Demonic Dragon: Harem System

The city of Vorah was silent, but not the serene silence of dawn—it was the heavy silence of ruin. The smell of soot still lingered in the air, and the black earth beneath the warriors' feet seemed burned to the soul.

Scarlet walked among the rubble with her usual upright posture, though her eyes betrayed her fatigue. At her side, her three daughters—Cassandra, the eldest and most restrained; Daniela, impatient and thirsty for action; and Bellatrix, the youngest, but with a gaze as cold as steel—moved among the ruins, searching through the remains of what had once been the eastern sector of the city.

"Last five blocks cleared," Cassandra announced, her voice steady as she watched a floating arcane map she had conjured herself. "No sign of life. Just bodies. And smoke."

Bellatrix, kneeling beside an old man who had fallen among the beams of a burned-out wagon, ran her hand over the dead man's empty eyes, closing them. "This one said a prayer before he died. He has the symbol of Myrran burned into his palms." She stood up and looked at Scarlet. "They knew they were doomed."

Daniela kicked a fallen sign with restrained anger. "Damn dragons. They attacked without logic. Without mercy. This was a massacre for no reason."

"No," Scarlet said with icy calm. "I don't think it was without reason... in fact, there is a very big reason."

The daughters stopped. Cassandra was the first to ask. "What?"

Scarlet looked up at the night sky, where the clouds still held remnants of ash illuminated by the moon. "Dragons are extremely sensitive to mana. We gained these new bodies not long ago, so we're not very sensitive, but a dragon that has lived for thousands of years? The chance that it sensed Strax transforming us into true dragons is very, very high."

Daniela clenched her fists. "So... we're to blame?"

"No, there's no point in blaming yourselves," Bellatrix murmured. "We became dragons without a choice."

Scarlet walked back among the rubble, her voice low but with the sharp authority of someone who has commanded armies. "It doesn't matter why now. We clean everything up. No survivors left. No traces ignored. No one else dies under our watch."

She stopped in front of the crater where the first explosion of fire had fallen, looking at the destruction with calm, cruel eyes. "Vorah still breathes, even if with only one lung. We will rebuild... but not in silence."

Cassandra approached. "Ah... we'll have a lot of work to do... Rebuilding this will take many years." She said, looking around.

Silence fell again as Scarlet's daughters began to retreat, leaving their mother at the edge of the crater, alone with her thoughts. Smoke rose in slow spirals, mingling with the mist that descended from the hills.

Scarlet squinted into the darkness, but she did not see the present—she saw the past. An ancient memory, so ancient that it seemed to belong to another life, another era. A forgotten fragment... until now.

"If he ever awakens... the world will not know what to do with him."

The voice came into her mind like a distant flame—Scathach, the immortal, Strax's mother.

Scarlet felt a chill run down her spine, and for a moment, the crater before her turned into a field of black flowers, the skies still golden with twilight, the sound of waves in the distance. It was there, so many centuries ago, that she had been with Scathach for the last time.

…

"So you fear your son?" Scarlet had asked curiously as she walked alongside the woman she called her disciple.

Scathach, wrapped in her purple and silver cloak, did not answer immediately. She gazed at the horizon as if reading the weather.

"I do not fear him. But I fear what the world will do to him."

Scarlet frowned. "The boy? You haven't even had him yet, and you're talking about the problems he's going to cause?"

"He will be too strong," Scathach said softly. "And that is the problem. He will be born with something that should not exist. The spark... the ancient breath. The same one that set the first dragons ablaze. A power that did not come from me. It came from before me."

Scarlet remembered laughing. "You talk as if he were a prophecy."

"No. Prophecies can be avoided. Strax is destiny. And the world, Scarlet... the world hunts what it cannot control."

The memory crumbled like ash in the wind. Scarlet blinked, back to the present, her eyes still fixed on the crater.

"That was it..." The pieces began to fit together, with the weight of a damned truth.

The dragons' attack.

The precision.

The violence.

The instinctive fury.

They weren't destroying out of strategy. They were reacting. They sensed the transformation. They sensed the magical rupture that Strax had caused by transforming several warriors into true dragons of flesh and blood. A ritual that shouldn't have been possible. A feat that perhaps only a being like him... an heir to the primordial spark... could accomplish.

And the ancient dragons? Proud, territorial, deeply sensitive to mana and the natural order?

They responded like wounded animals.

Bellatrix approached, noticing her mother's strange torpor.

"Mother... are you okay?"

Scarlet turned slowly. Her eyes were red, intense, but not angry—they were worried. Something rare. Something dangerous.

"Strax has awakened something. Something that perhaps even he does not understand."

Cassandra and Daniela, who were listening from a distance, also approached.

"Are you saying it was his fault?" Daniela asked incredulously.

Scarlet shook her head. "Not his. That which he carries. Scathach once said that he was older than any of us could understand. That the source within him was not hers... but something ancient. And that if it awoke, the world would fear it. Perhaps... it is beginning."

Cassandra looked at the ruins. "So the dragons sensed it. They sensed that he broke an invisible law. An ancient boundary."

"And they attacked," Bellatrix added. "Not out of malice. But out of instinct. As guardians of an order that no one else understands."

Scarlet took a deep breath. Her chest burned—perhaps from the revelation, perhaps from exhaustion. Her eyes scanned the wreckage again, and this time, there was less fury in her stance... and more urgency.

"Why did I get involved with such a problematic man..."