Kai agreed.
He looked at the scar in the sky above Blackridge.
At the ceasefire holding above the ruins.
At the war that was supposedly paused.
"Nothing has been easy."
He started walking.
"That hasn't stopped us yet."
Drakar rose and followed without being asked.
Lyra fell into position alongside.
Victor stepped in behind.
And Rael — after one moment of stillness — followed too.
Five now.
Moving through the ruins of a city toward a hidden enemy that had spent eighty years making sure this exact moment would never happen.
The suppression network pulsed somewhere beneath the world — silent, invisible, patient — completely unaware that the Sovereign it had been built to slow down had just learned its name.
Keep reading — Dragon Sovereign System
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