Banished from Time
Before the Shattering tore Aethoria apart, shadow dragons wielded power so absolute they could have prevented the catastrophe entirely. Alongside the Dragon King, they were the only force capable of stopping King Soran's greed from destroying the world.
So they were banished.
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Exiled to the void before the Shattering could be stopped, the shadow dragons were removed from the equation by design. Someone—or something—wanted the world to break, and couldn't allow the one force powerful enough to prevent it from interfering. While the Dragon King died trying to hold the dimensions open and thousands of dragons fell from the sky, the shadow dragons remained trapped in absolute darkness, watching their world tear itself apart from behind an impenetrable barrier.
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For over two thousand years, they have existed in the void—a place between dimensions where time moves differently, where silence has no witness, and where even the proudest souls slowly erode under the weight of eternity.
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Ender is the first to escape.
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Ender's size dwarfs all other dragons—twice as large as the mightiest court dragon, a living mountain of shadow and ancient power. His scales are polished obsidian that catch no light, as if light itself fears to touch them. His eyes burn ruby—not the typical dragon gold, but crimson fire that speaks of the void, malevolent and ancient. His teeth are the length of a man's arm, white as bone, sharp as judgment. His wings are shadow and absence given form.
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When he roars, it is not merely sound—it is a dimension-shredding scream that tastes like void and smells like the space between stars, the sound of reality itself breaking.
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The other dragons feel what he is—ancient, powerful, transformed by millennia in a prison that should have broken him.
He did not break. But the void changed him.
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Shadow dragons before the Shattering could wield shadow magic, but they had physical form, solid and unchanging. Ender and his kind have been transformed. They can become pure shadow, pure vapor—slip into corners, follow someone across walls and floors like their own silhouette, exist as the darkness itself. The void didn't just trap them. It remade them into something new.
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And Ender is the first shadow dragon in history to choose a rider.
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Ender - The Ancient Witness
Ender has existed for over two thousand years, though the void warps time in ways that make such measurements almost meaningless. He has watched souls come and go, witnessed gods rise and fall, and seen civilizations bloom and die from his prison between dimensions. The erosion of so much time in absolute darkness has worn away pieces of who he once was—softness, perhaps, or mercy, or the patience his kind once had for lesser beings.
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What remains is something harder, sharper, more primal than the shadow dragons who entered the void. He is beautiful and terrible: a presence that creates its own gravitational pull. When he moves, the world adjusts around him.
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His voice carries the weight of centuries. When he speaks—mind to mind, the way all dragons communicate—it slides in "slick and cold and ancient," layered with authority that predates kingdoms. His laughter is a sound that cracks ice. His contempt is palpable.
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He does not suffer fools, nor does he bow to courts. To Ender, the "domesticated" dragons of Eldoria and Arcadia are lapdogs playing at power, their elemental magics pale shadows of what true dragons once commanded. "The stones fear because they remember what we did before courts existed. What we could do again."
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He is fiercely protective of his bond with Vallen—the first rider any shadow dragon has ever chosen, the first being Ender deemed worthy in over two thousand years. Their connection is absolute, sacred, beyond question. When challenged, his response is simple: "I go where my rider goes. The bond is sacred. Even for you domesticated types."
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But he does not control Vallen. He respects him too much for that.
His personality is:
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Ancient and patient - Has witnessed the rise and fall of gods
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Contemptuous of weakness - No tolerance for those who break easily
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Fiercely loyal - The bond with Vallen is absolute and sacred
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Brutally honest - "You think anyone controls him? You think I do?"
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Feeds on fear - Says it makes the shadows "sweeter"
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Respects strength above all - Chose Vallen for his unbreakable will
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Distrustful - "We do not trust lightly. Everyone betrays us."
When Will Cracked the Void
Ender did not escape the void. He was summoned.
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In the dungeons beneath the Twilight Court, a seventeen-year-old fae prince named Vallen was being systematically destroyed. King Malak wanted information—the location of a girl Vallen had protected, the names of those who helped them escape. Vallen gave him nothing. Not spit, not blood, not tears. Just silence and an iron will that refused to shatter no matter how many times they broke his body.
The cell was lined with anti-magic runes, symbols designed to sap power, crush hope, flatten every thought until nothing remained but animal survival. It should have been impossible for any magic to penetrate.
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But Vallen's refusal to break created something the runes couldn't contain.
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After months of torture—perhaps years, time blurred in the darkness—shadows began appearing where there should be none. A flicker at the edge of vision. A pool of black that moved against the light. The guards didn't see it. The runes didn't stop it. Because it wasn't coming from inside the cell.
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It was coming from outside reality itself.
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Vallen's will, his stubborn insistence on survival, his determination to outlast the king—it created a crack. A hairline fracture in the fabric between dimensions. He pushed against the darkness so hard that he pierced through to the void.
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And Ender felt it.
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"I was in the void for centuries," Ender would later tell Raven. "I have seen souls come and go, gods rise and fall. I've never met a will like his."
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The shadow dragon reached back through the crack, drawn to this impossible being whose spirit burned bright enough to breach dimensional barriers. One night, after a particularly brutal session, the shadow pooled thick around Vallen's broken body. It spoke in the back of his skull:
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"I see you, little prince."
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"Do you want to live?"
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"Yes."
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"Then let me in."
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Vallen said yes.
And Ender flooded into him—into his mouth, his nose, his eyes, wrapping around his neck and squeezing until Vallen gasped. It was agony. It was the best thing he had ever felt. The void poured through the crack Vallen's will had created, and for the first time in over two thousand years, Ender tasted freedom.
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He settled inside Vallen's chest, curled around his heart, and made himself at home.
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Vallen named him "Ender"—the end of everything he once was, and the beginning of something new.
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Together, they began the slow work of escape. Ender taught Vallen how to move through darkness, how to turn anger into blades of night, how to survive when survival should be impossible. And Vallen—the fae who had cracked the void through sheer stubborn will—became the first rider any shadow dragon had ever chosen.
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"Even he hadn't fully comprehended what Vallen was until that moment in the dungeons, when the boy refused to break despite having every reason to surrender. When Ender had made his choice, when he chose Vallen as his rider."
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After five years in those cells, Vallen emerged transformed. The guards called him the wraith, the ghost, the prince who would not die. They drew protective wards on the walls and traveled in pairs, terrified of the thing he had become.
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But Ender knew the truth: Vallen hadn't become a monster in those dungeons. He had always been extraordinary. The void had simply given him the tools to prove it.
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"When he calls, the dead wake."
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The Bond - Prince and Ancient
Ender and Vallen's bond is unlike any other dragon-rider connection in Terros. It was not formed through tradition, ceremony, or the careful matching of compatible magics. It was forged in absolute darkness, in desperation, in the moment when a tortured prince's will proved strong enough to crack dimensional barriers and summon a dragon from the void itself.
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Their connection operates on a level that makes other dragons uncomfortable.
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Absolute Autonomy
Ender does not control Vallen. He respects him too profoundly for that. When others suggest restraining the Shadow Prince, preventing his self-destructive choices, Ender's response is immediate: "You think I control him? You think anyone does?" He understands what few others grasp—Vallen's will is the force that freed him from two thousand years of imprisonment. To try to cage that will would be to dishonor the very thing Ender chose to bond with.
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"Even Death itself cannot force his hand when his mind is set."
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Void Connection
Ender can slip into the void at will, and he can take Vallen with him. When Vallen needs to retreat—from pain, from memory, from the weight of what he's endured—Ender cocoons him in absolute darkness that "swallows light like a hungry wound." Inside that void, Vallen is suspended, safe, waiting. Not dying. Just existing in the space between heartbeats where nothing can reach him.
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When Raven touched Ender's scales and felt the void, she experienced it: "A pulse, slow and relentless, like a heart beating at the end of the world. And beneath it, an echo of something older. Lonelier. A memory of silence that had no witness."
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Mutual Recognition
They chose each other for what they are, not despite it. Ender saw in Vallen a will that could wake the dead, a spirit that refused to break even when breaking would have been mercy. Vallen saw in Ender a creature who had survived millennia of isolation without losing himself, who understood what it meant to endure the unendurable.
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"We do not trust lightly. Everyone betrays us." But they trust each other absolutely.
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Battle Synchronization
In combat, they are devastating. Ender's size alone—twice that of any court dragon—creates gravitational presence that forces others to adjust around him. His void magic can cloak both rider and dragon completely, turn them into living shadows, create weapons from darkness itself. Vallen's own shadow magic, learned through years of Ender's brutal teaching, amplifies and complements the dragon's power.
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Together, they are the thing nightmares warn about.
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Shared Trauma, Shared Strength
Both were imprisoned. Both were isolated for years beyond counting. Both emerged transformed by darkness but not broken by it. Their bond is built on mutual survival, on the understanding that sometimes the only way forward is through absolute night.
Ender does not coddle. He does not comfort with soft words. But when Vallen needs him, he is there—patient as stone, ancient as stars, loyal as death itself.
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And Vallen, the prince who cracked the void, gives Ender what no other being has in two thousand years: freedom, purpose, and a bond sacred enough to be worth everything the void took from him.
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A Force Unbound
Ender is the first shadow dragon to escape the void in over two thousand years. His presence alone shifts the balance of power in ways that make even ancient dragons uneasy.
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Whatever role the Shadow Prince and his dragon will play in the wars to come, one thing is certain: they answer to no court, bow to no king, and will not be caged again.
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