The Frozen Myth -3

Long Lie — King Xian

It was becoming clear that we could no longer afford to stand apart from the world’s unrest.

Lin Xi had rescued Mo Meilin. She had killed Feng Haoyu — and he had deserved every bit of it. But that act had drawn a line in the sand whether we intended it to or not. The Kingdom of Frozen Abyss had made its position known. Now it was time to make it official.

My retainer stepped forward and bowed, a letter held carefully in both hands.

“Your Highness — along with Fenrir Kingdom, the King of the Earth Binder’s Kingdom has requested an audience at the upcoming meeting. How shall we proceed?”

I took the letter and set it down on the desk.

“It is time for this kingdom to be known,” I said. “Invite them both. We will discuss political alliances and assess the situation outside our borders together.”

“As you command, Your Highness.” He bowed and left the study to begin preparations. The meeting was two days away.

The door opened again almost immediately.

Lin Xi stepped inside and came to stand before me — and I knew something was different before she said a single word. Her face was luminous, her fingers moving restlessly against each other, a smile pressing at the corners of her mouth that she was very clearly trying — and very clearly failing — to contain. She looked like someone carrying a secret so bright it was leaking through her skin.

I rose from my chair, crossed the room to her, and kissed her gently on the lips. The blush that rose to her cheeks was instant.

“Is there something you’d like to tell me?” I asked.

“I need to take you somewhere,” she said. “Are you free?”

“For you?” I smiled. “Always.”

We climbed onto Aetherion and flew to the far edge of the kingdom where the half-grown dragons trained in the open expanse beyond the palace, “Dragons Nest”.

The moment we arrived, Zhurong spotted us. He spread his wings wide and released a roar of pure delight — the sound rolling across the ice in warm waves. The retainers and guards stationed around the training grounds lowered their heads in a single unified bow as we landed.

The dragons were magnificent. Bigger than I remembered them being even a few months ago — moving with a confidence and power that hadn’t been there before, their bodies beginning to fill out into the creatures they were becoming.

“They’re half-grown now,” Lin Xi said, stepping up beside me. “Mature enough to protect themselves — and others.” She glanced at Aetherion and Zhurong beside us. “And those two — no one with any sense would dare stand against them.”

“No,” I agreed, watching Zhurong stretch his neck proudly as though he had heard every word. “They certainly wouldn’t.”

She led me further — to the very edge of the ice plate where the kingdoms Ice plates ended and the ocean began.

I stopped beside her and simply looked.

The sun was descending in a slow, golden collapse toward the horizon, and the ocean beneath it had turned the colour of molten metal — an endless, shimmering blanket of gold stretching as far as the eye could reach. The ice at our feet caught the light and threw it back. The sky above was soft and boundless.

It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.

Then Lin Xi turned toward the water and called out clearly —

“Orochi.”

The stillness of the ocean broke. The surface shifted, swelled, and then the great serpent rose — all eight heads emerging with unhurried, ancient grace. He turned toward Lin Xi and bowed, all eight heads dipping simultaneously in a gesture of absolute deference.

He was enormous. Up close, even more so — eight heads, each capable of breathing water and ice, his body moving beneath the surface with the effortless power of something that had existed long before kingdoms rose and fell. Elegant and ferocious at once, completely and utterly hers.

I extended my hand slowly.

One of his heads turned toward me, nostrils flaring softly. Then he leaned forward and pressed the side of his face into my palm — gentle, deliberate, warm in a way I hadn’t expected from something so vast.

“Beautiful,” I said quietly. And I meant it entirely.

“You had heard of him,” Lin Xi said, moving to stand beside me. “But you’d never properly met. This is Orochi — my companion. The one I train with.” She smiled. “Aetherion and Zhurong already know him well.”

She took my hand.

We climbed onto Orochi’s back together and he carried us out into the ocean — moving through the water with a grace so complete it felt less like swimming and more like the ocean itself was shifting around us, making way. He took us further and further from the shore until the setting sun felt close enough to touch, its golden light pouring over the water, over Orochi’s scales, over Lin Xi’s face.

She had never looked more beautiful than she did in that light.

I leaned in and kissed her, one hand settling at the small of her back, and she smiled against my lips.

Then she pulled back just slightly — that smile still on her face, softer now, carrying something deeper.

“Our dragon children are half-grown,” she began. “Mature enough to protect themselves and the people around them.”

I nodded.

“Aetherion, Zhurong, and Orochi — the three strongest companions we have.”

I nodded again, watching her face.

Then she paused. Her fingers found mine and held them. Her eyes met mine fully, openly, with a brightness in them that had nothing to do with the setting sun.

“Your Highness — our family is growing bigger.” A breath. “I am pregnant. Twins. The royal physician told me today.”

The world went very quiet.

Tears came before I could stop them — rolling down my face without permission, without warning. I pulled her close with both arms and pressed my lips to her forehead, holding them there.

“My Queen.” My voice was not entirely steady. “You have just given me the greatest happiness of my life.” I held her tighter. “Thank you. I love you — I love you so much.”

I couldn’t contain it. After everything — after a year of building this kingdom, this life, this love from nothing — this felt like the world finally giving something back. The most extraordinary thing that had happened to me since the day I had married her.

We stood on Orochi’s back as the sun finished its descent, holding each other in the fading golden light, neither of us in a hurry to move. Just breathing. Just being here, together, in this moment.

Eventually we made our way back.

I extended my hand to help Lin Xi step safely down from Orochi’s back onto the ice. The retainers bowed. Orochi slipped silently beneath the surface and was gone.

The dragons were still at their training — moving through formations, testing their strength against each other — when it happened.

A young fire dragon misjudged a landing and came down hard on a sharp ice spike. The impact tore through him and he screeched — a raw, piercing sound that bounced off the surrounding glaciers in sharp, overlapping echoes. In the same instant, instinct took over and he breathed fire — a burst of flame that lit the air between us.

The ringing hit me like a wall.

My legs gave out. I dropped to the ice, both hands pressing against my skull as the sound tore through me and the memories rushed in — faster this time, more vivid, less merciful. The same fragment I had carried since Zhurong’s bonding: the burning dragon, the ice spike, the two laughing figures riding away.

But this time something new broke through the blur.

A woman.

On her knees. A blade falling. And in the last moment before it did — her lips moving, whispering something to me, her eyes holding mine even as the fire rose around her and consumed what remained.

Her face was still unclear. Her words were still silent. But the pain attached to that image was not blurred at all. It was precise and absolute — a grief so deep and so old that it lived in my bones rather than my memory.

My whole body shook.

Tears fell without my permission. My chest felt like it had been split open. Somewhere beside me I was distantly aware of Aetherion and Zhurong — both of them restless, agitated, pacing — feeling through our bond exactly what I was feeling and unable to reach me.

“Your Highness — Your Highness, are you alright?”

Lin Xi’s voice. I followed it back.

The pain receded slowly, like a tide pulling out. The ringing faded. I blinked and the training grounds came back into focus — the dragons, the guards, all of them still and tense, watching me with wide, worried eyes.

Lin Xi was beside me, crying, her arms around me before I had fully returned to myself.

“Please don’t scare me like that,” she whispered. “Please.”

I wrapped my arms around her and held on.

“I’m alright,” I said quietly. “I’m here. Relax.”

She pulled back and exhaled shakily, then nodded toward the training ground. “Look — the healing dragons have already tended to him. He’s fine.”

I looked. The young fire dragon was back on his feet, the wound already closing, his earlier panic settled into something calmer. The other dragons moved around him as though nothing had happened.

Everything was back to normal.

Except for Aetherion and Zhurong — still restless at the edges, still feeling the echo of what had passed through me. And the guards and retainers, still watching, still holding their breath.

I stayed until the tension left the air completely — until the dragons settled and the guards relaxed and the training ground returned to its rhythm. Then I offered my hand to Lin Xi and we climbed onto Aetherion together.

We flew back toward the palace in silence.

The golden light of the evening had faded. The sky above the Kingdom of Frozen Abyss had deepened to a quiet, cold blue.

And somewhere inside me, buried beneath a year of peace and love and everything I had built here — something was waking up. Slowly. Painfully.

Piece by piece.