"Who am I? Lorcan?"
The question reverberated through Lorcan's skull like a blacksmith's hammer on an anvil. His mind fractured between two impossible truths: He was Lorcan, the peerless Alchemist Emperor whose potions could split mountains and heal gods. Or was he Lorcan, the pitiful weakling whose very existence was a mockery of the Dragonblood legacy?
A groan escaped his lips as agony lanced through his body. Even the air seemed to conspire against him, each breath a knife twisting in his ribs.
"Lorcan! Oh thank the Heavens, you're awake!" A woman's voice—warm as hearthfire on a winter's night—flooded his senses. Her fingers fluttered against his forehead, damp with tears that glistened like dew on spider silk. "Why would you duel that boy? Do you have any idea how your father and I—" Her words dissolved into a choked sob.
Lorcan blinked against the blinding light. As clarity seeped in, he found himself staring into eyes that mirrored his own—wide, worried, and framed by crow's feet that told tales of sleepless nights. The woman's beauty was faded but unmistakable, like a tapestry left too long in the sun.
"Mother?" The word emerged as a rasp, foreign on his tongue. Her face contorted in panic, hands clutching his shoulders as if he might vanish like smoke.
"Of course it's me, child! Don't you dare—"
"Milady Dragon," a gravelly voice interjected. An elderly physician materialized from the shadows, his brow furrowed. "The lad's skull took a grievous blow. Give him time. The restorative draughts need hours to work their alchemy."
Lorcan watched through half-lidded eyes as his mother withdrew, her silhouette trembling against the doorway. The physician lingered, voice dropping to a confidential murmur: "The boy's survival is miracle enough. Memory... may be a tax the Fates have levied."
When their footsteps faded, Lorcan turned his attention inward. Agony pulsed through a body that felt both his and not his—a paradox wrapped in flesh. Three cracked ribs. A splintered humerus. And the back of his skull... Gods. The occipital bone had caved in like a blacksmith's hammer had struck him.
But then—a flicker.
His spirit-sense flared to life, piercing the veil of pain. Ten paces in every direction, he could feel—the dampness of the stone walls, the flutter of moths against the window, the physician's vial of wolfsbane tincture still warm in his satchel.
A spirit-sense this acute... The realization hit him like a tidal wave. Even crippled, I'm more than they know.
But when he probed deeper, ice water flooded his veins. The spirit root in his dantian—a withered husk. The spirit bone at his sternum—cracked open like a stolen egg. And beneath his ribs, a hollow cavity where his innate bloodline essence should have throbbed.
"Someone stole everything," he breathed. "My root, my bone, my blood..." Rage burned hotter than any wound. Who would mutilate a child so thoroughly?
A knock interrupted his seething. The door creaked open to reveal Bao'er, his maid of thirteen summers, her braids askew and cheeks smudged with soot. "The master must take his medicine," she said, producing a lacquered box with ritualistic care.
Lorcan wrinkled his nose. The "potion" inside resembled a lump of charcoal. "What is this abomination?"
"Mother sold her jewelry for it—a Tiger Bone Pellet from Master Yunqi himself," Bao'er insisted, her voice trembling with pride.
Lorcan almost laughed. The pellet was a counterfeit, its potency leeched away like rain through sand. A waste of his mother's sacrifice. But as he swallowed the bitter lump, something shifted. The spirit-sense that had survived his mutilation began to sing, guiding the meager essence to his fractures with the precision of a maestro conducting symphonies.
By dawn, Lorcan stood before his mirror—a youth of chiseled jaw and storm-gray eyes regarded him back. "From this day forth," he vowed to his reflection, "Lorcan Dragonblood rises."
The first alchemical fire would be kindled not with gold, but with fire.
