Talen felt the dragon's hand close around his own.
It was not warm. Not cold. It simply was —like the first breath of dawn or the final heartbeat before death. A presence older than time, yet bound now to the moment.
Then the world shifted.
Light fractured like glass.
His body burned—not with pain, but with memory.
Every life he had lived surged through him at once:
The prince who once ruled with fire.
The tyrant whose name was struck from history.
The knight who died in battle and rose again.
The hero who slew the beast and forgot himself.
All of them.
Him.
Them.
He gasped as the visions passed, and when he opened his eyes, the chamber looked different.
Sharper.
Truer.
The runes on the walls pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
Vorathax smiled.
"You remember."
Talen exhaled slowly.
"I do."
The Return of the Forgotten
Above, the city still burned.
But not with rebellion.
Not entirely.
Something deeper stirred beneath the chaos.
In the streets, people paused mid-scream.
They clutched their heads.
Their chests.
Their hearts.
One by one, they fell to their knees—not out of fear.
But remembrance.
A woman screamed as her past life flooded back—a healer from a time before kings.
A soldier dropped his sword, trembling, as he saw himself again—not just as a warrior, but as a dragonborn scribe turned prisoner.
Children wept, their minds opening to truths buried beneath generations of forgetting.
The Veil was thinning.
And the old blood remembered.
The Binding Breaks
Back in the chamber, Vorathax turned toward the throne.
With a single motion, he raised his other hand.
The shadows around the seat of power twisted—and shattered.
Chains of memory snapped.
Bars of illusion dissolved into mist.
And from the darkness beneath it all, something began to rise.
Talen stepped forward.
"What is that?" he asked, though part of him already knew.
Vorathax did not answer.
Instead, he spoke to the air itself.
"Bound in flesh. Hidden in myth. Forged in silence."
The voice echoed through the chamber, reverberating through stone and soul alike.
"Let the Firstborn awaken."
The ground trembled.
Then, from the space between worlds, they emerged.
Figures cloaked in light and shadow.
Eyes like stars.
Wings of wind and flame.
The other dragons.
No longer prisoners.
No longer myths.
Only gods returning home.
The World Remade
Outside, the sky changed.
The stars blinked out.
Then came back—arranged in patterns unseen since the birth of men.
Storms gathered over distant mountains.
Oceans whispered names long forgotten.
In the ruins of Eldenhold, Kaela stood amidst the chaos, watching the sky burn with unnatural light.
She felt it too.
The shift.
The truth pressing against reality like a tide breaking through a dam.
And she knew.
Talen was gone.
Or rather—he was becoming something else.
She whispered his name.
But the wind carried no answer.
Only thunder.
Only fire.
Only the sound of the world waking up.
And deep within the heart of the mountain, the new dragon opened its eyes—and smiled.