Chapter 9: Dragon Blood

“I need you to read.”

Iris stared at me as if I’d just announced the sky was made of fire. Then she smacked her own forehead with an open palm.

“How in the world do you know how to speak but not read?” she blurted.

I could only shrug.

“No idea,” I admitted. “Speaking feels natural. I don’t even think about it.”

Her eyes narrowed, and sarcasm crept into her voice.

“Have you tried reading without thinking?” she shot back.

For a heartbeat, I actually considered it.

In this world, “without thinking” had worked for stranger things. My body had learned sword rhythm without my mind truly understanding it. The system itself rewarded repetition, not insight. Maybe language was the same, something my tongue remembered even if my eyes didn’t.

I opened the worn journal to the first page. Lines of writing marched across it in tidy rows, symbols that looked almost familiar.

I fixed my gaze on the text and tried to empty my mind.

No forcing it.

Just… letting it happen.

I stared until my eyes watered.

They stayed what they had always been to me: meaningless ink marks on a page.

I lowered the book with a defeated breath.

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just… nothing.”

“Right…” Iris tapped her chin. “Are you sure I can even read this?”

“Of course,” I said quickly, misunderstanding her angle. I lifted the journal slightly, as if offering it more clearly would solve the problem.

She stared at me like I’d lost my last shred of sense.

“No,” she snapped. “You idiot. Are you sure it isn’t a grimoire?”

“A grimoire?” I repeated.

Iris exhaled hard, half sigh, half curse.

“Good gods,” she muttered, then lifted a hand in front of her. For an instant, the air around her wrist shimmered, a faint pulse of mana that prickled against my skin like static.

A book appeared. It simply formed in her palm.

It was small and compact, its cover the color of packed earth, textured like dried clay. Subtle runes crawled along the spine.

“A grimoire,” Iris said, holding it up so I could see, “is a magical book. A unique item for each mage. We conjure them.”

“No one else can read another mage’s grimoire,” Iris continued. “Unless ownership is passed on. That’s how families make sure magic stays in the bloodline and how they keep everyone else from getting access.”

My grip tightened on my journal.

If what I held was a grimoire, then handing it to her was pointless. Worse than pointless. It might be holding the only thing that could explain my “unknown element,” and no one but me would ever be able to read it.

“I’m not sure, if this is a Grimorie,” I admitted. “Can you write in a grimoire?”

“No,” Iris said immediately. “It fills itself automatically.”

My journal didn’t fill itself.

I held the journal out to her again, more firmly now.

“Then it’s a normal book,” I said. “Please. Read it.”

“All right,” Iris said at last.

She settled the journal between her knees, then tugged the armored plates from her hands. Gauntlets and bracers coming off with soft metallic clicks. Bare fingers looked almost wrong after all that steel, pale against the dark leather lining. She flexed them once, before fliping through the pages.

“It’s a diary,” she announced, voice flattening into something practical. “Your day-to-day.”

I swallowed and moved closer, sitting beside her on the flat rock.

I was so focused on the pages that it took me a moment to notice something else, something small and strangely human.

A faint scent of lavender.

It drifted off Iris as she leaned over the journal. It didn’t fit the setting at all. She wore plate armor. She had been patrolling through dust and torch-smoke and damp stone. I’d expected metal and sweat and oil.

Instead, there was lavender.

Iris turned another page. Her brow furrowed. She slowed, lips moving silently as she traced a line.

“…Tricky,” she muttered. “You write like a noble. Some of these words are… confusing.”

My throat tightened. “Can you read it?” I asked, trying not to sound desperate.

“Mostly,” she said. “Let’s start with the first page.”

“Agreed.”

She returned to the beginning. For a moment she stared at the first entry.

“‘Received my evaluation today,'” Iris read. Her tone shifted as she found her footing. ” ‘I have no Circles.'”

“‘My lord did not seem sad. Nor happy. He seemed to already know.'” She paused, then read on. ” ‘As for my lady, my mother, she began to weep. She kept repeating something I couldn’t hear. Since then, they’ve ignored me.'”

I didn’t remember their faces. I didn’t remember their voices. Yet, it hurts to hear those words.

Iris finished the passage and looked up at me, an expression of blunt disgust flickering across her features.

“I think that’s what this part means,” she said. “What a shitty family. Oops, sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I don’t remember them.”

But even as I said it, something in me ached. Whoever Kaspar been, he’d sounded so… alone.

Iris didn’t linger. She flipped onward. The diary moved quickly through days. Short entries, clipped observations.

As she read, a portrait formed in my mind: a young man desperate to prove himself, to earn a place in a world that had already labeled him a disappointment.

Iris stopped again and read, more clearly now, as if the writer’s urgency made the words easier.

“‘My last chance to awaken a Circle is here. They must have some answers.'”

Last chance?

Iris turned another page, then slowed, her eyes narrowing.

“Now this is…” She hesitated, then read carefully. ” ‘I’ve discovered something intriguing. Not only am I missing a Circle, but also a Grimoire. It should be impossible.'”

Iris looked up sharply. “So you don’t have a grimoire either?” she asked.

My mouth went dry. I could only nod.

“Apparently,” I said.

The word tasted bitter, because I hadn’t even known what a grimoire was until minutes ago.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“This is one of the last pages,” Iris said, her voice quieter as her fingers slowed.

I leaned closer without realizing it, my attention fixed on the page the way a starving man fixes on food.

Iris cleared her throat and began to read, translating the formal, noble phrasing.

“‘I received the letter from the Academy. It’s my last chance. Either I do well on this expedition, or I will be expelled.'”

Iris continued, eyes scanning steadily.

“‘I had to enlist in the army. They will pay me. It’s the best I can do, since my family no longer sends me money. I can’t keep asking my aunt for more help.'”

Iris flipped to the next part, and her brow furrowed as she read on.

“‘They have no idea I wanted to go on this expedition. They said we’re heading to a cavern in the east. According to ancient documents, it doesn’t seem to be a place rich in mana stones.'”

My mind jumped immediately to the gate, to the way it demanded a ridiculous amount of mana to open.

Iris kept reading, and the tone of the entry shifted.

“‘I’ve been investigating the oldest tomes. Some legends say the area was filled with dragons in the past.'”

A chill ran down my spine.

I didn’t need to pretend confusion here. I already knew what lived beyond that gate.

He wasn’t wrong, I thought grimly. Not wrong at all.

“‘Draconic blood was, for a long time, an alchemical component. It was used to enhance magical abilities or … maybe awaken them.'”

My pulse quickened.

That was why Kaspar, the other Kaspar, the one whose life I’d inherited, had wanted this expedition.

Not for the Academy, glory or some noble rite.

It was one last, desperate experiment.

Iris’s voice dropped slightly as she read the sentence that mattered most.

“‘I need to consume dragon blood. If it works, it might repair my grimoire.'”

I stared at the page as if I could see my past self’s hand shaking when he wrote it.

Iris looked even more confused now than she had at the beginning.

She reread the last part under her breath, lips moving. Then she looked up at me with genuine disbelief.

“Where in the world are you supposed to find draconic blood?” she asked.

My mouth opened. I almost answered aloud.

I know where, I thought.

 

---

 

The afternoon slipped by.

Iris became a teacher without trying to. She sat beside me with the journal open between us, tapping lines with her finger, correcting my pronunciation, forcing my eyes to stop treating letters like meaningless shapes. Even with the diary translated, I could feel how important it was to learn the language properly. If I had to live the same day again and again, then every scrap of knowledge I carried forward mattered.

“Again,” Iris would say when I stumbled. “Not like that. You’re swallowing the ending.”

I’d repeat the sound, jaw tense, and she’d sigh like I was a stubborn recruit.

At times she seemed amused by how quickly I picked up certain patterns. At other times her patience frayed and she’d mutter under her breath about nobles and their useless education. But she didn’t leave.

Yet, soon the command arrived.

“The gate’s opening! Prepare yourselves!”

It yanked me out of the page mid-syllable.