Chapter 96: Let me use my flame to close the flesh!

Move. I need to move, Hana screamed at herself internally, barely able to breathe properly.

​The crimson warnings pulsing across her vision were a blinding nightmare, making her head spin even more, to the point she could barely tell where the cave floor ended and the sky began.

She didn’t give a damn about the system’s frantic text right now. It was completely useless. It hadn’t flagged the invisible threat, and now it was just cluttering her line of sight while her life leaked onto the stone.

​With shaky, blood-stained fingers, she forced her hands up, dragging her tablet off her tactical belt.

The screen was already smeared with a thick, warm coating of her own blood, her thumbs slipping uselessly against the glass as she tried to bypass the flashing system notifications to get to the medical inventory list.

​She needed a sealing agent. Anything to plug the hole before the blood loss knocked her out.

​"Hana! What do I do? Tell me what to do!" Kulu panicked, his voice raw, entirely stripped of his usual calmness.

His giant, trembling hands held her shoulders, but he was staring at the gushing red ruin of her dress with wide, utterly helpless amber eyes. He was built for tearing armies apart, not stopping a human from draining into the dirt.

​"Kulu... shut up and use your eyes," Hana choked out, a spray of blood catching her lips as she coughed.

The pain in her ribs was sharp, digging deeper with every shallow breath. She forced her trembling arms to lift the tablet, thrusting the blood-smeared screen right into his face. It displayed a glowing green cylinder icon.

"The blue container inside... find the tube that matches this shape. It’s the medicine spray. Hurry!"

Kulu looked from the screen to the deep, red puncture wound in her side. His breath hitched. He couldn’t just drop her onto the stone floor to go run an errand; she was losing far too much blood, and her weight was leaning entirely against his chest.

​"Caspian, take her!" Kulu roared, his voice cracking with desperation.

​Before Hana could even blink to the sudden shift, Kulu carefully but swiftly transferred her into the dragon king’s arms.

Caspian caught her instantly, carefully, his massive frame sliding into place behind her.

He pulled her back against his broad, solid chest with a terrifyingly tight, protective grip, his hands immediately clamping down over the puncture wound on her side to apply pressure.

​"Go!" Caspian bellowed at his brother, his golden eyes wide with a manic, protective fury.

​With Hana securely in the dragon’s hold, Kulu didn’t waste another heartbeat. He scrambled up, his massive crimson wings nearly clipping the cave walls as he tore into the den like a desperate gale to fetch the cylinder.

​"Hana!" Caspian rumbled from behind her, his breath hot and ragged against her neck as he felt the warmth of her blood soaking through his fingers. His dragon horns were visibly trembling violently. "I can sear it! Let me use my flame to close the flesh!"

​Is he completely insane?!

It might’ve been an option if they had no other, but it would’ve only made things worse. Anything but a burn wound on top of a stab.

"No! Touch me with fire and you’ll cook the child!" Hana snarled, the raw venom in her voice instantly cutting through his panic. Another violent spasm rippled through her abdomen, making her womb tighten dangerously.

She reached out, her bloody fingers leaving dark, desperate streaks across Caspian’s wrist. "Just keep petting it. Don’t let up!"

​Caspian’s eyes widened, his jaw locking as he maintained the crushing, immovable force against her side, anchoring her body against his own to keep her upright.

​Beneath his heavy palm, she felt a sudden, frantic flutter—the child in her womb giving a panicked, protective kick against the internal trauma.

​A kick? The realization cut through her adrenaline-fueled fog, leaving her momentarily stunned. How is it even moving like this?

She was only on Day 7 of her pregnancy. A human fetus at one week was barely a cluster of cells, completely incapable of movement, let alone a physical strike potent enough to ripple against a beastman’s hand. Even with this bizarre, accelerated one-month gestation period, a response this violent was biologically impossible by any standard metric she knew.

​But as the internal flutter came again, harder and more erratic, she looked down at the curve of her abdomen. Yes, that would’ve been the case if she were pregnant for a human but this wasn’t a standard human lineage. It was a dragon.

With an accelerated gestation period of only one month, the creature inside her wasn’t just passively waiting—it was developing, shifting, and feeding on her energy every single second.

It possessed the ancient, primal survival instincts of an apex predator. It felt the kinetic shockwave of the bone blade, smelled the sudden rush of maternal adrenaline, and sensed that its life was being directly threatened before it had even seen the light of day.

It was already fighting back from within the darkness of her womb.

​A dark, terrifyingly proud smirk tugged at the corner of Hana’s blood-stained lips, her fingers digging deeper into Caspian’s arm.

​Good, she thought, her teeth grinding as another wave of pain ground against her ribs. Be angry. Remember this scent. Because we are going to burn every single one of them.

Kulu sprinted back out of the cave entrance, his face pale, clutching the gray biosynthetic foam cylinder.

​"Hana, I have it," Kulu choked out, his voice raw as he dropped to his knees beside her. He looked down at the cylinder, his amber eyes wide with a terrifying helplessness. "Hana, what is this? What do I do with it?"

​"R-Rip..." Hana gasped, a sharp, white-hot blade of agony slicing through her ribs as she tried to speak. "Rip the dress. Press the nozzle directly over the wound."

​Kulu’s large hands moved carefully, tearing the blood-soaked fabric of her white dress away from her side, exposing the deep, bubbling puncture wound.

But the moment he lifted the heavy metal cylinder and aimed the cold silver tip at her exposed, raw flesh, he froze. His fingers trembled violently against the trigger.

​"Hana... it is too deep," Kulu rasped, his breath hitching in his throat as he stared at the gushing red ruin of her side. "If I force this metal inside you, it will hurt. It might pierce the child. I can’t—"

​"Do you trust me or not, dammit?!" Hana hissed, a spray of blood catching her lips as her eyes snapped open, turning completely feral. The raw venom in her voice cut straight through his hesitation. "Just do it!"

​Kulu’s jaw locked. Gritting his teeth against his own terror, he slammed the silver applicator nozzle directly into the laceration.

"Argh!" She gasped in pain.

Then, he pulled the trigger

​HISSSSS.

​A cold, thick biosynthetic foam flooded into the puncture, expanding instantly to mimic the pressure of her internal tissues.

The burning agony in her ribs was violently replaced by a freezing, chemical numbness.

​Hana let out a long, ragged gasp, her head falling back against Caspian’s shoulder as her system window flickered in her peripheral vision, the flashing crimson text slowly stabilizing back into a cool neon blue.

> ​[TRAUMA AGENT DETECTED: SYNTH-FLESH COMPLIANCE 89%]

> Internal Hemorrhage: Arrested.

> Fetal Threat Level: Decreased to Low.

> Note: Host structural integrity maintained. Avoid excessive movement for the next 42 minutes.

Yeah, thanks for nothing, bitch!