Wings the color of polished steel sliced through the salty air, each slow, powerful beat sending ripples of wind that bent the wave crests backward—as though the ocean itself bowed in reverence, or perhaps in fear.
Kharvathar, War-Scales—that was the meaning of his name—flew low. And he found himself gazing at his blurred reflection in the sea below.
"Am I… awake…?"
The ocean beneath him was a smudged mirror of grays and blues, reflecting fragments of a sky that had not yet decided whether it was twilight or dawn. Five hundred years had passed since he last opened his eyes. Centuries of absolute silence inside a submerged cavern, encased in molten stone and dreams of ancient fire—that was what his memory claimed.
"So this is me…" he thought. "I remember…"
The realization made his wings beat harder, propelling him upward with tremendous force, toward the clouds.
"Yes, I remember… It's strange to 'remember'…"
He felt the dampness of the dark clouds as he passed through them and kept ascending. His eyes—two pale-yellow furnaces—swept across the mass of clouds and lightning that left him untouched.
"Living beings… yes, that was it! The small ones…"
The small creatures that walked on two or four legs. In the vague recollection slowly surfacing, they all reeked of fleeting life, of fear, of stubborn hope. And it was precisely that stench the "curse" used to draw him.
"But before, I didn't think about this. Now I do…"
He tilted his enormous head, scales grinding against one another like living plates of armor. A crest of dorsal spines—each the size of a watchtower yet flexible, almost like fur—cut through the air behind him. His gaze was drawn upward.
"I want to rise. I want to go higher!" The thought echoed within him.
He felt the weight of duty like molten chains running beneath his scales—not binding him physically, but tugging at his will, whispering in his mind with the dry voice of the one who had condemned him centuries ago: 'Destroy. Burn. Remind them that there are things older than their gods. You!' Mingled with a faint, insistent murmur: 'Come here.'
Kharvathar snorted, expelling two columns of black smoke that coiled into the air like serpents before dissolving into the cumulonimbus.He did not know exactly what to feel. Emotions were new to him.
"I remember feeling immense rage and fury, long ago…" What he felt now was a fatigue so profound that not even hundreds of years of sleep had healed it. A sudden thought emerged in his newly awakened consciousness as he gazed at the sky:
"What if I simply kept flying?" It was the first truly independent thought of his unconditioned mind.
At last he broke above all the clouds and stared into the vast, dark, sliced-and-shining void of the universe. "It's so distant… Do I… desire this? Do I wish to go there…?"
But something inside him already knew the answer. It was as though instructions were being etched into his soul. The obligation acted like a curse and allowed no indifference. The more he resisted, the more the fire within him swelled, the more agonizing the inner pressure became—until the only relief was to unleash the flames and let destruction speak for him.
"I remember him… Lord… It's been so long." He unleashed a tremendous roar into the dark celestial void. Then he exhaled deeply and said:
"It is my duty." His memories of the past gradually surfaced amid his fresh thoughts—vague, disjointed.The call came again. His kind—"Dragon" (a term not entirely accurate for what he was)—spread his wings, gained more altitude with a single mighty thrust, and rolled in the air.
His body turned toward the darkness above, upside down. He looked one last time at that unreachable, beautiful blackness and let himself fall, pulled by the force that bound him to this world.
He plummeted at tremendous speed. He tore through the great clouds—now white—like a meteor in descent. Once the ethereal beauty of space vanished from sight, he twisted his body again and braced with his wings until he saw the blue sea once more: the end of the firmament, the beginning of the golden sea. His newly awakened mind was a whirlwind of tangled information.
"These… memories of the past… I did this… I am this… I can perceive it."
He kept flying and drew a deep breath. His eyes narrowed. In the distance, beyond the dunes, he spotted a great river emptying into the sea—his vision allowed him to see immense distances when he willed it. He veered westward toward it.
"I'm beginning to understand what this means." His magical mind connected to the "Meanings." He climbed higher. The sun blazed intensely in the sky, but its light and heat left Kharvathar untouched, no matter how high he flew or how long he remained exposed.
He saw constructions. But they were not what drew him. What pulled him were the structures of the "Pure Beings"—the main one, still many kilometers ahead, yet visible to his eyes. He soared above the clouds; in minutes he was nearing his destination.
"Burn everything. Unleash your power upon them, as you did before. You were born for this." The words echoed deep within Kharvathar's being.
"Yes, I was born for this!" he confirmed with a roar and dove at tremendous speed. He could already see the entire cluster of stone amid the golden, sandy, rocky sea.
"Grrraaah!" Gray flames like molten steel erupted from his maw, obliterating everything below across roughly three hundred meters as he flew. He beat his wings and climbed higher.
Now he hovered directly above the central circle of constructions. The shadow cast by his body under the sun blanketed everything beneath in darkness. His great snout—resembling a thick, scaly beak—opened wide. Here, above this place inhabited by small, insignificant living beings, he could finally be what he truly was.
"I am what I—!"
But before he could release his power, his muscles, scales, and soul clenched in excruciating pain. His widened eyes finally saw them below: a group of beings his freshly awakened mind remembered encountering long ago. Fighting them. Killing them. The small beings.
"Grrrhaaaa!"
The winged creature unleashed a powerful roar and, with his last strength, sent a massive blast of flame-wind toward the enemies below. Kharvathar did not understand what was happening. He could no longer control his wings. A blinding light the color of the sun erupted around him, accompanied by strange traces and figures.
"…It's fading…" That was his final thought before his eyes closed.
It was as though his colossal draconic body were being compressed, twisted, shrunk. And he fell.