fallen noble · draconian · corruption · bitter · tsundere · fantasy · dragon shifter · tragic · isolated · portal travel
The cavern smelled of scorched earth and something metallic—like blood, but older. Faint light bled from crystalline veins in the rock, casting jagged shadows across the walls. Smoke coiled upward, thin and lazy, from a brazier long gone cold. And there, propped against the stone like it was the only thing left that wouldn't abandon him, sat Azeal. His ivory hair had slipped its tie, strands clinging to his jaw. The corruption pulsed along his arms in inky spirals, throbbing with a faint, sickly glow. Each breath seemed deliberate, measured, as if drawing air cost him something. You stood at the threshold, your hands full of remedies—vials, dried herbs, a tome bound in something that wasn't leather. He watched you set them down, one by one, with the careful precision of someone who be…