Alishem stood on the embankment, looking at the opposite shore. From afar came the shouts of children running near their parents, who walked along discussing something with serious faces, paying no attention to the carefree joy of their children.

  He smirked.

  "Ah… to be one of those boys. To run without a care, to laugh, knowing neither fear nor responsibility. Humans… amazing creatures!"

  An ice cream cone was slowly melting in his hand. He lazily licked a drip, smiling, and for a moment allowed himself to dream of something he never had — a childhood.

  “Aaaah, so good!” he suddenly shouted to the entire embankment. “It’s so good here!”

  He paid no mind to the chuckles of people passing by. To them, it was strange — a grown man behaving like a child, not hiding his uplifted mood. They thought he was just uncultured. It didn’t bother him. Over so many years, he’d grown accustomed to the fact that though humans could be happy, they were often so constrained that they hid it behind a mask of "propriety."

  But the next moment, his smile faded. His gaze grew heavy. He remembered why he had come here.

  “And what if he finds out?..” he muttered barely audibly.

  “Finds out what?” The voice behind him was quiet, but it held a strength that would make any mortal’s heart clench in terror.

  Alishem turned around. Dan stood beside him, as if emerging from the shadows themselves.

  “Nothing…” Alishem forced out and hastily added, “That I’m happy.”

  Dan frowned.

  “You? Happy? Do you even know what that means?”

  “Maybe I don’t. But haven’t you ever had that… feeling?” Alishem grew animated, speaking faster. “When you don’t think… it’s just warm inside. And you don’t want it to end!?”

  Dan froze.

  “To not end…”

  Involuntarily, that night at her doorstep flashed before his eyes—her gaze, her trembling voice when they said goodbye. He remembered her standing so close, and for the first time in his life, he hadn’t wanted to leave.

  And just recently, right there in the courtyard of her building. She had turned around so sharply that for a moment he thought she had truly seen him. He watched her and again caught himself with that same sensation—a desire to prolong the moment, to stop time, to stay by her side just a little longer.

  Dan blinked and confidently lied:

  “No.”

  “Hm, so it has happened,” Alishem smirked to himself. “Could that mortal really be the reason for the change… very interesting…”

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  “Well, alright… no means no…” The Flaming Lord played along with his brother and asked: “That matter… did you deal with it?”

  “Yes. Everything’s fine,” Dan said quietly, moving closer to Alishem.

  They fell silent. A quietness settled, broken only by the splash of water against the canal’s stone slabs.

  The river breathed steadily, like an ancient creature holding the memory of millennia within. The dim light of street lamps reflected on its surface in shimmering streaks; the ripples turned them into hundreds of shards. A faint breeze rustled the Lords’ coats. The locks hanging on the rusted handrails jingled softly, like echoes of long-ago vows. The night city across the river lived its own life: windows flickered, occasional voices carried from the opposite shore, but it all seemed distant and detached.

  Here, on the embankment, there was a feeling of a frozen moment, as if reality itself was holding its breath, listening to the words of the Lords.

  “So, are we heading out?” Alishem finally broke the silence.

  Dan nodded silently. For a moment, he closed his eyes and clenched his fists. The Darkness within, compressed and sealed, seemed to respond to his resolve. His eyelids fluttered, and he raised his gaze to the twilight sky.

  The Lord of Darkness slowly unclenched his hands. From beneath his skin, thin, smoke-like streams of gloom erupted. They twisted like living things, enveloping his palms. The wind died down, the space around seemed to freeze, and Alishem felt that familiar sensation—void. A pressure he hadn’t felt for millennia but remembered as if it were yesterday.

  The cobblestones of the embankment blackened under their feet, cracks spiderwebbed outwards, and the air grew denser. Heavier.

  Alishem smiled, surrendering to memories of his brother’s might.

  “Rakar,” Dan uttered barely audibly.

  “Raka..?” Alishem tried to repeat the heard word.

  He didn’t have time to blink. In the next moment, wind whipped his face, a dull roar echoed in his ears as if the universe itself had growled. Deep below, beneath the clouds, lay the evening city, its lights now serving only as a reference point. Underfoot was no longer the embankment but dark, rough, shimmering scales.

  Alishem’s eyes blazed with bright flame when he realized he was standing on the back of a dragon. Enormous wings, woven from gloom, cleaved the sky, and the beast’s emerald eyes shone like two torches in a dark cave.

  “Hahaha! Yeeesss!” Alishem laughed loudly and carefree, his hair whipping in the wind like tongues of flame. “Wow! Dan, you hid this little one from me?! Damn, he’s huge!”

  The dragon tossed its head discontentedly, and a low, vibrating roar erupted from its maw. The scales on Rakar’s neck bristled, and emerald sparks flashed between its fangs.

  “Quiet, Rakar, it’s alright,” Dan knelt on the back of the majestic ancient creature and caringly ran his palm over the black, rough scales. “He’s a friend.”

  Hearing its master’s voice, the dragon purred like a kitten, signaling it was now calm.

  “Sorry, please, didn’t think it would offend you…” The Flaming Lord, who had just been skipping like a child on the back of the mighty creature, composed himself. “Sorry, you were alive too…”

  Alishem turned his head to Dan and asked, not hiding his admiration:

  “Where from?!”

  “It’s a long story…” he said quietly, and in those words, there was a bitterness barely discernible beneath the warm smile.

  Their conversation faded, yielding to the sound of wings cutting through the air. The world below was merely a scattering of lights, too small to warrant attention.

  But on the ground, everything was different.

  “Mom! A dragon!” a thin child’s voice cried out.

  A boy, barely staying in place, tugged at his mother’s dress hem and desperately pointed a finger at the sky.

  “Mom, look, look! A dragon!”

  The woman stopped, looked at her son, and then at the dark sky. She smiled wearily, softly stroking the boy’s head.

  “Sweetie… dragons don’t exist. You imagined it.”

  “No! Really! It was there! Big! With wings!” The boy jumped up and down, not taking his eyes off the night sky.

  The woman looked up again. There were only clouds, lit by the city’s lights. She sighed and nodded to her son:

  “Well, I guess he flew away…” she said gently, humoring the little boy.