I have watched stars be born and die in the span of a thought. I have seen worlds rise green from nothing and sink to ash under the weight of their own stories. Time, to Me, is not a river but an ocean every moment present, every age within reach.
And yet, even in all that vastness, there are instants that press brighter than others.
Tonight is one.
It begins in a mortal hall of stone and shadow.
The kingdom is called Aegrostin now. It has worn other names forgotten, buried beneath new banners and revised histories. Mortals rename things when they grow uncomfortable with what lies beneath. Still, I remember what stands under their foundations.
Bone.
Dragon bone.
In the throne room, weak gold light trembles in iron sconces. Tall windows show only a restless night. The air tastes of old smoke and old fear. A king sits on a throne of obsidian-veined bronze, posture rigid, jaw tight. He looks like a man trying not to show that his hands would shake if he unclenched them.
He is not alone.
An old man stands before him: thin, stooped from a lifetime of bowing, clutching a scroll bound in faded crimson silk. His name is Arthemon. His pulse is hurried and uneven. Every step he takes toward the throne drags decades of dread behind it.
He has carried that scroll for thirty years.He has avoided opening it for just as long.
"Your Majesty," Arthemon says, voice roughened by age and caution, "I bring the Dragon Shaman's prophecy. The one given to your father."
The king's eyes flicker to the scroll, then away again. Mortals always look away from the things they fear will change everything.
"My father swore that scroll would only be opened when the signs began," the king says quietly. "You told me, when he died, that the time had not yet come."
"Yes, Majesty," Arthemon answers. "It had not… until now."
Wind moans faintly outside, though the sky above the city is clear. The night feels thinner, as though something on the other side presses its weight against it.
The king nods, once. "Then open it."
The old man hesitates, fingers tightening on the silk, then obeys. The ribbon comes loose; the parchment unfurls like a held breath released. Even from here, I can see the faint shimmer of dragon essence in the ink
The Shaman who wrote these words was mortal. But he carried within him what all Dragon Warriors carry to some degree:
A shard of a dragon god's essence.
In his case, it was only a faint trace thinned by generations, mixed with mortal blood and time. But even a trace leaves a mark.
Arthemon raises the scroll and begins to read.
"In the age when only ten pure houses remain,the last ember of Xaryon shall awaken."
The king's fingers tighten on the armrests. I hear his pulse accelerate.
He knows the name.
Even mortals who pretend the old stories are superstition remember that one.
Xaryon.
The first of the dragon gods to fall to the Order's judgment.The first whose death birthed Dragon Warriors.The first whose essence refused to vanish from the world.
Arthemon continues, voice trembling slightly.
"Know this: many carry fragments of the gods.Their bloodlines hold essence of Vaelthar's flame,Seralune's tide, Morthien's shadow, Arkaelion's storm, and Granithos' stone."
He pauses, glancing at the king, then reads on.
"They are Dragon Warriors mortals only,bound to earth, never gods, and never to be worshiped.Vessels of borrowed sparks, not thrones of divinity."
This is truth even the Warriors know.
They do not call themselves divine.They do not claim the heavens. They fight. They bleed. They die. And in their veins, diluted and scattered, move small remnants of dragon essence tiny reflections of beings far greater than they could ever be.
Their power is not deity. It is inheritance.
But this prophecy is not about them.
Arthemon's voice lowers.
"Yet from the line of the first slain god,from the blood spilled when Xaryon fell,there shall be born one who is not merely vessel,but bearer of his last, unspent essence."
The room seems to shrink around the king.
The difference is subtle, but vast.
The Dragon Warriors carry fragments a breath of Vaelthar, a sigh of Seralune, a sliver of Morthien's night's edge, a spark of Arkaelion's lightning, a grain of Granithos' stone. Echoes. Reflections. Remnants.
But this prophecy speaks not of a fragment.
It speaks of a last ember.
The final concentrated essence of Xaryon himself.
Not divinity reborn. Not a god in mortal skin. Not a being who can stride across Realms as Xaryon once did.
But still something far greater than all other Dragon Warriors.
A single mortal, carrying what remains of a god's dying blaze.
Arthemon swallows hard and finishes the passage:
"He shall not walk the Realms, for he is mortal and bound to earth. He shall not speak with the voice of a god,for he is man and knows hunger and fear. But in his soul shall burn what Xaryon could not take to death.When his essence stirs, kingdoms raised upon dragon bone shall tremble.When he learns his name, he will come to claim his due."
Silence falls.
The torches gutter, then steady.
The king stares at Arthemon as if hoping the old man will suddenly confess it was all invention.
He does not.
"How long," the king asks at last, "have you known this… in full?"
"Since the day your father died, Majesty," Arthemon replies. "He had me read it to him every year, to be certain he remembered."
"And he believed it?"
"Yes," the advisor says. "He saw the truth in the Shaman's eyes."
The king looks away. Toward the high windows, toward the sleeping city outside, toward the darkness that hides the streets where real lives are lived. His jaw clenches.
"Dragon Warriors," he mutters. "They roam the outer provinces. They sit in our courts. They serve as mercenaries and lords. But they are just… men and women. Stronger. Stranger. But mortal. They know they are not gods."
"True," Arthemon says softly. "They know they are vessels, not thrones."
"And yet this prophecy sets one above them."
"Not as a god," Arthemon reminds him. "As a bearer. The bearer of Xaryon's remaining essence."
The king's hands shake. He hides them in the folds of his cloak.
"I thought we killed that line," he whispers. "When my grandfather sent hunters after the houses that still held strong flame. When my father continued the culling."
He is not wrong.Much blood was spilled.Many of Xaryon's descendents were hunted, cornered, butchered in shadowed halls or on open fields. Some died not knowing why their enemies feared them.
But essence is hard to erase.
It moves. It hides. It thins, splits, merges through families forgotten even by those who bear the blood.
"You killed many," Arthemon says. "But you did not end the line. The Dragon Shamans felt that much. They knew Xaryon's essence still sought a vessel strong enough to hold what little remained of him."
The king slowly sinks back onto the throne.
That throne… I remember the day it was raised.
Beneath it lies the skull of a Dragon Warrior whose essence burned closer to Xaryon's than most. Not the boy of the prophecy, not yet but one of the line that led toward him. Murdered. Buried. Sat upon.
Mortals sitting over bones they do not deserve is not new.
"…And now?" the king asks. "You said the time has come. What has happened?"
Arthemon's fingers tighten around the parchment. "Two nights ago, in the eastern quarter, a woman gave birth to a son. Witnesses heard a strange sound as he drew his first breath. They said the timbers shook. Dust fell from beams. The midwife swore she saw a flicker of light escape his lips."
The king's eyes darken.
"Where is this child?"
"Gone," Arthemon answers. "His mother fled with him before the soldiers arrived. They tracked them for hours, then lost the trail in the lower alleys. Some claim they vanished into the old tunnels below the city."
The tunnels run near bone.
Of course they do.
The king rises again, pacing before the throne. The fur trim of his cloak whispers against cold stone.
"So this boy the prophecy claims he carries Xaryon's essence?" he demands. "Not just some distant echo like the others?"
"Yes," Arthemon says. "The last ember. Not the whole flame never that. But more than any Dragon Warrior has carried in thousands of years."
The king stops. "Can he be killed?"
The advisor flinches at the bluntness of the question. "He is mortal. His body can die."
"That is not what I asked."
"…No, Majesty," Arthemon says at last. "If you kill him, the essence will not vanish. It will break, scatter, seek another line. Perhaps weaker. Perhaps stronger. But it will not be gone."
The king closes his eyes.
He sees the problem clearly.To kill the boy is to scatter what remains of Xaryon.To spare the boy is to allow that essence to mature, to consolidate, to remember itself.
"This prophecy," he says slowly, "claims he will take my throne."
Arthemon nods, gaze lowered.
The king looks down at the obsidian beneath his hands. He does not know what lies under it. Not truly. He has heard whispers. Childhood stories that were scolded away. Half-remembered warnings from a father who drank too much in his old age and muttered about dragons in the deep.
He never believed them.
Belief is irrelevant.
I know what sleeps in the stone.
"Read that part again," the king says hoarsely.
Arthemon obeys.
"When his essence stirs, the ground shall remember what lies buried beneath crowns and marble.When he comes into his name,the seat forged above his kin's remains will shake, then fall, then rise again under his hand."
"Enough." The king shudders, raising a hand. "I have heard enough."
The old man falls silent.
For a long moment, there is only the crackle of torch-flame and the distant murmur of the city.
Then the king speaks, voice low and brittle.
"What did my father say, at the end, about this prophecy?"
Arthemon looks older than his years when he answers.
"He said: if the bearer of Xaryon's essence ever stands before you… bow."
The word hangs in the air like a blade.
The king laughs once a short, broken sound. "Bow? To a boy who thinks himself nothing but a man with a strange fire in his chest? To a Dragon Warrior who knows he is not a god, only a carrier?"
"To the last ember of a god you built your kingdom upon," Arthemon says softly. "Yes."
The king turns away from him, facing the dark glass. His reflection stares back crowned, frightened, furious.
"I will not bow," he whispers.
Beneath the throne, the skull remembers.
It remembers the day its owner was betrayed.It remembers the heat of its own essence. It remembers Xaryon.
running from the soilders, in a cramped, hidden tunnel, a newborn stirs. His mother hums softly, though fear tightens her throat. She does not know names like Xaryon. She has never heard of dragon gods or their essence. She has never seen a Dragon Warrior.
But as she looks into her child's strange, ash-bright eyes, she feels something vast and old looking back.
The boy yawns. For an instant, a tiny spark flickers in his exhale. His skin is warm, just slightly warmer than any mortal infant's should be. The air hums faintly around him, as if some buried music has not quite remembered its tune.
He is not a god. He is not immortal.He will bleed, break, learn, fail.
He is only a boy.
A boy who carries what remains of a god's last defiance.
Back in the throne room, the king slumps against the back of his seat, staring into nothing.
"What am I to do?" he asks no one in particular.
Arthemon bows deeply, the weight of prophecy pressing on his shoulders. "What you choose, Majesty, will not change what he carries. It will only change how you face him."
The king says nothing.
Outside, the night deepens.
Within that night, a new life slowly settles into the world.
The Dragon Warriors continue to walk their mortal roads, each carrying their diluted echoes of fire, tide, shadow, storm, and stone. None of them suspect that somewhere in the heart of Aegrostin, a child sleeps whose essence is different from theirs.
Not a fragment of a god
but the last ember of one.
And I, who saw Xaryon's final breath, now see the shape of what comes next.
I do not reach out to stop it.I do not bend it.I do not bless it.
I simply bear witness.
For the boy from the prophecy has been born,
and the essence of Xaryon has chosen its final vessel.