The world was already broken.
Ash fell like black snow across a battlefield that stretched beyond the horizon. The ground was a carpet of corpses—Sky Warriors by the thousands, their once-proud wings shattered, limbs severed, bodies scorched black by flames that still smoldered in the craters. The air reeked of burnt feathers, blood, and ozone. Every breath tasted of iron and endings.
Fang clawed his way out of a pile of rubble, coughing dust and blood. His armor was cracked. One of his horns had been sheared halfway off. He forced himself to his feet, boots sliding on gore-slick stone, and lifted his head.
In the distance, alone amid the ruin, stood the Dragon King.
Crimson mana roared around his body in violent, living waves, painting the air itself red. He did not move. He simply waited. High above him, a single dark figure hovered in silence, a blot of absolute black against the blood-colored sky.
Then the sky changed.
The deep crimson that had hung over the war for hours began to darken, as though night itself were pouring across the heavens. Fang's first thought was that the sun had finally died. But the darkness was not empty.
It was moving.
Thousands upon thousands of shapes poured across the firmament—winged nightmares with bodies of living shadow, eyes like cold stars, jaws opening in silent hunger. They blotted out what remained of the light until the entire sky became a writhing ceiling of teeth and wings and malice.
Fang's breath stopped in his throat.
Below, the Dragon King moved.
He launched upward in a single blinding streak of red, a spear of pure destruction cutting through the falling dark. The shockwave of his ascent flattened what little still stood on the ground.
Fang's hand clenched around the hilt of his blade until the metal bit into his palm. Raw, crushing power rolled down from the sky in waves, pressing against his bones, his lungs, his mind. His legs shook. Sweat poured down his face in rivers. He locked his knees and forced himself to remain standing as the first of the nightmares began to fall.
The world is ending.
The thought was not dramatic. It was a simple fact. The sky itself was collapsing, and the only thing rising to meet it was a single crimson figure who had already decided the outcome.
The nightmares rained down—
Fang's eyes snapped open.
His chest heaved. Sweat ran in cold trails down his temples and neck, soaking into the dark restraints that still bound him. Amber eyes darted wildly across the chamber, taking in green lantern light, stone walls veined with living root, and three figures standing a short distance away.
Rhelga. Vespera. Sabrel.
All watching him.
He twisted as far as the tendrils allowed, searching the corridor where that impossible presence had appeared. Empty. No golden eyes. No quiet voice. No Dragon King.
A shaky breath left him.
A nightmare… I thought I saw him. Has the trauma finally caught up to me after all these years?
Relief, fragile and desperate, settled into his chest as he let his head fall back against the restraints. The past was done. The Dragon King was gone. Whatever he had glimpsed had been nothing more than the ghost of an old war refusing to die quietly.
Rhelga's voice cut through the lingering quiet.
"Are you back to your senses?"
Vespera's golden eyes studied Fang with mild interest.
"He's looking at us like he's seen a ghost."
Fang said nothing at first. Then a single, broken chuckle escaped him. Another followed. Tears welled in his amber eyes and spilled over as the laughter grew, raw and uncontrolled, echoing off the stone walls until it bordered on hysteria.
Sabrel leaned slightly toward Vespera and whispered,
"Has he gone crazy?"
Fang only laughed harder.
Sabrel's expression flattened. She stepped forward, fist already cocked, and drove it hard across Fang's cheek. The impact cracked through the chamber. Blood sprayed from his mouth and painted the dark restraints. His head snapped to the side, laughter cut short by the sudden violence.
"Have you lost your mind?" Sabrel asked coldly.
Rhelga's staff struck the floor with a sharp report.
"Enough. Physical harm will do us no good. Push him further, and the blessing may answer."
Sabrel held Fang's gaze for a moment longer, eyes like winter frost, before stepping back.
Vespera smiled and snapped her fingers.
In an instant, Sabrel was pulled through the air and placed neatly at Vespera's side. Her white eyes widened in confusion. Vespera reached up and pinched her cheek with almost affectionate firmness.
"Oh dear," she murmured, voice soft and sweet. "Leave the violence to me."
Sabrel stared at the calm curve of Vespera's smile and the darker promise behind it. She swallowed.
"… f-fine!"
Rhelga released a long, weary breath. The frustration that had been building in him since the interrogation settled into something colder and more deliberate. He stepped forward until he stood directly before the bound Veinborn.
Fang lifted his eyes. For a moment the centuries between them seemed to thin.
Rhelga's voice was quiet, almost gentle.
"You will never leave this place alive. Your fate was sealed the moment you were taken. That is the truth of it." He paused, letting the words settle. "But this is the only chance you will be given under the Dragon King's mercy. Help us understand the enemy's movements. Their numbers."
He rested a steady hand on Fang's shoulder, the touch careful around the dark tendrils.
"For the greater good of Chaos. For the loyalty you once carried. It is better to die knowing you completed the purpose you were given… than to have your soul toyed with by hands that will never see it as anything more than a tool."
Rhelga bent slightly, mismatched eyes meeting amber ones without flinching.
"Fang. You served under our banner for hundreds of years. I understand the pain of those years. The weight. The losses... I see you."
Something in Fang's expression softened—just a fraction, a crack in the bitterness.
Rhelga's voice dropped even lower.
"Be free of the darkness. Let us avenge what was taken from you."
Silence settled over the chamber.
Fang lowered his eyes. The dark restraints pulsed once against his throat, then stilled. For a long moment the only sound was the slow drip of blood from his split lip onto the stone.
When he spoke, the laughter was gone. His voice came low, drained of everything that had held it upright.
"The messenger should be on the Giants' continent by now. Or he has already left it."
Rhelga's mismatched eyes narrowed. The green lantern light caught the lines of his face and made them deeper.
Fang continued, each word measured.
"He is not alone. He moves with others."
"Who?"
"The leader of the Void Watchers. Peanon." Fang's gaze stayed on the floor. "Kharak of the NoonVeils. And Neriel of the Ironscale."
Rhelga's fingers found his beard. He pulled at it once, slowly.
"Leaders of their factions," he said. "All of them turned to the darkness." His hand dropped. "What else? How much does this messenger already understand?"
Fang drew a shallow breath.
"He follows a trail. One no one else can see." A pause. "Peanon and Kharak both found something. They went to report it to him."
"What did they find?"
"I do not know." Fang's voice thinned. "I parted from Neriel while she was still searching this continent. I never learned what the other two uncovered."
Rhelga was quiet. The lanterns hummed faintly against the root-veins in the walls.
"If you and Neriel were here," he said at last, "where were the others searching?"
Fang did not answer at once.
"The outer plains of the East."
Vespera's fist closed. The motion was small. The knuckles whitened all the same.
Rhelga's breath caught. He cleared his throat, the sound rough in the stillness.
"Outer plains. Is there anything specific? Which plains?"
Fang shook his head once.
"I do not know."
Rhelga glanced at Vespera. Something passed between them that neither voiced. He looked back at the bound Veinborn.
"It takes a long time to search these continents. Two people cannot cover lands of that scale alone."
"Each of us sent out our units," Fang said. "The messenger gave us one day. One day to find anything of value."
Rhelga exhaled.
"I see."
He turned to walk away.
Fang spoke again, quieter than before.
"The messenger will find you. It will not be long before your secrets stop being hidden."
Rhelga stopped. He looked back over his shoulder.
"What makes you so certain we will be caught?"
Fang lifted his head just enough for their eyes to meet. The amber in them was dull, but steady.
"I have always had an intuition for such things. Only a few have failed me."
Rhelga studied him for a moment longer.
"That is not certainty."
Fang said nothing. His eyes dropped again, and the chamber returned to silence.
Rhelga stepped away from the restrained Veinborn and leaned his back against the living wall. The green lantern light washed over his face as he exhaled, long and slow. For a moment he simply stood there, one hand resting on the withered arm, mismatched eyes unfocused. The weight of the conversation settled into the lines of his face. Age, calculation, and something close to dread moved behind them in quiet succession.
At last he spoke.
"I hate to admit it," he said, voice low, "but you were seen."
Vespera folded her arms.
"So what if I was seen? It proves nothing. Wherever I go, I leave no scent. It has been that way for the last thousand years."
Fang's head lifted a fraction.
"No wonder we could not find you."
The three of them looked at him. A brief, heavy pause filled the chamber.
Then Sabrel clapped her hands once. The sharp sound bounced off the stone and root until silence returned.
"So what if we were caught?" she said. "We have Rhelga here. He can do the impossible."
A small, tired smile touched Rhelga's mouth.
"It brings me joy to hear that. But I am not the same elf I was years ago. I can try to work around this mess… yet it will take time."
Sabrel's eyes brightened.
"We also have Indura. Even with a new soul, he still carries the old intelligence. He's—"
She stopped.
The air in the chamber seemed to thin. All three of them turned, slowly, toward Fang.
The Veinborn was already staring at them. His amber eyes had gone wide.
Indura?! New soul?!
Vespera's finger moved in a small, almost casual arc. A swift thread of red aura passed through Fang's skull. His eyes grew heavy at once. The lids closed. His head sagged against the dark restraints.
Sabrel watched the unconscious form for a moment, then shook her head.
"Anyway... We came all this way for one purpose—to find the army of dragons." She looked at Rhelga. "Where is the legion?"
Rhelga sighed.
"Knowing where the legion is right now, compared to the crisis we are already in… feels like a little too much, don't you think?"
"Just knowing," Sabrel pressed. "Even a clue of where they might be would help."
Vespera's voice was calm.
"Before Amon died, he mentioned the legion crossing the Red Sea."
Rhelga was quiet. He looked from Vespera to Sabrel and back again, studying them both with an expression that mixed caution and old knowledge.
"You are bold," he said to Vespera at last, "to want to know where the dragons are… considering they are what you hate."
Vespera tilted her head, golden eyes unreadable.
Rhelga nodded once.
"You will not find the dragon army anywhere in Chaos. The only dragons left here are the three generals—each in a different region—and a scattering of lesser ones who may already be dead or hidden beyond reach."
Sabrel's brow furrowed.
"Then where is the legion, if not in Chaos?"
Silence stretched.
Rhelga met her gaze.
"The army… was captured by the Asuras of the Sky Palace."
He let the words settle before continuing.
"If you intend to free the dragons, you would have to ascend to the Sky Palace itself."
The revelation landed hard.
Neither Vespera nor Sabrel spoke. The idea of climbing beyond the skies—of reaching a place that sat above the world itself—hung between them like something too vast to grasp. For a moment the chamber felt smaller, the green light thinner. The task did not feel like a plan. It felt like a door that had never been meant to open.
Outside the chamber, behind the curve of the living wall, Indura leaned with his back against the stone. His presence alone had been enough to drag Fang's old trauma to the surface; remaining hidden had been the wiser choice. He had listened to every word, expression calm, golden eyes focused on nothing in particular.
Now, however, his mind had turned inward.
Deep within the darkness of his essence—where there was neither floor nor ceiling—Indura stood completely still. Arms clasped behind his back. Golden eyes fixed on the figure before him.
The same golden eyes stared back.
The same long crimson hair. A body sheathed in crimson scale armor that looked as though the wars had never ended. The presence that radiated from that figure was older, heavier, and colder—the aura of a king who had watched civilizations rise and burn and still remained standing.
His True Self
They simply looked at each other.
Neither spoke.
---------------
Far from Rhelga's domain, the ruined shores of the Red Sea lay under a thinning crimson sky.
Craters scarred the coastline in wide, overlapping scars. The sand was still wet in places, dark and heavy where the waves had been forced inland and then retreated. The sea itself had gone strangely calm, its surface almost glass-smooth, as though the violence that had torn the shore had finally exhausted it.
Five figures stood at the edge of the largest crater.
The Hunter stood at the front. Behind him, the Dark Followers waited in silence.
His purple eyes moved slowly across the broken shoreline. The air carried a sharp, residual scent—salt, scorched stone, and something colder beneath it, like frost that had no business existing this close to the water. For a long moment he simply breathed it in, letting the aftermath settle into his senses.
A battle took place here.
He turned his head, studying the other craters that pitted the coast in uneven rings.
What kind of monsters fought in this place… and how did I not sense it?
He bent down, drove his gray fingers into the damp sand, and lifted a handful. The grains clung to his skin. He brought them close to his face and inhaled.
The soil is heavy with energy. The kind they call mana.
He rose to his full height, letting the sand fall away.
But this mana is strange. It is… pure.
Above them, the clouds began to thin. Afternoon light cut through in long red shafts. One of the rays struck something farther down the beach and flashed once, sharp and metallic.
The Hunter's eyes narrowed.
Darkness uncoiled from his body. In the next breath, the space where he had stood was empty.
He reappeared before the glinting object and crouched. Whatever it was had been half-buried by the tide and the force of the earlier destruction. He brushed the sand away with careful fingers. The surface beneath was dark silver, smooth in places, ridged in others, and cold even under the sun.
He tilted his head, studying it with quiet curiosity. Then he gripped the edge and pulled.
The object resisted.
A faint smile touched his mouth. He set both hands to the work and drew harder. Sand and wet earth broke away in clumps as more of the shape emerged—larger than he had first judged, heavier, the curve of it continuing down into the shore. When it finally came free, he held it up against the red light.
The object was the size of a small boulder. Its surface caught the sun and threw it back in muted flashes of dark silver.
The Hunter's smile deepened.
"I see… I understand now."
It was a scale.
A single, massive scale.
"Now…" he murmured, turning it slowly in his hands, "what beast in Chaos did you fall from?"
Behind him, one of the followers spoke. The voice was tight with something between awe and unease.
"There's more."
The Hunter looked up.
The other Dark Followers stood farther along the crater's rim, each of them holding similar fragments—dark-silver scales the size of shields, some still half-buried, others already lifted free of the sand. The afternoon light slid across their surfaces in cold, clean reflections.
The shore was littered with them.