Albion floated in silence.
The soul-fla of Ddraig hovered before him—his essence calm now, no longer blazing, no longer roaring—just waiting. As if he, too, understood what must be done.
But Albion hesitated and looked at Hespera. Her Pandemonium Noctis was sheathed once more but still pulsing with power ancient and absolute.
He breathed in deeply and… he looked inward, mories long forgotten in the centuries upon centuries of life ca to front of his mind.
He was small again.
A hatchling no larger than a boulder, all ivory scales and too-big wings that flapped in crooked circles as he skidded across the soft, mossy clearing of the cradle-valley. The other dragonlings shrieked and tumbled with him, their laughter echoing like wind chis down the hollow roots of the ancient glade.
Above them, high on the cliffs overlooking the nesting grounds, the adult dragons watched.
Guardians. Elders. Ancients.
And at their center—
Nidhoggr.
Her obsidian scales shimred beneath the sunlight, her presence vast and still, coiled like a sleeping mountain. She did not speak often, but when she did, the roots even listened.
Young Albion had always watched her more than the others. Not with fear. But reverence. Wonder.
She was not like the others.
While the elders carried themselves with pride and fire, his mother was silent. Thoughtful. Her eyes were full of things she never said.
He rembered one evening—how he had limped back to her side after scraping his wing on a jagged root. While others would have scolded or healed, she simply curled her body around him, shielding him from the chill. Her voice rumbled low.
“Even gods need rest, little moon.”
He didn’t understand it then.
But he did now.
---
Another mory blood behind his eyes.
The Day of the Sentence.
The sky had gone dark without a sun, as if Yggdrasil itself had shrouded the heavens in mourning. The dragons had gathered—hundreds upon hundreds of them, luminous, radiant, majestic.
The Council stood atop the roots.
The gods stood behind them—aloof and silent.
And Nidhoggr, regal and unflinching, bowed her great head before the Tree.
The verdict had already been spoken.
“To preserve the balance, one must consu the rot.”
“To hold the corruption beneath the roots, one must beco the warden of decay.”
“She will devour the poison, and she will remain beneath the world until the final fruit blooms.”
Albion had scread.
Begged.
Tried to throw his body between her and the gate of roots that had opened.
She had not stopped him.
She had simply lowered her head, pressed her snout gently to his tiny brow.
“I will watch from below, little moon. Stay strong.”
And then she had descended into the dark, never once crying out, never once cursing her fate.
Not even when the gate closed behind her.
---
Albion’s spectral body trembled.
“She never complained,” he whispered aloud, voice shaking with mory. “Never asked for anything. Not even when her scales cracked. Not even when she had to eat the lies of gods.”
His claws clenched against the invisible floor of the Dinsional Gap.
“She gave everything.”
The vision of her—gentle and alone, beneath the roots—seared itself into his soul like the kiss of a dying star.
“…And now she’s fading.”
Albion looked up.
The crimson orb that held Ddraig’s soul hovered before him still, humming with silent fire. Behind it stood Hespera, unmoving, watching. Not pressuring. Not pitying.
Just waiting.
A guardian of the end, offering one more beginning.
Albion closed his eyes. And in the darkness, he saw Nidhoggr again.
Not the feared monster of myth. But his mother.
Tired. Smiling. And waiting to sleep.
---
He opened his eyes.
And raised his wing.
“I’ll take it,” he said softly. “Her burden. Her place.”
“I’ll eat the rot.”
His voice strengthened as his fingers closed around Ddraig’s soul.
“For her.”
A pulse of red and white light exploded from his core—dragonfire and starlight, sacred balance and burning sacrifice.
And as it consud him, Albion didn’t scream. He breathed in. Swallowed the soul of Ddraig. Swallowed the weight. Swallowed the role.
And accepted it. Not as punishnt, but as an inheritance.
---
From afar, Hespera watched.
A flicker of sothing moved behind her gaze—too old to na, too soft to be anything but ancient appreciation and understanding.
She whispered her appreciation.
“…Well done, moon. You are definitely better than that dumb red dragon.”
And the Gap trembled around them, making way for the new Devourer.
Because the roots would not weep today.
They would welco their new warden.
And for the first ti in eons—
Nidhoggr could finally rest.
~☆~
anwhile—
Deep beneath the bark, in the marrow of Yggdrasil where ti crawled and light did not exist, she stirred.
Nidhoggr.
The ancient. The seer. The devourer.
Her wings, once proud and vast enough to eclipse moons, now hung like veils of withered velvet, too heavy to lift. Her obsidian scales—once polished mirrors of starlight—were dulled and cracked, spiderwebbed with runes she could no longer rember inscribing.
And yet… she endured. For that was her purpose.
She had chosen this. She had always known this day would co.
~~~
She rembered it still.
The day the Council gathered.
The day the bark of Yggdrasil bled.
The day the Rot was first spoken of.
It had co after the War of the Last Accord—the final, bitter clash between humanity and the old races. Elves, dragons, giants, spirits, dwarves… all brought low beneath steel, greed, and numbers. The heavens wept. The ground cracked. And when the battle ended, sothing deeper had changed.
The Tree had changed.
She saw it first. Of course she had.
Nidhoggr, the Seer of Skaldruun.
Last daughter of the Lindwyrm's Brood. Winged prophet of the Root Thrones. The one who had stared through the veil of fate and returned with truths no one wished to hear.
The day she saw the first black vein curling beneath Yggdrasil’s bark, she wept.
Not from fear.
But because she recognized it.
It was corruption.
Not a spell. Not a curse.
Not even evil.
It was apathy. Consequence. Waste made sentient by ti and blood.
The gods called it Rot.
The dragons called it Kirrvalk.
The fae called it the Hollowing.
It did not matter.
It was eating the World Tree from within.
And nothing—nothing—could halt its crawl.
Not gods. Not angels. Not ti.
Only consumption.
“Devour it,” she had said.
Her voice, soft and deep, had carried through the Glade of Yggdrasil where the Council of Elders gathered. Dragons, fae, gods, and spirits alike watched her with wary reverence.
“I will beco the Maw. I will hold the Rot. I will suffer the weight of the world’s waste so it does not poison the future.”
Her mate had begged her not to.
Her daughters cried.
But she had already seen the end.
And in all visions, only one prevented Yggdrasil’s collapse.
Her. And only her.
She was the mightiest. Not in raw strength—but in endurance. In wisdom. In clarity. She knew the songs of the tree. The heartbeat of the bark. The old lullabies whispered by the gods before silence beca their only answer.
She knew how to survive.
Even when it ant suffering alone beneath the world.
'I just need to endure until the Personification of Nihility appears. She is the only one who will be able to help the tree.
~~~
The descent was sacred.
She passed through the root gate draped in ceremonial silver. Her horns were adorned with woven laurels from the last true bloom of Yggdrasil. The spirits of the glade sang as she walked, and even the gods bowed—not in command, but in gratitude.
When the gate sealed behind her, no one spoke again.
No one dared.
~~~
Ti had passed.
Years. Centuries. Millennia.
She no longer counted.
She devoured. All things tainted, she consud. All things twisted, she swallowed.
She beca the forge of purity. The beast whose belly held everything the world wished to forget. Songs turned to screams. Light turned to sludge. And still she ate.
And still she endured.
But lately…
Lately, her dreams had returned.
Of the sky. Of wind.
Of a little pale hatchling asking if he’d ever be as strong as his sister.
Of a quiet little cherub with moon-colored hair who braided vines into her claws and asked too many questions.
Of a tree that once sang.
Of a world that once cared.
And now… sothing stirred.
Sothing shifted.
A changeof balance.
Her eyes, dimd by ti, cracked open beneath the root. A sigh escaped her massive chest—dry and ancient as the first wind.
She felt it.
The burden was moving.
Not ending. But transferring.
And for the first ti since the roots closed behind her, Nidhoggr wept. The possibility that she would finally—after all this ti—be allowed to sleep, was just too overwhelming.
A pulse trembled through the roots of Yggdrasil.
It was not Rot. Not pain. But… sothing new. Sothing alive.
A ripple of space peeled back like silk, and a portal—quiet and elegant—unfolded in the hollow chamber beneath the World Tree. Not torn, not shattered. rely opened, like a long-forgotten door creaking gently in invitation.
From it stepped a figure draped in light and stillness.
A young woman—though that word fell short of what she truly was. Her presence was sothing older, sothing layered in history and rewritten ti. Twelve wings fanned out behind her—each pair a different echo of power. So feathered and soft, so jagged like shards of shattered glass. They shimred in hues that danced between violet, magenta, and green, flowing like galaxies trapped in the shape of feathers.
Her hair fell past her waist in a shimring cascade of silver, the tips stained with the sa colors as her wings—like they had soaked up pieces of the cosmos. Her steps were soundless, her aura tiless.
But her eyes—
One blazed erald, radiant and sharp like sumr lightning.
The other, a deep athyst, burning with mory and quiet ruin.
Nidhoggr stirred.
Her massive head, long rested against the root-slick floor, lifted ever so slightly. Her joints groaned, bones creaking like branches under ancient snow. She blinked slowly, struggling against the fog of millennia.
There was sothing about this girl.
Familiarity.
Like the mory of a dream just out of reach. Like the scent of spring after centuries of winter. Sothing long buried.
A faint glimr caught her eye—the silvery crystal ring on the girl's right hand. A hum of energy coiled from it, the distinct pressure of folded dinsions echoing through the chamber like a bell made of ti.
"A spatial ring?" Nidhoggr thought dimly, her old seer’s instincts flickering to life. "No… not just spatial. Dinsional layering. She’s anchored in too many realities at once to be mortal."
But it wasn’t the girl that made her breathe for the first ti in a hundred years.
No—it was the spectral dragon beside her.
Pale as moonlight. Wings soft with mory. Spirit flickering like candlelight in sacred halls.
Albion.
Her son.
Her little moon.
She gasped softly—air thick with age and wonder—as her golden-black eyes locked onto his.
“…Little Moon…” she rasped, voice like a lullaby aged in stone. “…you’ve finally co.”
Albion stepped forward, eyes glistening with spectral tears. His body flickered with light, hovering in the space between what he had been… and what he was about to beco.
“I’m here, Mother,” he said quietly.
Nidhoggr’s form trembled.
Tears—real ones—spilled from her fractured scales, glowing softly as they soaked into the root-laced earth.
“I… I dread of you, you know. Thought you were a mory I’d made up… to keep from going mad.”
The young woman—Hespera, Daughter of Chaos, End of All Things—remained silent behind him, hands folded before her as the ring on her finger pulsed in gentle resonance with the roots.
Albion took another step, wings curling low, as if in reverence.
“I’ve co to take your place,” he said. “You’ve suffered enough. You’ve devoured enough.”
Nidhoggr’s great eyes widened.
She stared.
Not in disbelief—but in awe.
“You… would do that?”
Albion nodded.
“I must. And I want to.”
She shuddered again.
And then, slowly—painfully—she began to rise.
Roots uncoiled from her limbs. Old growth snapped and shed. Magics that had bound her in silent purpose for millennia began to loosen. She stood—taller than mory, broader than fear, darker than starlight.
Yet her eyes—
Her eyes were brighter than they had ever been.
“…Then let look upon you… one last ti… before the world forgets my na.”
Albion stepped closer.
And without hesitation, pressed his forehead to hers.
Spirit to flesh.
Son to mother.
Hope to legacy.
And in that mont, the roots pulsed in relief.
The burden was being passed.
The Rot would have a new devourer.
And Nidhoggr… could finally rest.
“…Hmm, now that I’m up close to it, I don’t think it’s unsalvageable,” ca a feminine voice.
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