Prologue
The World Before Love
Before kingdoms rose.
Before gods learned fear.
Before humans dared to pray beneath the skies—
There were only two eternal forces.
The Dragon Court.
And the Phoenix Cycle.
The dragons ruled the heavens from floating kingdoms hidden above storms. Ancient celestial beings with silver blood and immortal memory, they guarded the balance of the world. Every mountain carried their names. Every river remembered their voices.
They were not kind.
They were justice.
Cold. Absolute. Eternal.
Then there were the phoenixes.
The opposite of stillness.
They were rebirth itself. Fire given consciousness. They destroyed civilizations when corruption spread too deep and burned kingdoms so new life could grow from the ashes.
Where dragons preserved—
Phoenixes purified.
And for ten thousand years, the two races remained apart.
Because whenever dragon and phoenix powers touched…
Entire worlds collapsed.
So the heavens created laws.
No union.
No bond.
No love.
And yet fate, cruel as ever, always found loopholes.
Every thousand years, the world created two anomalies.
A dragon born with a human heart.
And a phoenix born with human kindness.
The heavens feared them.
Because compassion was weakness.
And love…
Was catastrophe.
