Chapter 428: The Dragon Queen

Luke leaned toward the window and cracked the curtain just enough to look outside. The village was gone. Or rather, it had been swallowed in seconds by a snowstorm so violent it looked unreal, as if someone had dropped it onto the world from above. Cold seeped through the walls like a living thing, and the wind howled in broken, uneven bursts that reminded him of distant screams mixing with the groan of wood under pressure.

People were scrambling across the streets. Some carried weapons, others grabbed whatever they could before fleeing indoors. Fire mages fought desperately to keep their flames alive, hurling streaks of heat against a blizzard determined to snuff them out. Panic spread through the villagers like a sickness. Many held their weapons with the same shaky grip they had used during the final event of the tutorial. It was clear the memory still haunted them.

But all that chaos was nothing compared to the shape looming above the rooftops.

Luke’s breath stalled as soon as his eyes found the massive silhouette in the sky. A ship. Not just a ship, but an enormous vessel carved from dark wood, shaped like something out of an old pirate movie he might have watched back in Maine. Except this was heavier, grander, built like a monument. It had multiple levels, long rows of windows, towering masts, and wide sails that refused to fold even in the storm. From the look of its size, Luke estimated it could house a thousand people without effort. Calling it a ship felt wrong. It was a floating fortress.

And floating wasn’t exaggeration. It was actually suspended in the air.

The sails snapped sharply in the wind, their surfaces lit by the glow of the many windows across its hull. Every sail carried a mark painted in deep blue… the outline of a dragon. Luke recognized it instantly. No one could mistake that insignia.

The crest of the Rhiannon family.

The sight of that colossal vessel knocked the air out of everyone who dared look up. Power radiated from it. Authority. A level of confidence so unshakable it bordered on arrogance, the kind only those at the top of the world could afford.

Luke stepped away from the window and closed the curtain slowly, as if the act might somehow soften the reality he had just witnessed.

“How did they find you here?” he asked. His voice was low, confused.

“How?” Evangeline echoed. “Well, I mean… our arrival here probably wasn’t exactly subtle to the big shots of the world.”

Allison sat in the armchair near the wall, pale enough to look sick. The moment she saw the dragon emblem, whatever color she had left drained away.

“It’s been only a few hours,” Luke pressed. “How could they know she was here already? And even if they did, shouldn’t it have taken longer? Would they really come straight here with a floating warship? Wouldn’t they send someone smaller first? Why would the high-ranking members come in person?”

Allison had only said one thing, but it was enough to unravel everything. That ship could only belong to her family. Their personal vessel. The most important one they had. They wouldn’t send an employee in something like that. There was only one explanation. The Rhiannon themselves had arrived.

“I don’t know how they found out so fast or how they got here this quickly,” she said, rising from the armchair with tense, jerky movements. “Their ship can fly, but the distance from here to their kingdom is still a few days of travel by airship.”

Luke looked through the gap in the curtain again. The suspended vessel hovered there, colossal and still, looming over the distant edge of the village like a patient predator waiting for the right moment to pounce.

“It doesn’t matter. We’re leaving,” he said. “We already have everything we need. We’re going to Maine.”

Jack, Eleanor, and Evangeline were there as well. Eleanor peered out the window with the same stunned disbelief Luke had felt, the sheer presence of that ship was nearly suffocating.

“You don’t understand, Luke,” Allison replied. “We can’t run. They’ve probably already placed trusted people at the teleport point.”

It made perfect sense. If they’d come in a flying ship and brought the family with them, they wouldn’t leave holes in their net.

“We can run anyway. We can stay in the New World until things calm down,” Luke insisted. “This place is huge. Even if it takes a month, we disappear for a while and then find a way to get to Maine.”

“We can’t. My face will be everywhere,” she said, her voice heavy with discouragement.

“How not? You can literally use an item that turns you into a man. If your female face is plastered everywhere, who cares?”

Allison let out a short laugh, but it was hollow — exhausted, brittle.

“You can’t outrun a family that can snap its fingers and bend the whole New World. It’s over, Luke.”

She brushed past him and headed toward the door, every step carrying a finality he hated.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Luke reached her just before she touched the handle.

“I’m going to surrender.”

“Surrender? We can just slip out the back. You don’t have to give up this easily.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Evangeline stepped between them, worry tightening her expression. “I know things are messy for you two right now. But we need to decide what we’re going to do.”

“It’s a real flying ship…” Jack muttered in disbelief, staring out the window as if his brain refused to accept the sight. “They’re supposed to be legends. Only the highest noble families have them… and this one… this must be one of the strongest ever built.”

“This is the kind of power a World Government family holds,” Eleanor said, stepping away from the window, still stunned. “And here I was thinking I was important in high school because my dad worked for the CIA.”

But for Allison, that ship held no awe. No grandeur. Only the crushing weight of everything she’d spent years trying to escape. Luke was the only one there who truly understood. To the others, she’d told a sanitized version of her past, a shallow explanation about not wanting to return. None of them knew how deep the wound truly went. They didn’t know she had chosen to die in the tutorial rather than spend another year under the Rhiannon family’s grip.

Her relationship with them was worse than slavery. She was a prisoner of a name, of a bloodline, of a legacy. And that kind of prison didn’t have doors.

Allison didn’t wait another second. She turned the handle and bolted outside.

“Wait, Allison! You’re being way too impulsive, you’re not thinking straight!” Luke ran after her.

The moment Luke stepped through the door, the cold hit him like he had plunged into a frozen lake. It wasn’t normal cold. It had weight, intention, the kind of magic that ignored the laws of nature. By all logic, the houses of the village should have frozen solid. Yet the cold stayed outside, pressing in from every direction, as if deliberately fencing the place in.