Cole Maximus, a pick into his personal journal

I was born of dragons. My father, Conner, was a powerful dragon shifter who ruled through dominance and fear. My mother, Inga, was also a dragon shifter, but also a seer, burdened with visions that carried both prophecy and sorrow. From the moment she carried me, she knew my fate. She saw me crowned over all the kingdoms of Ormagh. She saw solitude, hardship, and a life forged through pain. Yet even in those visions, she glimpsed something fragile and dangerous waiting for me, love, something I am determined to refuse, I will not crumble because of useless feelings.
I know my mother loved me without restraint and look what that took her. I was her only child, her light, her reason to endure a marriage that was already becoming a prison. To her, I was never a prophecy or a weapon. I was simply her son.
My earliest memories, however, are not of warmth. They are of discipline. Training began as soon as I could stand. Strength was demanded, never praised. Victory was expected; failure was answered with punishment and silence sharper than any blade. No achievement was ever enough. There was always another expectation waiting to crush me beneath its weight. I learned early that love was conditional. Still, I tried. Again and again, I pushed myself harder, faster, stronger, more relentless, believing that one day my father’s cold stare might soften into approval. However, it never did.
The only love I truly knew came from my mother. She did not fade from illness, she was destroyed by love twisted into possession. My father’s jealousy grew monstrous. He took lovers freely, yet denied her even the illusion of freedom. She was forbidden to travel, stripped of companionship, privacy, and trust. Friends disappeared. Family visits ceased. Conversations were watched. Eventually, even I was taken from her, because affection, my father decided, would make me weak. I remember my mother’s eyes losing their fire. I remember her voice growing softer, as if she were already half gone. When she died, the court was told it was a mysterious sickness. I knew the truth. She chose death because living had become unbearable.
After her death, my father became something darker. Angrier. More violent. His expectations sharpened; his punishments grew harsher. I endured it all, because endurance was the only thing I had left.
The great battle become a blessing to me. Dragon shifters, Fae, and other superbeings fell in numbers unseen before. My father died on that battlefield, surrounded by fire and blood. I felt no grief, only a vast, echoing emptiness. By then, something inside me had already hardened. I learned to despise love. To me, affection became weakness, vulnerability, a liability. I buried every trace of softness my mother once nurtured, sealing it behind ambition and flame. And I grew powerful. More powerful than my father had ever been. My fire magic eclipsed Dragara’s history. I did not inherit the throne. I took it. By force and fear. By unrelenting will I united the fractured dragon factions beneath a single banner, not through loyalty, but through dominance.
Respect and fear are interchangeable to me. Both ensure obedience. My goal is simple and absolute: to rule all of Ormagh. Power is the only thing that has never betrayed me and I am one more step closer to become the ruler I intend to be.