[Dragonspine]
The mountain slept in silence, its veins frozen in eternal ice. Yet within that abyssal stillness, a tremor of dread unfurled.
Upon the jagged cliffs, the Frost Dragons stood as one—an army of alabaster titans, their wings unfurled like banners of doom. Their thousand eyes burned with glacial fire, unblinking, merciless. All their gazes converged upon one figure—Orion.
His form shimmered, cloaked in the guise of the Dragon Sovereign. A hollow illusion, a facade of majesty—yet even a lie, when woven with the threads of divinity, commands terror. His silhouette rippled with primordial grandeur, a tyrant born from frost and myth.
And still—not a single dragon faltered. Their breath misted in defiance, white clouds against the storm. They had carved their courage from centuries of blizzards and blood. Fear would not touch them.
---
[Celestia]
Above, in halls where starlight itself bowed low, the throne of heaven stood desolate. The Empty Seat—the crown of eternity—sat veiled in mourning.
No chorus of archons. No whisper of seraphim. Only Rhindotter.
Her shadow stretched long across the marble floor, the silence around her as sharp as a blade. Then, like a fracture in reality, a figure emerged at her side. Naberius. His form, a mirror to her own—too precise, too perfect.
"My dear Rhindotter," he cooed, his voice as soft as silk soaked in poison, "your pawn has been sullied. Darkness coils within his vessel like a parasite. A corruption most exquisite."
His tone was tender, but beneath it slithered an unnamable horror—something that brushed against the marrow, cold as the grave.
Rhindotter's lips curved—not in joy, nor grief, but in something far more dangerous.
"I know, Naberius..." she whispered. "The legacy of the Dragon King has awakened. At last, the poor boy bears the crown of ruin. Oh… how deliciously interesting this will become."
---
[Dragonspine Returns]
The mountain roared awake.
The Frost Dragons moved as one, their wings beating the sky into thunder. A single breath—then the heavens tore open with their ascent.
"YOU FILTH!" the Leviathan bellowed, its voice shaking glaciers from their roots. Its words thundered across the peak like an executioner's drum.
"Such a pitiful cry," Yandelf coughed from the ground, lips split in a bloody grin. Her body trembled, broken, yet her laughter burned. "So unbecoming of you..."
And then it happened—an instinct older than gods, older than stars.
The Frost Dragons' eyes widened as one. A chorus of recognition. A unity forged in despair.
They spiraled together, weaving their bodies into a spear of living ice and fury. A storm of wings, claws, and fangs condensed into a single act of defiance.
They plunged.
The sky ruptured with their war cry—ten thousand throats screaming as one. The mountains shook with the sound, a hymn of annihilation. Their fangs shattered against Leviathan's scales, but they tore, they dug, they rended. Flesh split. The monster's underbelly burst open, a flood of shadow and ruin spilling into the snow.
"KKKKKRRRRREEEEEEEE—"
The scream of the beast was no longer a sound. It was an apocalypse.
---
[Mondstadt]
The city trembled. Windows rattled. Goblets spilled.
Knights raised their heads toward Dragonspine, their eyes wide with dread. But the storm veiled the truth—the horror hidden behind snow and cloud.
"By Barbatos…" one muttered, "what… what is that roar?"
The air tasted of iron and storms.
Venti stood at the city's gates, lyre clutched like a weapon, his gaze fixed upon the mountains. His smile was gone. His eyes were ancient.
"A storm…" he murmured, voice heavy as the weight of centuries. "A storm older than wind itself is about to break."
And he walked into the dark.
[Natlan]
The moon wept.
Her silver tears bled into the rivers of flame that carved through Natlan's volcanic heart.
The stars shifted. Trembled. Then one by one, they plummeted. Shards of light—screaming across the heavens—tore the night apart. A thousand comets braided together into a single luminous wail, a requiem written upon the firmament itself.
The sky mourned.
And beneath that sorrow, Felix stood.
Before Citlali's home, his form was a shadow carved from ruin. His eyes were voids—not hollow with grief, but utterly stripped of will. No emotion. No thought. Nothing left but the husk of a man branded monster.
Blood dripped from the jagged scales along his face, each crimson droplet steaming against the ground. Shredded flesh clung to him, grotesque trophies of violence. And at his feet…
The body of Noctharn.
His last breath already gone. The one who had loved Felix most—slain beneath his talons.
The night seemed to recoil.
Felix did not look back. His wings tore the silence as they spread wide, black rivers of shadow rippling between their scales. He leapt into the air, rising with unnatural force, cleaving the storm-scorched sky.
From within him, a voice—echoing, terrible.
"Orion..."
The heavens cracked. Constellations splintered. And Felix surged toward Dragonspine, a meteor of flesh and madness.
---
[Near Natlan's Front]
Amid the ashes of war, Capitano stood alone. His armor drank the firelight, a towering silhouette of iron and inevitability. Around him, the battlefield was silent—only the corpses bore witness.
In the distance, the thunder of boots approached. A company of soldiers, armor battered and banners scorched, sprinted toward him. Their voices rose, sharp with desperation.
"CAPTAIN!"
They arrived breathless, weapons raised, eyes scanning the wasteland. "Where is the enemy? Where did they fall!?"
Capitano turned, each movement deliberate, the weight of centuries in his stance. His mask caught the comet-light above, a reflection of the sky's mourning.
"You are late," he said, voice low but ringing with finality. "I told you—I would march ahead. And yet still you crawl."
The soldiers faltered, shame washing across their faces.
Capitano lifted his blade, the edge dripping with the silence of the slain. His presence seemed to bend the air itself.
"The Khaenri'ahens…" his tone was both reverent and scornful. "They are the strongest of all who walk Teyvat. To clash with them is to test the marrow of one's soul. If I had fallen…"
He turned fully, mask gleaming, voice rising like a hymn.
"…then how could I have upheld the honor of my Legion?"
The silence that followed was thunderous. Behind him, the horizon bled fire, and in the heavens above, the stars continued to fall.
[Dragonspine]
Yandelf's chest heaved, her blood staining the snow in petals of crimson. Each cough rattled her bones, her breath thinning into whispers.
"Mother Rosen…" her words faltered, but she forced them through the agony, "hear me. Orion… he has been poisoned—infected—by the Abyssal Essence. His body is no longer his own. It is a prison of sinew and despair, and within it, the true Orion suffers, forced to witness the horrors his hands commit."
Her voice was frail, but the plea carried, piercing the veil.
From within her mind, a voice bloomed—ancient, soft, but heavy as stone.
"Tell me everything, child. What unfolds?"
Yandelf swallowed blood, eyes closing as she whispered, "It is like this…"
---
[Above, the Mountains]
The Frost Dragons scattered. No longer a single flock, but a storm of fangs and fury.
They fell upon the Leviathan with savage precision.
One lunged for its eye—talons sinking deep, dragging wet ribbons of flesh as it gouged the orb from its socket. The eye burst like a rotten fruit, fluids spraying in steaming arcs across the ice. The beast shrieked, thrashing, but the storm did not relent.
Others dove into its wounds, splitting flesh wider with every strike. Their claws raked muscle into strips, tearing veins that burst like rivers. Dragons bit and ripped, their jaws snapping bone, dragging entrails into the open.
One Frost Dragon buried itself into the Leviathan's gaping wound, thrashing like a spear of ice until the ribcage cracked with a howl loud enough to shake the peaks. Another clamped onto the throat, scales grinding against scales, until its fangs tore out the windpipe in a spray of blackened gore.
The snow turned crimson. The mountain trembled beneath the choir of slaughter.
The Leviathan screamed—no longer regal, but pathetic. A titan unraveling under the gnashing of its children.
And still… within the hollow prison of the beast, Orion's thoughts bled despair.
'Yandelf… her dragons… they are my end. This nest… I cannot break it. I am lost.'
But his voice was smothered. The Abyssal essence seeped deeper, a black tide that drowned every plea, sealing the true Orion into silence.
---
[The Sky Above]
The storm hushed for a heartbeat. Then—
A rift split the heavens.
Through it descended a shape, wings stretching wide against the pale moon. Not a savior. Not a brother. But a dirge given flesh.
Felix.
Once the Frost Prince, crowned in feathers of purest ivory, heir to snow's serenity. Now—a grotesque elegy. His plumage had burned away, leaving his wings draped in wreaths of lavender blossoms, cruel and mocking, gifts of a damnation that twisted beauty into pity.
The flowers bloomed along blackened veins, their petals falling like ash as he flew, staining the air with a scent both sweet and sickening. His body was scarred, reshaped by the Abyss, each scale cracked and bleeding frostfire. His eyes no longer held starlight, only a violet abyss that swallowed all reflection.
The air froze. The battlefield turned silent. Even the Frost Dragons paused mid-slaughter, their wings faltering as his shadow swept over them.
A prince had returned—not as hope, but as requiem.
Felix descended into Dragonspine like a fallen god, and the mountain groaned as though it recognized its heir… and mourned.