The dragon's harem

Arad kept trying to consume the star from the inside as it collapsed back on him. As long as he didn’t allow the pressure to build up too much inside the core, it shouldn’t explode into a supernova, but that was easier said than done. Each time his elemental expansion shattered, he was faced with the sheer pressure, power, and heat of the dying star, which far outclassed any attack that he had ever endured.

He did have powerful regeneration, but it was by no means enough to keep him alive. His entire draconic body, which was hundreds of meters long, would get crushed into a tiny ball in a second, burned to ash, and then erased from existence by the boiling plasma. But he didn’t die; it took time for his soul to leave his destroyed body, and that time was enough for one more cast.

[Elemental Expansion: Devouring Void]

As the void exploded from the depths of Arad’s charred flesh, it instantly grew larger and larger, giving him space to heal and regenerate. His bones would grow out of nothing, get covered with flesh, veins, and washed in blood, before getting adorned with obsidian scales and raging magic.

But, by the time Arad’s body would’ve fully healed and his eyes opened, his elemental expansion would’ve already shattered once more, causing the first thing he sees to be the rushing flames of the dying star coming to kill him once more.

The pain, agony, and constant cycle of death and resurrection would’ve driven anyone mad, but to Arad, that suffering was the last of his worries. What took the biggest toll on his mind was the constant and convective cast of his elemental expansion and the sheer volume of matter he was absorbing into his stomach and reusing.

His mind and soul were slowly breaking apart, but that, too, he could easily endure. He wasn’t the kind of man to break, because he was no man he was a dragon. This torture-like situation wasn’t enough to break him apart, but something else gnawed at his soul, something that gave him a problem.

Arad had three souls: a human soul he got from his father, and a draconic soul he got from his mother. But there was always a third one, dormant, silent, and empty. But now, that soul was stirring back to life, and Arad knew that if it woke up, something would change, something that he might not be able to take back.

Arad had to both fight for survival inside the collapsing star and try to keep the dormant soul, dormant. He didn’t want it to wake up, because he didn’t know what that would mean, what would change, and how it would affect him.

That soul fought to wake up, and Arad had to fight back and keep it from rising and usurping his existence. In fact, it reached a point where the pain and agony from getting charred again and again by the collapsing star became the only thing holding him back from the edges of madness, from getting knocked out and allowing that soul to emerge.

From the moment he saved Eris to now, not even a tenth of a second had passed, yet to him it had felt like years. He had been stuck there thanks to Aether’s magic, being allowed enough time to recast his expansion without getting overwhelmed.

But then, after thousands of elemental expansions, Arad finally lost consciousness for only a fraction of a millisecond. He had failed to cast his elemental expansion in time, and his entire being got ground up into pure nothing.

Everything in his stomach froze for a second, time seemed to crack, and the sky outside flashed, then… everything went back to normal. Amaterasu ignored Aether’s remarks and stared at the star, fully knowing that he had woken up inside it.

Arad Orion, AO, the creator, should be the one stuck at the heart of that star now. What will he do? Will he take control of the entire universe as his body once more? Will he erase all of the gods and take their place? Will he mount a direct assault on the abominations?

He didn’t do any of that. The start collapsed, but it didn’t explode. From the outside, it looked like it was sucked by something, and when Amaterasu looked, a blinding while mobius strip was all that remained floating in the void.

“A singularity?” As her eyes opened wide, bones and blood emerged from the singularity, forming a titanic draconic body, and in the blink of an eye, Arad’s draconic body was floating where the star was.

“AMATERASU!” A deep, rumbling voice growled behind her, and when she turned back, she could see Mathilde standing there and glaring at her with burning eyes.

One of Amaterasu’s archons glared at her and growled back. “Watch your tone! Even if you’re…” But before she could finish, Mathilde kicked her so hard that she sent her flying to the other side of Arad’s stomach, and the other archons all froze.

“I don’t give a single fuck who she is now. She could’ve stopped that sun.” Mathilde was an archon of the elvish goddess Sylph in the past, and now she serves Cerilla. But since she knew that Arad was AO, that meant her loyalty rested with him and no one else.

And she wasn’t alone, hundreds of thousands of angels all flew down from nowhere and surrounded Amaterasu. Some were weak, some were decent, and some were utterly terrifying horrors. The scariest of them all were two little boys who looked too angelic to be taken seriously in a fight.

The last time those two showed up was when Yog threw Arad into her world and almost got him killed. “Calm down, Mathilde.” One of those two kids waved his hand, and the other added. “Amaterasu knows what she is doing. Instead of leaving AO’s resurrection to chance, she is trying to understand its conditions and requirements by slowly putting Arad under harsher and harsher tests.”

“That doesn’t excuse this. Such a risk shouldn’t be allowed.” As Mathilde growled back, the two angels sighed. “We know. If we caught her before this thing started, we would’ve never allowed her to go with it. But now that the experiment ended safely, we can’t complain about getting new data.”

“And Amaterasu, don’t take such risks again. We know that AO’s soul would only respond to true threats, but it also should awaken when Arad reaches his true potential. We don’t need a premature awakening.” As all of the angels that came with the two kids started to leave, another voice boomed by their side.

“So, daddy is your boss? What does that make me, a prince? Blegh! Gonna puke.” Aether’s soul was there beside them, listening.

The two little angels didn’t seem to mind. Mathilde looked worried that Aether found out about AO, and Amaterasu just smiled. “Just so you know, AO is technically my father. So that makes us somewhat of siblings.”

Aether stared at her, absolutely horrified and appalled. “Explains why you turn all my good senses off and bad ones on.” He looked away, then at Arad’s unconscious draconic body. “So, who is that now? Father, or AO?”

Amaterasu smiled. “They are the same person. The only difference between them is the amount of knowledge and power they hold.” She then pointed. “But, if you’re asking if he’ll stay the Arad you know from now on, or will he change a bit, that I don’t know.”

“Where is Eris anyway? Should she be around?” Mathilde asked, and Amaterasu shrugged. “Arad sent her to the abyss to keep her safe. He had an incarnation there.”

The two angels turned toward Aether as Amaterasu and Mathilde talked. “So, now that you know who your father is, what will you do?”

Aether smiled. “Are you asking if I’ll keep the secret? Depends. I’ll look into things on my own, and I hope you don’t mind.”

One of the angels smiled. “Aren’t you talking nicely for once? Are you afraid of us?”

Aether just chuckled as he started smoking again. “No, cause you look like kids.”

From the moment Arad pulled Eris out of the collapsing sun to the moment it all ended, no more than a second had passed.