"Armaan—!"
Samar and Roumit both lurched forward on instinct, panic flooding through them as they rushed toward their fallen friend.
They barely managed two steps.
A sharp sonic crack split the air.
Before either of them could react, Zykarith appeared directly in their path. She had moved so fast that not even the Thanes watching from their seats had been able to follow her.
"Do not interfere," she said.
Her voice was cold. Calm. Almost frighteningly emotionless.
"This is a natural stage of the Draconic Awakening."
The authority in her words stopped them dead.
Samar and Roumit stared at her, stunned. This was Zykarith, the warrior who was usually quick-tempered, sharp-tongued, and almost impossible to intimidate. Yet the expression on her face now carried a seriousness neither of them had ever seen before.
A chill ran down their spines.
Whatever was happening to Armaan, she clearly knew something they didn't.
The two boys slowly swallowed their panic.
Then, almost comically in their desperation to obey, they pressed their index fingers against their lips and stood completely still.
Not a word.
Not a step.
Nothing.
They could only watch.
When Armaan opened his eyes, he found himself standing in the same endless, suffocating darkness that had once haunted his nightmares.
Back then, Xarthos had been a looming terror, something Armaan could barely comprehend.
Now, he was an ally.
Yet somehow, being back here still made Armaan's stomach tighten.
He swallowed, but his throat felt painfully dry.
Then, deep within the darkness, five pairs of eyes appeared.
They were enormous.
Void-black yet faintly luminous, they stared at him from impossibly far away. Their gazes seemed to pierce straight through his body and into his soul, carrying a weight so ancient and immense that Armaan instinctively felt insignificant beneath them.
He barely had time to process what he was seeing.
The ground beneath his feet disappeared.
SPLASH—!
Armaan plunged downward.
Cold crimson water swallowed him whole.
His eyes widened as he recognized the place immediately.
The crimson abyss.
The same endless ocean he'd fallen into during the depths of his Third Trial.
"What's happening...?"
His voice came out strained and muffled beneath the crushing density of the blood-red water.
Panic clawed at his chest.
Armaan forced himself to stay calm, but the deeper he sank, the harder it became to ignore the overwhelming sense of dread pressing down on him.
Then reality itself began to change.
The crimson ocean around him slowly dissolved into something far beyond his understanding.
A vision unfolded before his eyes.
Not like a memory.
Like the universe itself was remembering.
A primordial star was born.
It burned with blinding brilliance, its light flooding the vastness of space.
Then, without warning, it collapsed.
The star imploded beneath its own unimaginable gravity.
Spacetime twisted.
Light bent.
The surrounding cosmos seemed to distort around the collapsing mass until, from the catastrophic remains, something monstrous was born.
A black hole.
Not an ordinary one.
A supermassive singularity so enormous that Armaan could barely comprehend its scale.
His eyes widened.
"That's... the supermassive black hole near the Draconic Realm."
As if responding to his realization, the event horizon began to distort.
Something moved within it.
Slowly, a colossal silhouette emerged from the gravitational darkness.
A dragon.
Its entire body was pitch black, as though it had been carved from the living void itself. Light disappeared wherever its form passed. Matter, cosmic debris, even fragments of energy were dragged toward its body and swallowed into the endless darkness surrounding it.
The Black Hole Dragon.
At the same time, far away, the ancient planet of the Draconic Realm seemed to resist the cosmic titan's pull. Its planetary core anchored itself against the overwhelming gravitational force, refusing to surrender.
The Black Hole Dragon spread its enormous wings.
Then it flew.
Straight toward the Draconic Realm.
The vision shifted.
The dragon descended upon the summit of Mount Draugr'vaulen.
Below it stretched a vast, chaotic wasteland.
Countless dragons were engaged in a savage struggle for dominance. The entire land seemed consumed by conflict, with one dragon tearing into another as they fought for territory, power, and supremacy.
Then the Black Hole Dragon opened its colossal jaws.
A roar erupted.
"—VVOOOOOMMMM-SKRRRRAAAAGH—!"
But it wasn't merely a roar.
The sound seemed to collapse in on itself.
The surrounding noise vanished as though swallowed by a vacuum, while the atmosphere itself trembled violently beneath the sheer force of the dragon's presence.
Every dragon stopped.
One by one, their heads turned toward the mountain.
The Dragon of the Void looked down upon them.
When it finally spoke, its voice was impossibly deep.
It didn't merely travel through the air.
It seemed to vibrate through the planet itself.
"I shall become your ruler."
Silence.
For a moment, none of the dragons dared to respond.
Then one of the largest beasts, a magnificent Spirit Dragon radiating brilliant energy, snarled and launched itself toward the mountain.
"Why do you think we wil—"
It never finished.
The Void Dragon simply opened its jaws.
A concentrated beam of pure, devouring void energy erupted from its mouth.
It struck the Spirit Dragon instantly.
There was no explosion.
No struggle.
No final cry.
The dragon simply ceased to exist.
Its body vanished.
Its energy vanished.
Even the remnants of its presence were erased, leaving behind nothing but empty space.
The Black Hole Dragon slowly closed its jaws.
Below, the countless dragons stared upward.
Their fury had disappeared.
So had their defiance.
Only fear remained.
The Void Dragon gazed down upon them with absolute supremacy.
"Now..."
A pause.
"Do you believe me?"
One by one, the warring dragons lowered their heads to the earth.
They surrendered.
Only moments ago, the Spirit Dragon had been regarded as the most terrifying and invincible creature in the realm. Its name alone had been enough to silence challengers.
Now, it was gone.
Erased in a single breath.
Whatever courage the others had possessed vanished with it.
The vision surged forward.
Years became centuries.
Centuries became millennia.
And millennia became millions of years.
Armaan watched countless eras of war unfold before him as the Black Hole Dragon, Zabr, ruled the Draconic Realm with an iron grip. Every rebellion was crushed. Every uprising was silenced. No challenger could stand against his overwhelming power.
But even the mightiest beings eventually reach the end of their story.
After millions of years of undisputed rule, Zabr began to weaken.
His once-mighty body grew old.
His movements slowed.
And eventually, upon the summit of Mount Draugr'vaulen, the first sovereign of the Draconic Realm drew his final breath.
Then the vision changed.
Something began to emerge from the earth.
From the pools of Zabr's primordial blood, a colossal creature slowly took shape.
Armaan's eyes widened.
Its body was formed entirely from living crimson gore. Rivers of blood flowed endlessly across its jagged scales, spilling from its enormous wings like waterfalls.
And its eyes...
Those same abyssal, void-like eyes.
But there was something different about this dragon.
Something far more terrifying.
This was the birth of Xarthos.
The Deepsea Bloodshed Dragon.
The second sovereign of the Draconic Realm.
The instant Xarthos landed upon the highest peak of Mount Draugr'vaulen, the memory of Zabr's final prophecy echoed through the minds of every dragon in the realm.
"Upon my death, my son shall arise on the summit of the sacred mountain. He shall be your next ruler."
There was no hesitation.
The entire dragon race bowed before their new sovereign.
Armaan watched in silence as history continued to unfold.
Xarthos was nothing like his father.
Where Zabr had ruled through fear, Xarthos sought order through wisdom.
That didn't mean he was weak.
When four massive civil wars erupted across the realm, Xarthos ended every single one of them himself.
His overwhelming strength left no room for argument.
Yet despite having every opportunity to slaughter his enemies, he never took a single life.
Instead, he spoke.
He taught.
He forced the warring factions to understand one another and guided them through the conflicts that had divided their kind for generations.
And slowly, impossibly, the Draconic Realm changed.
For the first time in millions of years...
There was peace.
Then Armaan's attention was suddenly drawn back toward the place where Zabr had died.
Something was buried beneath the earth.
A massive stone rested within the soil, pulsing faintly like a living heart.
It was shaped exactly like one too.
Only this heart was enormous.
It could have easily rivalled the size of a three-story building.
Xarthos arrived at the location alongside his most trusted right hand, the Shadow Dragon, Rogan.
For the first time, Armaan saw something that didn't fit the image of the calm and composed Xarthos he knew.
Fear.
Real fear.
Both dragons moved with unusual urgency as they sealed the strange relic and concealed it from the rest of the realm.
The vision refused to show Armaan where they hid it.
But he could feel their thoughts.
Their dread.
Their panic.
Whatever that artifact was...
Even Xarthos feared what would happen if it ever fell into the wrong hands.
The ages continued to pass.
And once again, millions of years disappeared in an instant.
Armaan found himself standing upon Mount Draugr'vaulen.
Xarthos was old now.
The once-terrifying sovereign had become an aging dragon, his immense form carrying the weight of countless eras.
Before him stood a young Storm Dragon.
Drohn.
Xarthos raised one claw and allowed a single drop of his sacred blood to fall upon the juvenile dragon.
His final decree echoed across the mountain winds.
"He shall become the next ruler of the Draconic Realm."
And with that, Xarthos' reign came to an end.
He took one final, peaceful breath.
Then the Deepsea Bloodshed Dragon was gone.
The mantle of his bloodline passed on.
Years later, the young Storm Dragon who had once stood before him had grown into a mighty sovereign.
Drohn ascended the summit of Mount Draugr'vaulen.
And there, upon the sacred peak where his ancestors had begun and ended their reigns, he claimed his place as the next ruler of the Draconic Realm.
The cosmic chronicle surged forward once again, revealing the terrifying might of the third sovereign.
Armaan watched in awe as a colossal shadow appeared across the heavens.
An asteroid.
It was so enormous that it could have rivalled Jupiter in size, hurtling through the depths of space on a direct collision course with the Draconic Realm.
If it reached the planet, there would be nothing left to save.
Before the asteroid could even enter the atmosphere, Drohn shot upward into the stratosphere.
The sky began to tremble.
Clouds spiralled around him as an unimaginable storm of cosmic energy erupted from his body. Lightning tore through the heavens, and the entire atmosphere seemed to bend beneath his power.
Then Drohn unleashed it.
A cataclysmic blast of storm energy slammed into the approaching asteroid.
In a single strike, the planetary behemoth shattered.
Its enormous fragments were hurled across the stars, scattering harmlessly into the depths of space.
The Draconic Realm had been saved.
Again, the vision shifted.
And this time, there was no war.
No destruction.
No bloodshed.
Instead, Armaan witnessed something he never expected to see.
Drohn was standing beside an elegant female dragon surrounded by crackling azure lightning.
She was beautiful in a way that felt almost otherworldly.
The Electric Dragon.
Afza.
Armaan's eyes widened as the connection finally clicked.
"Afza..."
He stared at her lineage.
"That must be the dragon Raiden inherited his powers from."
For a race whose history had been shaped almost entirely by war, duty, and power, something extraordinary happened.
Drohn fell in love.
He became the first ruler in the history of the Draconic Realm to truly love another dragon.
And from that bond came a child.
A tiny hatchling emerged into the world, glowing with a strange, prismatic brilliance.
Crystal-like scales shimmered across its body, reflecting colours Armaan had never seen before.
Seer.
The first direct blood-heir of the sovereign line.
Under Drohn's rule, the Draconic Realm entered an era unlike anything that had come before.
Peace flourished.
The realm prospered.
For millions of years, the dragons lived without the endless wars that had once defined their history.
But eventually, even Drohn's immense life force began to fade.
The third sovereign grew old.
And after millions of years upon the throne, the Storm Dragon finally drew his last breath.
Once again, the sacred lineage continued.
Seer had grown.
The tiny hatchling who had once been born from Drohn and Afza had become a magnificent Crystal Dragon.
He climbed the ancient slopes of Mount Draugr'vaulen and stood upon the same summit where his predecessors had ruled before him.
Crystalline light radiated from his body, washing over the surrounding lands like the first light of dawn.
And there, beneath the ancient sky, Seer declared the beginning of the fourth sovereign reign.
Armaan slowly began to regain his senses.
The haze of the cosmic memories started to fade, and little by little, he became aware of his own body again.
He was still sinking.
Deeper.
Far deeper than he'd ever gone before.
Thousands of leagues beneath the surface, Armaan floated within the endless crimson abyss. The pressure surrounding him was immense, crushing enough to flatten steel, yet somehow, his body remained completely unharmed.
His newly evolved physiology had adapted to it.
The crimson bloodline coursing through him shielded his body from the overwhelming pressure as though it were nothing.
Armaan remained suspended in the blood-red depths, his dark eyes fixed on the shifting currents ahead.
Then the vision began again.
The crimson waters around him seemed to stir as another chapter of the ancient history unfolded before his eyes.
The reign of the fourth sovereign of the Draconic Realm.
The Crystal Dragon.
Seer.
And Armaan could only watch as the next chapter of the sovereign bloodline began.