Without pause, Kai moved deeper into the frozen forest, the condensation from his breath floating upwards as small icicles formed around his nostrils.

The adrenaline had finally died down, his escape from the cave, what he believed to be his final battle with his arch nemesis, the rabbit, and the confrontation with the humans had been an incredible rush but now it was over, he was mentally drained.

Not only that, but he was physically exhausted. Even though he had improved greatly in the past eighteen years, he had used his dragon's breath twice. The signs, his skeletal structure visible behind his scales, emphasises this point and Kai knew that he needed to find a rich source of nourishment soon, preferably before he rested.

Kai narrowly missed a tree, swerving around it at the last second.

If one could see him now, they would definitely blame his distracted state, his pupils slightly unfocused, on his exhaustion but they would be wrong.

Kai's emotions and thoughts were in turmoil.

When his ancestral memories were triggered by the female human, most of Kai's darkest, most repressed fears had been answered in one blow and while the emotional impact had been dampened, as they were not his true memories, they still left him reeling.

The black dragon clan, a subspecies of the primordial dragon that had merged with the element of darkness, had been eradicated from this world.

As this wasn't enough of a blow to dragonling, Kai had not only discovered that his mother was really dead but saw the events that lead to her demise. She had valiantly sacrificed her life to ensure he would not be captured or killed by their enemies.

While he already suspected that this was the case, her absence saying more than the memories ever could, the emotions that swelled in Kai were like a raging sea.

After calming himself, a sigh, a strange sound to be coming from a dragon escaped from between his sharp, predatory teeth.

He was utterly alone but then again, he had been for more than a million years.

He did not hold anything against the humans, nor the gods that manipulated them from the shadows. Due to his upbringing, his mindset was vastly different than most of his species.

Death was one of the fundamental laws of nature, survival of the fittest a close second. Only the weak and foolish would blame their defeat on their adversaries.

While if the perpetrators were still alive, he would have sought vengeance, however, the group that had driven his mother to such extreme ends had ultimately fallen at her claws ending the cycle of blood. Even if they hadn't, they would have long since turned to dust and Kai saw little point of taking it out on their descendants.

Kai felt that even in defeat, his mother had been victorious. The image of her standing proud and defiant, even as she stared death in the face, filled him with pride.

In the end, even though she paid the ultimate price, she had achieved her goals. Kai was not only alive but free.

The unfocused pupils suddenly contracted, the dragonlings eyes hardening as his resolve strengthened continuously as he worked through the emotions and memories. As he reasoned and resolved each one, Kai's will was tempered and he felt more and more admiration for his mother.

Where before, he had lived a life of necessity, the first morals and ideals of the young dragon started to form, based on the memories of his mother represented.

Power.

Elegant.

Unyielding.

Cunning.

His mother, due to her dire situation, had slightly turned away from the clan's dragonic teachings, and while he knew from the other ancestral memories many of his kind wouldn't have agreed with her methods, their pride getting in the way, the results displayed how effective they had been.

Kai snorted in disdain at, to him at least, were ridiculous sentiments and rules.

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Without those to guide him in his early days, Kai had not gained the arrogance that his kind was, at least in the past, well known for and felt that placing restrictions on himself, just because he had more potential than others, was beyond foolish.

His memories showed that dragons stood like mountains and challenged the world head-on, confident in their strength and too proud to use the strategies of mortals believing that time and their strength, would resolve all issues.

While this worked against those who fought them in the same manner, especially as nearly all of creations creatures were significantly inferior, against the cunning, devious species that spread like a virus, continually growing and improving through generations and hardships, it was just a matter of time before the mighty dragons would fall.

Kai had grown up fighting such creatures and, without the indoctrination of his kind, he had developed a similar mindset. While he possessed the spirit and body of a dragon, his mind housed the cunning and nurtured instincts of a short-lived being.

He was not protected at birth like his kind was custom too, nor while he went through the most dangerous periods of a young dragons life and so, he knew just how dangerous the world truly was.

Yet each time he was nearly defeated, sometimes so close to death that he could feel its icy tendrils wrapping around his heart, he not only survived but grew stronger.

Kai understood that there was no place for emotions like pride, pity or arrogance when fighting for survival. In the cave system, he had started as one of the weakest, and only through hard work, determination and a lot of blood, did he reach the apex.

While his success initially went to his head, the memories that Kai had later gained made him realise that he was nothing more than a frog at the bottom of the well. The skies were high, the oceans deep and in it, he was yet a grain of sand blown by the whims of nature.

Realising this, Kai's arrogance was checked and he revisited the lessons he had learnt early on in the cave, his subconscious already set on reaching the pinnacle of the world, just like his ancestors.

However, to do that, he needed to survive.

Experience told him that those that stand out, that flaunt their strength or intelligence, their desire to control and power, all perish.

The light, while feeling good, was lethal and so, he would remain in the shadows. He would keep his existence a secret, an unknown entity and forgo the typical traits of his kind.

Time heals all wounds, and maybe his kind wasn't the enemy of the world anymore, but why would he take the chance.

As Kai was thinking this, the black mist that surrounded his body thickened, allowing him to blend into the shadows generated by the evergreen tree's surrounding him, their snow-covered branches blocking out the rays of light.

His steps became quieter, the crunching of the snow and even the tracks he left becoming less and less visible.

While Kai continued to stalk through the forest, his thoughts returned to the humans, and he felt a small pang of guilt.

The humans, if you excluded the rabbit that couldn't talk and would only fight or run, were the first sentient creatures that he had interacted with and he felt strange after killing them.

This was especially true when he considered the ones that couldn't defend themselves. The human adolescents weren't a threat to him, and as such, it felt... wrong to kill them.

Kai scraped his tongue on his teeth, feeling like he could taste something unpleasant.

The man was a minor threat, and so had to be eliminated and the woman...

Kai shuddered.

He had used his most potent attack, utilising over eighty per cent of his energy, to eliminate her as fast as possible without giving her the chance to retaliate.

She was a dangerous existence. Another predator who had locked her sights on him.

Kia knew that it was only because she was distracted, slightly wounded, lack of knowledge, and had underestimated him, that she had been beaten so easily and fortified his mind so he wouldn't make the same mistake.

Thinking about the woman, who had turned to ash before his very eyes, Kai felt slightly better about the whole thing.

That woman had to die, no matter the cost, and the others, even though they were still young, needed to be silenced.

They had seen too much.

His knowledge of the world came from his ancestral memories, and so he didn't know what sort of influence the gods maintained after such a long time. As beings that lived extremely long lifespans, though nothing compared to a dragon, a few of them could still be about.

Technically, they were still at war and so if he wanted to move without fear, none of the gods or their servant races could know that he existed. If they did, and they were still hostile, he would be hunted and in his current state, killed or enslaved.

Kai shook his head, his limbs feeling heavier than they ever had before as his body's temperature continued to drop.

At the back of his mind, he knew that he should have eaten the human corpses, not only would they of contained rich spirit energy, but would have provided an extremely nutritious meal.

The thing was, his instincts were screaming at him that if he did, then it would change something fundamental and, with no information on the topic, he decided that caution was the better part of valour.

Plus, even though it was faint, he smelt something he had been aching to get his teeth into for such a long, long time. Well, it wasn't exactly the same smell, but it was familiar enough that he couldn't help but drool.

Kai's head emerged from behind a tree, spotting a small grove that strangely didn't have any snow on the ground in a large circle around it. Infront of a large, three meters thick, vine-encased tree, was a small mound with countless rabbits running around and entering through a single entrance.

At the top of the mound, a sentry carefully scanned the surrounding treeline, but his gaze passed the motionless Kai, and soon his back was turned, Kai crept forward.

A malicious glint shimmered across the dragon's golden eyes as he lowered his posture, his stomach now slightly touching the snow as he slowed his speed and inched closer to his targets.

All the thoughts that were buzzing around his brain became silent as he fell into a trance-like state.