"The seal of the Ultimate Fear... lies beneath Sky City?!"
Leon could hardly believe the words coming out of his own mouth, the revelation hitting him with the force of a physical blow.
For eight years, Sky City had been a familiar sanctuary, a symbol of peace and dragonkind's ingenuity. He'd visited countless times, often with Rossweise and their daughters, not only for diplomatic reasons but also for leisure and relaxation. This was the place of their fondest memories—a vibrant haven for the Melkvey family and countless others in the Dragon Clan.
Simon's next words, however, carried the crushing weight of a truth long buried.
"To be precise... the entire foundation of Sky City is the seal containing the Ultimate Fear."
Leon's expression darkened, his mind reeling as he processed this shocking truth. The city of hope was a prison lid.
"How? Why would you construct such an important city, a home for thousands, over something so catastrophically dangerous?"
Simon sighed deeply, a sound filled with millennia of weariness, and gazed down at the misty clouds swirling around the tower's peak.
"Do you know why I truly built Sky City in the first place, Your Highness?"
Leon furrowed his brow, rifling through his memory. "Rossweise told me you established it to shelter Dragon Clan refugees after years of relentless civil wars. That you and Dragon Kings like Constantine and Odin united to give them a home, a neutral ground. That's the story I was told."
Simon nodded slowly. "That much is true. It is the public reason, the noble cause that rallied support. But there's more to it than that. A far more dire necessity."
Leon's gaze sharpened, his voice dropping to a low, urgent tone. "Then why would you place them in such a perilous position, directly atop this... this abyss?"
"Let me explain," Simon said, his tone heavy with the burden of his long vigil. "After the Sacred Dragon Council approved our proposal to save the refugees, the responsibility of sheltering them fell to those of us who had championed their cause. The Dragon Kings who opposed the plan offered no land, no resources, and no aid."
"In their eyes, wiping out the refugees was the easiest solution. Efficient, they called it. A cold, brutal calculus. But we couldn't let that happen. We would not."
"At first, Constantine, Odin, Morgan, and others agreed to house small numbers of refugees in their territories. But as time passed, the number of displaced dragons grew exponentially. Their lands couldn't sustain them, especially with the ongoing wars draining resources."
"So, I began searching across all Dragon Clan territories for a new, permanent haven where they could truly thrive, safe from the politics and violence of the mainland."
Simon's gaze became distant, lost in the memory. "During this search, I encountered Veronica, the Silver Dragon Queen's grandmother, as well as Principal Angelina Olette of St. Heath's Academy. Together, pooling our knowledge and power, we discovered something unimaginable—an ancient, colossal seal deep beneath what would become our territory, a construct of immense power left by the Primordial Dragon King Noah."
"This seal imprisoned the Ultimate Fear—a monstrous entity born from the primordial chaos, a consciousness of pure entropy and despair. Its psychic presence is so vast it defies comprehension, buried deep within the earth like the festering wound of a forgotten war."
Leon's voice grew tense. "And what did you do? You couldn't just leave it."
"Veronica's scrying and calculations revealed that the seal would naturally begin to weaken over tens of thousands of years. Without intervention, the Ultimate Fear would reemerge, plunging all of Samuel into an eternal darkness long before any prophesied savior could be born."
"But we had no Thunder Child. No destined hero. Without them, we couldn't hope to stand against such a catastrophe. We needed to buy time. Millenniums of it."
Leon's fists clenched at his sides. "And then? What was your solution?"
Simon sighed again, his voice barely above a whisper, as if sharing a sacred and terrible secret.
"Principal Olette, a genius in magical theory, devised a method to delay the weakening. She theorized that the seal was eroded by the ambient negative emotions of the world—fear, hatred, despair. But by countering that with a concentrated, sustained source of positive emotions—hope, joy, contentment—we could drastically slow its decay."
Leon's gaze instinctively turned back to the city below. The vibrant metropolis, filled with bustling streets, laughing children, and joyous residents—the descendants of those long-ago refugees living in a paradise they believed was a gift. The truth was so much darker.
"So, you built Sky City," Leon murmured, the pieces clicking into a horrifying, brilliant whole. "A paradise built directly atop a nightmare. Their happiness wasn't just a benefit; it was the fuel for the prison's lock."
Simon nodded, his face etched with a profound and lonely guilt.
"Yes. I made it a shining haven for the Dragon Clan, a place where refugees could truly rebuild their lives and find peace. Their happiness, their hope, their simple daily joys—it all serves to generate a psychic energy that reinforces the seal, creating a barrier of light against the darkness below."
Leon's mind whirled. As horrifying as the revelation was, he couldn't deny the brutal, pragmatic genius of the plan. Simon's actions, while morally fraught, had likely prevented an apocalypse for centuries. He had carried this secret alone, bearing the weight of a deception that saved the world.
"If I hadn't done this, Samuel would have succumbed to darkness long before you were born, Your Highness," Simon said softly, his eyes pleading for understanding, if not forgiveness. "You're a smart man, a leader who understands impossible choices. I trust you see the necessity."
Leon met the Tower Master's gaze. In Simon's weary, ancient eyes, he saw the profound resignation of a man who had borne the weight of the world alone for far too long.
"And now?" Leon asked, his voice steady but laced with a grim determination. "The nightmares, the tremors. The lock is failing, isn't it?"
Simon's lips curved into a faint, bittersweet smile, a look of relief mixed with utter exhaustion.
"Now, the time has come for me to entrust this burden to you. The prophecy speaks of the Child of Thunder for a reason. My part was to stall. Yours is to finish it."
A Subtle Tremor
As the words hung in the air between them, the ground beneath their feet trembled faintly, a deep, groaning shudder that vibrated up through the stone of the tower. It was stronger than before. Simon's expression grew grim as muffled, concerned voices from the city below drifted up to the tower peak.
"Hey, did you feel that? That's the second time this week—it's getting worse!" a voice shouted.
"Yeah, is the city's foundation failing? Are we going to fall?" cried another.
"Don't joke about that, you idiot!" a third voice chastised, laced with fear.
The tremors subsided, leaving only an eerie, waiting stillness in their wake.
"These earthquakes have become more frequent and more intense," Simon said gravely. "Each tremor is a direct signal of the growing instability of the seal. The positive energy is no longer enough to contain the pressure. It is... stirring."
Leon's thoughts raced back to earlier clues—the strange, oppressive energy Constantine had mentioned sensing whenever he approached Sky City, the odd magical fluctuations that were always dismissed as quirks of the floating city's engine. It all made a terrible, perfect sense now.
"How much time do we have left?" Leon asked, his strategist's mind already shifting to logistics, to timelines, to survival.
Simon hesitated, closing his eyes as if listening to the very stones beneath them, before replying.
"A month. Perhaps less. The decay is accelerating exponentially now."
Leon's chest tightened. "Only a month?"
Simon nodded, a grim finality in the gesture. "It may not seem like much, but it is enough, if we act swiftly, to evacuate the city's residents. I will inform them of critical structural issues with the city's core and use that as a pretext to move them to the mainland."
"And the truth?" Leon pressed. "They deserve to know what they've been living on."
Simon's expression darkened. "Revealing the existence of the Ultimate Fear now would cause mass panic, a surge of the very fear that would strengthen it and hasten the break. The incident with Constantine at St. Heath's Academy has already unsettled the Dragon Clan. We cannot afford further chaos. The lie that saved them must protect them until the very end."
Leon, though he hated the deception, knew the old master was right. Panic would be a weapon in the enemy's hand. "Then I'll help. The Silver Dragon Clan, the Lionheart Society—we'll ensure the evacuation goes smoothly and quietly."
The wind swept across the tower's summit, whipping at their clothes as they stood in silence, each lost in the enormity of the task ahead. Beneath their feet, in the deep dark, an ancient terror stirred—a harbinger of the final battle to come.
The seal's cracks were widening. The time for stalling was over.
Simon's long vigil was ending.
Now, it was Leon's turn to shoulder the burden of a world balanced on the edge of a knife.