His magic, they called it Disaster Dragon Slayer Magic a rare, primal form of Dragon Slayer Magic born not from one element, but from the wrath of the world itself.
Taught by the ancient dragon Voltigern, Fafnir's magic did not merely breathe fire or summon wind. No, his power mimicked the fury of nature in all its forms. He could shake the earth with a thought, splitting mountains like dry bark. He could call forth tremors from the bones of the land, bend gravity and pressure to summon tsunamis, and summon vortexes of wind and lightning that mimicked the breath of an angry god.
Fafnir didn't master Disaster Magic.
He survived it.
And it changed him.
---
X380
Three years after the others were sent through the Eclipse Gate
Fafnir stood on the cliffs of western Fiore, wind tearing through his white hair. His golden eyes once bright with youthful firewere distant, contemplative. Each time he used his magic now, his body changed further. The side effects of Dragon Slayer Magic with no seed to anchor the soul.
His hands had hardened, fingertips becoming claw-like. Patches of white scales trailed up his spine and shoulders. Wings—still small but visible—folded against his back, hidden beneath the cloak Voltigern had left him.
"Each use brings me closer," he muttered to the sea below. "But if that's the price of protecting their future…"
He opened his palm. The air around him shimmered. The sea began to rise unnaturally, cresting into a spiral before he closed his hand and let it fall.
---
X382
He met Zeref in a ruined temple in Bosco, surrounded by stone and silence. The immortal had come to retrieve lost texts he hadn't expected company.
"I wondered when you'd appear," Zeref said quietly, his voice ageless.
Fafnir stood at the edge of the chamber, cloak fluttering, now a young man tall, lean yet strong, with long white hair tied back, and sharp golden eyes that gleamed even in darkness. White scales trailed along his jaw and neck, a sign of the slow metamorphosis within.
"I didn't come to fight," Fafnir said, bowing his head slightly. "Only to see the man my father once feared, but respected."
Zeref tilted his head. "Voltigern's boy."
"I'm not a boy anymore."
"No," Zeref agreed. "But you're not yet a dragon either."
The two stood in silence for a long while. Then Zeref asked, "And what would you do, if you stood against me?"
Fafnir's voice was calm. "I'd listen first. Fight only if I had to."
Zeref gave a tired smile. "That may be why you haven't been swallowed by your power… yet."
They parted without conflict, though the weight of the future hung between them.
---
X384
The next encounter was not as peaceful.
He found Acnologia in the ruins of a battlefield, where the corpses of humans and dragons both rotted beneath the sun. Fafnir's magic reacted violently pressure rippled from his body, a pulse of pure seismic rage.
Acnologia turned, blood on his hands, his grin wide.
"Well, what have we here?" he laughed. "Another runt clinging to dragon blood?"
Fafnir's golden eyes flared. "I'm no runt. I'm what your path could've become if someone had tried to stop you earlier."
"Big words from a half-breed." Acnologia walked closer. "I can smell it on you rot. You're turning. Slower than most. But it'll come."
Fafnir raised a hand. The ground cracked.
"I'm not like you," he growled. "I didn't choose to destroy what I loved."
The dragon king paused, eyes narrowing. "Hmph. Maybe not yet. But in time, we all burn."
Their clash was brief. Violent. But Fafnir held his own. A massive tremor cracked the valley floor beneath them, swallowing the battlefield whole. In the chaos, Acnologia vanished unscathed, but amused.
"Next time," he called over his shoulder, "try hitting harder."
Fafnir stood among the dust, his right arm now fully scaled, glowing with pulsing runes of magic.
The change was accelerating.
---
X387
He met another dragon that introduced herself as Irene Belserion, in the Eastern Mountains, where she had secluded herself in bitter isolation.
He came not with threats, but with questions. Irene sensed him before he even reached her cave.
"You're not from the Empire," she said as he approached, eyes narrowing. "Who are you?"
Fafnir bowed, respectfully. "Someone walking the line you walked… and may walk again."
He didn't raise his magic. Instead, he offered her a bottle of aged tea.
"Voltigern taught me to seek knowledge, not just power."
At first, Irene was cold. Suspicious. But over time weeks, then months they shared conversations, debates, even laughter. Fafnir learned of the dragonification curse, the agony Irene bore for centuries. She, in turn, learned of Voltigern, and the Eclipse Gate, and the children of fate who had vanished into the future.
"You're like me," she told him once. "But you're still human."
"For now," he answered. "But the dragon inside me stirs more each day."
"Do you fear it?"
"No," he said softly. "I fear losing my purpose."
---
X390
Now a man of twentyfive, Fafnir had become more legend than fact. His human form was tall and commanding, clad in white and black robes laced with silver threading, a dragon-shaped pendant at his collar. His long white hair often drifted freely in the wind, and his golden eyes had a brilliance that struck awe or fear into all who met them.
His arms bore the armor of nature white scales, luminous in moonlight, climbed his skin like armor. Small wings now emerged when he summoned his magic. His voice, though steady, carried weight like rolling thunder behind calm words.
He was not fully dragon yet.
But he was no longer fully human.
---
Alone beneath the stars, Fafnir meditated on a mountaintop.
The wind whispered Voltigern's name.
He could feel the dragon inside him—less a monster, more a shadow of himself. Not evil. Not even wrong.
Just… inevitable.
"But not yet," he whispered to the night. "They still need me to be me."
And far away, across time and destiny, the children who had once called him brother stirred in the future.
Someday, they would meet again.
And when they did…
They would find that the White Flame had never gone out.