The Dragon's Heir

Chapter 1: The Duct-Tape Wizard

Tony stood back, wiping grease onto his jeans, his face splitting into a cheesy, full-throttle, I-am-a-genius-and-I-know-it grin. It was the kind of smile that made him look slightly unhinged.

If a real engineer saw what Tony had built, they would cry. If a fire marshal saw it, they would probably arrest him on the spot. The thing looked like a lawnmower had a wild night with a bicycle, and then a whole roll of duct tape showed up to raise the baby. Wires ran places wires had no business going.

But against all common sense, the monstrosity actually worked.

Tony climbed onto the squeaky seat and started pedaling like a hamster on espresso. Sixty seconds later, the machine made a happy CLUNK, the pedals started moving on their own, and suddenly - magic. Free energy. No more paying for electricity to heat their water.

A tiny spark jumped from the machine, trying to start trouble in a pile of sawdust.

"Hey." Tony pointed at it. "Behhave, Gregory."

The spark fizzled out. Gregory was a good spark. Mostly.

You could tell how bad things were by watching the hallway lightbulb.

- 3 flickers: A storm is coming. Hide the electronics.

- 5 flickers: Someone used the microwave and toaster at the same time. Felony behavior.

- 7 flickers: Run for the candles. We're entering the Dark Ages.

Most fourteen-year-olds spent their afternoons playing video games or failing math tests. Tony spent his keeping his family from falling apart.

The front door had a giant crack in it. Every winter, the wind whistled through like a ghost trying to sing opera. The little kids - Milo and Peach (don't ask about the name, just accept it) - were terrified. So every night, Tony walked to the door, patted the wood, and said, "Goodnight, Mr. Wind Ghost. Keep it down, please."

Somehow, it worked. Either the wind listened to him, or the kids just needed to see him pretend.

The roof had more patches than a pirate's eye. When it rained, they set out buckets in a pattern Tony secretly called Soggy Sorrow: A Modern Art Installation.

Holding this whole beautiful disaster together was Mercy.

Mercy was in her early thirties. Her hands always smelled like bread. She had deep lines around her eyes from laughing - mostly because laughing was cheaper than crying.

By choice, she had adopted ten kids. Ten. That's not a family. That's a small, poorly behaved army.

They lived in a tiny village where the most exciting event was when Old Man Henrik's goat escaped and ate someone's laundry. The goat had already devoured three of Tony's favorite shirts. Tony built a small electric fence to teach it a lesson. The goat ate the fence too. Tony respected that level of spite.

Before the chaos, Mercy had been a rich socialite. She wore shoes that cost more than their current whole house. She knew which fork was for salad and which was for pretending you're better than everyone else.

Then her horrible uncle did something unforgivable. Mercy never told Tony the details. She just said, "Some people are monsters in suits, Tony. The worst monsters are the ones who hide their claws with sweet talk and money."

When Mercy told the truth about what he did, her family didn't protect her. They protected their money source. They threw her away like trash.

Tony's hands tightened into fists just thinking about it. A bunch of fake, smiling rich people. How could anyone look at Mercy - who gave away her last piece of bread, who stayed up all night with sick kids - and decide she wasn't worth keeping?

But then Tony laughed. A sharp, funny laugh.

Because here was the joke: if those rich jerks hadn't been so awful, Mercy never would have ended up here. She never would have become his mom. He wouldn't have this family. So in a weird way, he had them to thank for that.

Sure, they ate a lot of "mystery soup" (the mystery was whatever the farmer gave them for free). Tony's bed was a couch cushion that smelled like pickles. But this was real. They shared blankets. They fought over the last potato. They laughed when someone farted during a quiet movie.

To the rest of the house, Tony wasn't just a brother. He was a wizard.

They didn't understand his inventions, so they treated them like magic. When Tony tried to explain "perpetual motion" to his eight-year-old brother Beans (nicknamed because he once ate a whole can of cold beans with a ladle), Beans just whispered, "So... magic?"

"No," Tony sighed. "Physics."

"Same thing," Beans said, and wandered off to find more beans.

His siblings brought him weird offerings for his workshop. Scraps of wire. Strips of metal. A single squishy potato. Yesterday, his sister Peach handed him a confused, cross-eyed chicken and announced, "She has the spirit of innovation. Her name is Science Chicken."

Tony kept her. Science Chicken was useless at engineering, but her emotional support was excellent.

But every night, when the house went silent and the only sound was the drip-drip-drip of the leaky sink, Tony stood in front of the cracked bathroom mirror.

He stared at his eyes.

They were wrong.

Not brown like his siblings'. Not gray like Mercy's. They were blue. A deep, electric, glowing blue that didn't exist in nature. The kind of blue that made strangers look twice, shiver, and look away fast.

Tony flicked off the light.

Total darkness. Except - it wasn't.

For Tony, the dark turned into a crisp, clear twilight. He could see the cracks in the ceiling. He could see a spider building a web in the corner. He named her Gertrude. She was good pest control.

He had discovered his "condition" at twelve. His oldest sister Mary had shined a flashlight in his face during a late-night search party. His pupils had turned into vertical cat slits, and his eyes had glowed - a soft, creepy, blue-green glow.

Mary dropped the flashlight.

"TONY, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR FACE?!"

"Shh! Calm down!"

"YOUR EYES ARE GLOWING! LIKE A DEMON CAT!"

The screaming brought Mercy running outside in a bathrobe and one slipper, holding a broom like a sword. She looked at Tony's glowing eyes, didn't scream, and just sighed.

"Oh, honey. We're buying colored contacts. Immediately."

It was the tone of a woman who already had too many problems and was just adding "mutant child" to the grocery list.

Now, at fourteen, Tony wore contacts every day. The rest of the house thought he just had bad eyesight. Only Mercy and Mary knew the truth.

Tony leaned closer to the mirror, watching his glowing cat pupils track his own movement in the dark.

His siblings thought he was a genius. A wizard. A hero. But the mirror whispered something colder: You don't belong here.

He wasn't a monster. He was just a kid using duct tape to keep his family from freezing.

But as he stared at his glowing reflection, listening to the strange whispers in the back of his mind that he hadn't told anyone about, Tony couldn't help but wonder:

What else am I?

To say Tony was normal would be an insult to the word. He stood out like a sore thumb.

A sore, glowing, genius, whisper-hearing thumb.

And honestly? It freaked him out sometimes.