Truth

Erin entered the stairs, following after his mother and aunt. The inside of the stairway was very long and dimly lit with moonstones that were attached to the wall.

They continued going down the stairs for the next minute before stopping in front of a giant door with a weird inscription written onto it in an unknown language. Erin gave the door a weird look, as he felt there was something eerie about it.

" Mama, what's inside?" Now he was interested in knowing the truth behind such a mystery.

" You can look for yourself." replied Senthia as she watched her mother perform a complicated symbol in the air, following which the different parts of the door began to lit up.

Click*

Everyone heard the unlocking sound of the door. Roberta pushed open the door, revealing a pitched black room, everyone felt a wave of cold air brush through them when they looked inside.

Roberta entered the room followed by Senthia, then Aurora and lastly Erin who hesitantly entered the dark room.

As he entered the room, the door closed itself, startling the already nervous Erin, Senthia looked back at her lovely child and held his hand. Looking at her mother who performed another small symbol in the air.

Soon the room began to slowly light up, revealing its elegant design with white and gold patterns all over the walls. The room was mostly empty except for the centre of the room, where there were six golden pillars standing in a circular pattern with different kinds of encryption all over them. In the centre of the circle formed by the pillars, there was a red crystal floating five feet above the floor.

As Erin kept looking around, he felt a sense of familiarity coming from the crystal, and when he would look at it once, he felt drawn towards it and started walking towards it.

" OUH!" Aurora smacked his head with a straight chop, waking him up from his dazed state.

He looked confused at the surroundings as he was standing close to the towering pillars along with his Grandma and aunt.

" Grandma, what is that?" He pointed at the blood red crystal at the centre of the pillars.

"That's the blood essence of a dragon." Roberta said.

" What! " asked Erin out loud. There were many less things in this world that could surprise him and one such topic was the dragon.

He can't believe his ears, after researching multiple books on the topic of dragons, he knew that they used to live on Gaia for millions of years before they suddenly vanished from the continent. The last known trace of a dragon was found around tens of thousands of years ago; nowadays people are sceptical of their existence due to a lack of proof, but now he was seeing the proof of their existence from his own grandmother's tongue.

" How?"

" Sit, I'll tell you everything from the start." She asked him to sit down because this was going to take time to explain in detail. Erin compiled and sat on the laps of his mother, who was faster than him. and offered herself to be his chair.

" So it all begins with the generation before your great grandma, her name was Mary Anderson. She lived her life for the thrill of adventure, and one of her biggest and final adventures was when she found some traces of a dragon in the restricted area of the continent. She followed the lead and found herself in the den of the dragon, she even went to meet the owner of the cave but only found the blood essence of a dragon in there."

" So grandma, are dragons really extinct?" If his great great grandma couldn't find the dragon after trying for decades, it was a logical conclusion.

" No one said dragons were extinct; they just don't appear in the social world." She might not have seen one with her own eyes, but she knew that such an apex predator wouldn't go extinct so easily.

" So where I was? Ah, yes, she only found that blood essence in the cave. She went to great lengths to explore its usage. After spending almost 100 years in research, she found an interesting answer. But for that, she needed to try it on people, so at the end she decided to test it on herself, and nine months later, your great grandma was born as the first hybrid of a dragon and a human. As she grew up, she was more talented than the average genius of her time and became one of the most feared beings of our humankind, thus giving us our middle name, Drakon.

Later, when it was her turn to groom the next generation, she didn't take any risk to lower their bloodline by giving birth to a human child and instead followed in your great great grandma's footsteps and gave birth to me. I was taught from an early age by my mother and continued the tradition, but later, after learning from your great great grandma's diary and my mother's research, and doing research of my own, I found a better way to use the blood essence, but for that you need to resonate with the essence. Unfortunately neither me nor my children resonated with the essence."

"So you understand now why we are here today?"

" Hmm." He finally got the gist of the situation, they wanted to test whether he resonated with the blood essesance or not.

" But grandma couldn't do this earlier." He felt confused after all they could've done it when he was born.

" Baby, let mommy answer this; you know dragons were known as the incarnation of destruction, and their blood is also that dangerous, when me and your aunt tested, we were already adults."

Even she herself was having little difficulty accepting that their mother is allowing him to take the test knowing how dangerous it could be.

" So, grandma, how do I do it? " He was now interested in this little test of theirs.

" Just enter the pillar and touch the blood essence, and you'll be good." She liked her grandson's attitude.

Erin stood up from his mother's lap and entered the pillar formation. From a close distance, it resembled a condensed sphere of blood. He kicked the ground, and an ice pillar rose from the ground, growing till it reached out to the same height as the blood essence.

As Erin extended his arm to touch the blood essence, it suddenly gained a life of its own and attached itself to his arm, instantly spreading across his body.

"AAAAGGGGHHH!!! " Wherever the blood would go, he would feel his skin melting.

"AAAAHH!!!" Erin kept screaming as the blood covered his body like a bodysuit, but in his case, a bodysuit made up of the molten lava.

" ERIN!!" Senthia and Aurora shouted in horror as they heard his scream.

"Don't disturb him now!" Before they could make their move, they were stopped by Roberta's voice.

" AARRRGGGGHHHH!!! " His screams intensified as the blood entered his body through his pores, mouth, eyes, ears…, anything with any space between them.

As the blood kept entering his body, it revealed his flawless skin to the people watching from the afar.

Erin's body began to swell like a balloon with every part of it, and he fell into the ice platform, rolling from left to right while screaming at the top of his lungs.

He could feel his muscles melting, then his internal organs, then his bones, and last but not least, his nerves. At this point, he didn't have the energy to scream and kept rolling left and right while shivering from the nerve melting pain.

After a while, he even stopped moving. The first to make the move was Roberta; she stood up in the blooded mess, with Erin in her arms. He had a flawless face and body without any sign of injuries, but he was unconscious. She took him and disappeared.

The next day Erin was lying in Senthia's room without any responses, sleeping calmly, then the next day he was still unconscious, then another day passed but he didn't open his eyes, days turned into weeks... weeks turned into months... months turned into a year... and year turned into 5 years but still he hadn't opened his eyes

To Be Continued…

" Hmm, where am I? " Erin slowly opened his eyes and found himself in front of the gate with unknown but familiar words written onto them.

Ticket to Hell: Free

Ticket to Heaven: 1 Power Stone

Ticket to Rebirth: 2 Power Stone

Ticket to Reincarnation: 3 Power Stone

Ticket to Return: 4 Power Stone

He understood the language and use of the Power Stone but didn't know how do he get them, when he suddenly heard a mechanical voice.

[Power Stone can be earned through readers.]