Caeden and Cat followed the dragon as he trudged through the forest. Why he didn't fly, Caeden had no idea. It would have been much faster than the sedate pace they were currently moving at. But the dragon offered no conversation, so Caeden was left with no answers. His best guess was that the powerful creature didn't want to let them out of his sight.

Instead of stewing his thoughts and worrying about where they were going, Caeden decided to rake in his surroundings a bit more. They were in a tropical forest area, which Caeden remembered was far closer to the Pillarside of the continent. The dragon continent was broader than it was tall, and they had landed on the far side from their destination, meaning they had to cross essentially the entire land mass. It was still faster than looping around, but it was a long trip.

If he understood their location correctly, the flight crystal buried in him took them at a forty-five-degree angle from their original trajectory. But this tropical zone was supposed to be huge, covering a tenth of the landmass on its own. Much of it existed on a peninsula that stuck out into the Starry Sea, but plenty of this forest was on the main continent.

Along the way, Caeden used investigative sense to get a feel for the area around him. Mostly, he wanted to know what the monster population was like. There had been surprisingly little data in the CA records about the monster composition on this continent. Usually, meticulous records were kept on what type of monsters usually formed and which areas they were likely to form in. The CA military was responsible for managing monster populations, and the records were invaluable.

Then again, the CA wasn't allowed on this island, so they had little reason to track the monster on it. But it had been an unhelpful gap in the team's knowledge. In fact, before the sabotage, Caeden's greatest concern had been encountering a powerful unknown monster along the way. Coming off the events surrounding the Magma Titan's Heartstone, it was a fear front and center in his mind. He didn't want a repeat of last time.

The monster activity was odd. Most continents had a spectrum of power for the monsters that spawned there. The last continent had varied from monsters around 500 IP to those around 5,000. The further inland you went, the stronger the monsters got, and the farther the continent was from the Pillar, the higher the average power. These were universal rules that every island and continent followed.

Another constant was how those monsters spawned. Those at the lower end of their continent's power spectrum would show up more often than those at the high end, like the last continent. For every Ash Reaper they saw, there were a thousand Plague Rats.

That was not the distribution Caeden saw here. He saw the variance, monsters going from around 5,000 IP to almost 20,000. Much higher than the last continent. But the monster skewed higher than lower. There were more around 20,000 than those at 5,000. Which was all wrong. Caeden had no idea what could cause such a strange shift in monster spawns.

As far as his knowledge went, monsters were a natural facet of their universe. Monsters appeared where there was land, and the farther from both the Starry Sea and the Pillar, the more likely they were to form with great power. Weaker ones appeared more often than stronger ones. To change these rules would be like changing gravity or thermodynamics. It was a function of existence.

"What's going on with the monsters?" Caeden asked before he could stop himself. It was unnerving to see.

The dragon swung its short neck around, its gaze falling on him. Caeden could see hate and anger burning in those reptilian eyes. But also hopelessness, and loss. The dragon wasn't just angry, Caeden realized. He was defeated. Whatever had caused him to hate shrouded had also shattered his spirit. And it had to be something more recent than the old war. The Treaty of Scales was signed roughly 50,000 years ago, and dragons lived only 30,000 years at most. Long-lived compared to a normal human, but nothing to an immortal shrouded.

"You truly know nothing of your people's atrocities." He sounded almost sad. His eyes unfocused, no longer looking at Caeden. "To think that my people's pain was so easily forgotten. Truly, your kind is monstrous."

"If you could explain, that would be nice." Caeden held back his mounting annoyance. Every time this dragon spoke, it was to insult Caeden and shrouded like they were a monolith while giving vague references to whatever horrible things had happened to his own people. It was hard for Caeden to empathize when he had no idea what had happened, and it was annoying that he was treating Caeden like he had personally attacked them.

The dragon snorted. "Very well. You wish to know why the monsters on this continent form differently than on others. I'm sure you also have questions about that cursed child you bonded to, as well as the crimes your people have committed. All of these questions are one and the same. Simply, your people modified this land."

"What? Modified it how?" Caeden asked.

"How much do you know of the war between shrouded and the other sentient species of the Starry Sea?" The dragon asked. Each word contained all of his reluctance and anger. It was obvious he did not want to talk about this.

"Not much. I only learned of it a few months ago and heard some more specific details in the last couple of days. My knowledge is cursory at best." Caeden admitted. He was no historian.

The dragon hissed, which Caeden's shroud identified as the dragon equivalent of a derisive snort. "No matter. I'm sure whatever knowledge you gained from your elder's teachings would be biased at best. I shall tell you the truth."

His tone shifted, his words losing their hostile edge and falling into the familiar cadence of a story. One this dragon had heard many times.

"Ages past, the dragons lived on equal terms with all other thinking life. Each claimed territory, but the Starry Sea was vast, with more than enough space. There were battles and things that could be called wars. We were not harmonious. And the dragons did their share of murdering and pillaging under the Pillar's light. But for the most part, there was peace."

"Then the shrouded came. Or perhaps they were always there. Such things are unknown to dragonkind. Either way, the emergence of shrouded ended whatever could be called peace on the Starry Sea. They were ruthless and strong. Their young were no match for the newborns of any race, but their elders dwarfed the power of our own venerable ancients. They came, and they were hungry for conquest. Wars were waged by them on every front, against every species that could wage war."

"The battles stretched out into decades and centuries as entire continents burned under the fury and avarice of the shrouded. Over time, many of the other species eventually capitulated. They were spent, their people all but gone and their might incomparable to the shrouded. But dragonkind fought on. Our people had advantages that the shrouded could not compare to."

"A female dragon can lay a clutch of anywhere between fifteen to twenty eggs every five years. Our eggs hatch after a decade of gestation and emerge capable of fighting and growing at supreme rates. In contrast, shrouded females can only give birth to one or two children in a little under a year, but most do much less than that. Additionally, shrouded babies require nearly two decades of growth to reach fighting shape. Overall, dragon hatchlings are born more often, in greater numbers, and with more inherent power than shrouded children."

"The shrouded saw that they would be out-competed in the most basic sense, and this realization led to the beginning of a campaign of atrocities. Dragons value their young above all else, shrouded child. We care for our unborn and protect them fiercely. Dragons died by the thousands protecting our hatcheries from the shrouded that came for them." The lime-scaled dragon paused in his walk to glare down at Caeden.

"You don't mean…" Caeden couldn't even say it. The mere idea…

"They crushed eggs, hatchlings yet to emerge, by the tens of thousands. A campaign that covered dozens of continents. Our hatchlings are strong, but our eggs are fragile, vulnerable. Shrouded children can at least move, and scream, and run. Our eggs spend a decade completely helpless. A whole generation of dragons was wiped out. Out key advantage had been brutally destroyed without remorse or conscience."

"I'm sorry. We were never told how badly dragons were wronged. They don't want us to know." Caeden frowned. It was hard to express condolences for this dragon when Caeden's own people had committed such atrocities. Even as he said them, the words felt hollow. It was laughable for him to turn to this aggrieved man and try to tell him that he was different, that Caeden would never do those things, and that he had his own problems with the CA. But this dragon wasn't looking for conciliation from him. He was trying to explain to Caeden just how much his people had been wronged. And he wasn't done.

"You think that is the extent of the shrouded's sins?" A rolling growl reverberated from the dragon's chest, a hollow laugh. "That is not even the worst of it. After the slaughter that came to be known as the Crying of Shattered Shells, many dragons were enraged. Islands burned by the hundreds under the fury of dragonkind. The shrouded feared our wrath, but our victories were costly, and with the next generation already left dead in the hatcheries, we quickly lost more than we could recover. That was when the shrouded came to us with the Treaty of Scales."

"At first, we believed them. They told us their losses had been great, as had our own. It enraged every one of us to deal with the egg breakers, but the oldest and wisest among us looked forward and saw only our extinction at the war's end. If we could not stop the fighting, the shrouded would kill us to the last. So a treaty that gave us lands of our own was the best we could hope for. That treaty later gained a new name. The Great Lie."

"Dragons revere truthfulness above all other virtues. And we believed our truth speech magic was infallible. But it was not. Through complicated by-laws and seemingly insignificant exceptions, the shrouded bound us to this living hell. We cannot leave, lest we be killed, and staying is torture of the worst kind."

"I don't understand." Caeden understood their anger, at least on a theoretical level. But this continent was a nice one. Why was staying here so bad? He asked the dragon much the same thing.

"You do not see. But you will." It seemed that he was done talking on the subject. Caeden was unwilling to push after hearing everything he had already said, so they continued on in silence until they reached a massive clearing spanning hundreds of feet across with a rocky tower in the middle. More a plateau jutting out of the dense jungle, the rock occupied over half of the clearing.

This was a dragon nest, Caeden was certain. The plateau's flat sides were dotted with dozens of caves of all sizes, and dragons flew in and out by the dozens. But what struck Caeden the most, what caught his attention and held it, were the hundreds upon hundreds of egg shells scattered across the remaining area of the clearing that the plateau didn't cover. They were all shades and varied in size from barely large enough to fill his palm to big enough that Caeden might have curled up inside one.

"What…" Caeden started to ask why there were so many shattered eggs when a high-pitched roar echoed out from one of the caves. Caeden's communication sense identified the noise as a sobbing wail. The amount of anguish and torment in that one sound was staggering to behold. Moments later, a dozen eggs fell from above, shattering on the ground. The unformed embryos of dragon hatchlings splattered wetly.

"You wanted to know what the worst thing was, what truly broke my people?" The lime dragon growled. "This is it. This is what the shrouded have done to us."