After the empress finally reached an agreement between herself and Nala, she and the other kids finally went off to sleep in order to put an end to this long and stressful day.

Nala and Trevor joined the rest of the dormant students in the guest's room while Sabiri returned to her own private chambers. Saramin was offered one of the special rooms as a sign of her respect towards her status as a princess, but the white-haired girl politely rejected the offer, claiming she wanted to stay close to Gaby and the others in case they needed to be healed again.

Kurt himself simply went to his own room and passed out on his bed after giving a quick glance at his own hands. He quickly recalled the times he used to be a young baby that wanted to impress his new mother and father by trying to turn himself into a dragon.

All those times he would try to grow wings by jumping out of his bed, looking into the mirror to check if his teeth had turned into fangs, and constantly looking at his arms to confirm if there were any scales in there.

Becoming a dragon used to be his main goal in life, but after today, he couldn't help but dread the idea.

To think the necessary step to turning into one would require taking someone's life. He could never imagine himself going that far.

And yet...

What if something went wrong again? What if another threat appeared and forced him to fight for his life? What if those he cared about were put in danger? What if his metal scales and his healing flames were not enough to keep them safe?

What if he needed to become a real dragon?

He continued to question himself until his exhaustion finally defeated him and caused him to fall asleep.

In his dreams, he found himself in a completely dark place once again, this time with a new guest staring directly at him.

"Hi... My precious lamb..."

Kurt flinched at the sight of a girl that was slightly taller than him with wild red hair dressed in a black dress and staring at him with her disturbingly big and wide fire-colored eyes.

He tried to utter the girl's name, but no sound would come out.

"What's the matter, little lamb?" she joyfully asked while appearing right behind him and hugging his neck, "Did the cat got your tongue?"

The boy tried to jump away from her but she simply vanished and instead another figure appeared.

"No need to look so worried, little dude!" a large youngster with the same hair color as Kurt and the girl from before commented while approaching him from afar, "We are all family here!! There is nothing to fear!"

Kurt glared at the boy that continued to come closer and began to rush towards him with a raised fist, but the moment he tried to touch him, the boy transformed into a massive red-scaled beast with golden horns and the legs of a centipede.

"Oh... Not cool, little dude!" the beast muttered while slapping Kurt with the back of his hand, "That's not how you treat family!"

The boy was sent flying into the darkness as the red monster disappeared and suddenly, a pair of black reptilian arms snatched him from the air.

"Not so easy to when you are all by yourself, is it? Fake prince!"

Kurt turned around to see who was holding him and came face-to-face with a dark lizard that was bigger than him in size covered with red stripes all over its body as well as two red horns.

"You thought you had all the answers to everyone's problems... But at the end of the day, you're nothing but a fool! A big idiot who knows nothing about anything and is completely useless by himself!"

The black lizard launched him back into the air and the red-haired girl appeared one more time to cuddle him, "My little lamb didn't know that little kids were being taken away from their families and sacrificed while he was being spoiled by his mommy in the comforts of his home..."

She then dropped him into the darkness and Kurt found himself falling into a bottomless abyss of nothingness until a gigantic red hand grabbed him out of nowhere.

"The little dude didn't know that dragons need to kill in order to unlock their true form! Every time he would ask anyone the secret to turning into one of us, he didn't know he was basically asking to let him kill someone as well! I bet your mother must have loved hearing you basically say 'I wanna kill someone too! I wanna kill someone too!!'"

The owner of the red hand began to play with Kurt as if he was a tennis ball and then launched him back to the top where he saw the dark walls around him turning into an army of figures in the shape of the black lizard smiling at him with their red eyes.

"This fake prince didn't know anything about how we've lived so far... About what we had to endure! He knows nothing about our pain and our struggle for survival! And yet he claims he is gonna fix everything even though he allowed me to die right in front of him! Just a foolish prince of ignorance who couldn't even pay attention to the suffering of those around him!"

All the voices of the creatures continued to speak at the same time while Kurt slowly lost the momentum from his throw and was placed in a floating state that allowed him to be in the very center of their glares.

Kurt tried to fight them, but his body remained frozen as it continued to hang in the air. The united voices then changed their speech so they would speak one by one.

"Didn't even know that his best friend was hired by his mom!"

"Didn't even know that he was nearly killed by the red princess!"

"Didn't even know the true meaning behind his brother's actions! He just punched his problems away!!"

"Didn't know!"

"Didn't ask!"

"Didn't care!"

"Didn't care about their pain! Didn't care about their problems! Didn't care about their suffering! Didn't care! Didn't care!"

A series of three pillars made of stone began to rise from below, each as tall as a door and surrounding the red-haired boy as if they were trying to imprison him.

One of the pillars began to shatter itself and lose its pieces until it took the shape of a Trevor made of rocks.

"Didn't care about his own friend's trauma!" a black lizard screamed while crawling on the statue.

A second pillar began to break down as well and took Saramin's shape, and right after that, the red-scaled beast appeared right behind the doll and grabbed her with its claws.

"Didn't care about his own sister's struggle!"

The third pillar finally shattered as well and assumed the shape of Gaby before the red-haired lady with wide eyes jumped on top of her head.

"Didn't care about his own girlfriend's safety!"

The black lizards began to jump on Trevor's statue and dragged it down into the darkness, "Too ignorant to watch out for them!"

Next, the boy turned around and noticed that the red monster had completely destroyed Saramin's statue with its giant bare hands, "Too cowardly to do what needs to be done!"

At last, Kurt looked at the only remaining statue, the one that had Gaby's figure, and observed as the red-haired girl raised its foot and stepped on it in order to split it into two pieces, "Too weak to help anyone!"

Kurt watched as the pile of rubble continued to fall until nothing remained and the taunting figures continued to approach him.

"You're too ignorant, fake prince... That's why we will all fall..."

"You're too cowardly, little dude... That's why they will all fall..."

"You're too weak, my precious lamb! That's why you will fall!"

One by one they continued to whisper the same words over and over into his ears as they circled him around.

"Ignorant! Coward! Weak! Ignorant! Coward! Weak! Ignorant! Coward! Weak! Ignorant! Coward! Weak! Ignorant! Coward! Weak! Ignorant! Coward! Weak!"

Kurt could no longer stand listening to this anymore and finally revealed his metal claws, and for the first time, his voice managed to come out as he roared to the sky while setting himself on fire.

He began to jump after the figures and attack them without even giving them a second to react. The boy kept slashing, and cutting, and dicing, and trashing them more and more.

They didn't fight back or even move at all, they just kept smiling at him while chanting the same words repeatedly as if their taunting was the only weapon they needed to injure him.

A strange crimson liquid began to scatter, filling the room that once was nothing bat darkness with the color red.

The boy kept fighting, and fighting, and fighting until all that remained was a massive red puddle that reached all the way to his kneecaps.

Once the cause of his torment was finally gone he simply dropped to his knees and observed his own reflection on the other side of the red liquid.

Except... It wasn't just the liquid that was red. It was his own skin, or rather, his scales.

He stared at his own body and saw that his claws were no longer made of silver metal, they had assumed a more reptilian appearance.

His legs, his face, his chest, everything was covered with scales of the same color as the liquid he was swimming in. He hugged his head and noticed a pair of black horns were there as well at the same time he sensed something weighting on his back.

After gazing at his reflection again, he saw that he now had wings and a tail.

With each passing second, he became less and less human and more and more something else entirely.

'How was this possible??' he thought. He never killed anyone. He shouldn't have turned into a dragon!

But then, as he continued to question his own existence, a series of arms began to appear from the liquid and latch onto his legs.

Beings covered in red liquid started to pull him down while muttering the same words from before all over again.

"Little dude..."

"Fake prince..."

"My lovely lamb..."

"Ignorant..."

"Coward..."

"Weak..."

The boy that was now more monster than human tried to raise his wings to fly away from those he had failed to destroy, but these hands pulling him down were stronger than he imagined.

More pairs of hands started to appear. Hands from members of his family, from his friends, from his classmates.

They all continued to try the best they could to make the boy sink into the poll of red with a grip so powerful that made him question if it was even worth it to keep trying to resist.

He attempted to fly yet again while giving a small glance at the liquid when his heart suddenly stopped once he noticed all the hands were gone and the only thing that remained was a version of himself trying to hold him down.

It looked just like Kurt, but there was nothing reptilian about its appearance. No traces of scales, horns, or anything. Just a regular human-looking boy.

The boy had no idea of what he was looking at, but he knew it couldn't be right. He knew that could not be him. He was him! There was only one him! And if he was the real him, what was he looking at right now?

His doppelgänger kept pulling him closer until they were about the same height and approached his lips next to his ear so he would be able to listen closely to his words.

"You keep trying o deny it... To escape it... To escape me... But I'll always be here! Watching you! Waiting for you to fail... For you to fall... For you to get tired of being you...

For you to give up!"

The human Kurt grabbed the monster Kurt by the neck, and with a blink of an eye, the two of them had changed body shapes, with the original Kurt assuming his normal appearance while being strangled by a red-scaled beast on top of a giant crimson puddle as it continued to smile at him with malice in its eyes.

"And when you do... It will be my turn!"

The lad couldn't understand what he was trying to say. All he could do was react with a whisper in order to clear out his confusion.

"Who are you...?"

The red figure of the boy smiled and gave him a strong hug.

"I'm the dragon... " it whispered before dropping him on the water.

Kurt couldn't do anything but helplessly struggle as he continued to drown while the being waved at him from above.

He searched his surroundings and noticed the broken pieces of his friends scattered everywhere, keeping him company in this abyss that he had dragged them into.