Far beneath the Heaven’s Gate Monolith, where sunlight had never touched and where even sound seed afraid to travel, the earth trembled.
Deep within that ancient darkness lay a creature older than Calot itself. A dragon of impossible size, sealed away in the ages when n learned to wield mana.
Its body was coiled around the roots of the monolith’s magic, its scales dark as the void and lined with veins of dull crimson.
For centuries, it had slept.
Its dreams were nothing but hunger and mory. mories of skies torn apart by wings, of firestorms that drowned kingdoms, of gods who had dared to call themselves rulers.
It rembered the war that ended it all. When the first mages, desperate and terrified, sealed its kind beneath the land and bound them with spells that they thought could outlast ti itself.
But now, the air around it stirred.
A familiar scent reached its nose, carrying the faint, corrupted sweetness of abyssal blood.
Two days ago, a man ca. A curious, foolish man.
The dragon had watched through half-lidded eyes as the man had entered its prison. The man had left behind a flask holding abyssal blood.
The scent had been faint, but intoxicating. A mory of freedom.
The dragon had inhaled deeply, breaking the flash and absorbing the blood, and for the first ti in what felt like millennia, its eyelids fluttered open.
The veins of the monolith around it flickered weakly.
And now, two days later, the dragon’s ancient heart began to beat again.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
A tremor ran through the cavern as the dragon stirred, muscles shifting beneath its colossal hide.
The light from the monolith above flickered again, as if it could sense the power it was ant to contain awakening.
The dragon inhaled deeply, catching the scent again.
Blood.
More abyssal blood, drifting from a city closeby.
A growl rumbled through its chest, reverberating through the depths like thunder. The scent called to it, clawing at its instincts, stirring the hunger that had slept for thousands of years.
It just couldn’t resist.
The dragon began to move.
Its claws flexed, scraping the stone beneath. The old roots imprisoning it flared to life, but they were dim. Much too old and weak.
The dragon flexed its wings, straining against the spell lattice holding it down. The earth cracked.
A low rumble grew to a roar as the ancient binding spells resisted, then scread as they shattered.
The cavern exploded in light. The monolith above the surface shook violently, beams of blue mana bursting skyward like dying lightning.
The ground split open as the dragon forced its way free, its massive form tearing through layers of soil and rock like paper.
The night above fractured as the earth itself gave way.
Captain Roderick and his n, stationed outside the Heaven’s Gate monolith, were thrown to the ground as the earth convulsed. The sky turned a faint red from the eruption of mana.
"What in the gods’ na—?!" one of the soldiers shouted.
Roderick barely had ti to bark orders. "Form the lines! Protect the—"
The rest of his words drowned in a deafening roar that tore through the night.
The dragon burst from the earth, an avalanche of black scales. Its wings unfurled like great storms, blotting out the moon.
The monolith cracked and fell apart behind it, bursting into a rain of glowing fragnts.
For a mont, even the world itself fell silent.
Then, the dragon roared again, a sound so vast and furious that the air itself seed to burn.
The first wave of soldiers fired spells, arrows, anything they could muster. Bolts of lightning and fla streaked towards the beast, striking its hide, and doing nothing.
The dragon turned its colossal head, fire swirling in its throat.
"Run!" Roderick shouted.
Too late.
The dragon unleashed its breath.
A thick torrent of black fire poured forth, engulfing everything in its path.
It wasn’t just heat that burned. It was decay, an abyssal inferno that dissolved both matter and mana.
The guards scread as the fire devoured them, their bodies disintegrating before they could even fall.
Roderick quickly splayed his hands, shielded his face with a barrier, the spell cracking under the sheer force of the attack. The entire valley was bathed in dark light, and when the flas faded, the world was silent.
The dragon stood amidst a field of burning earth.
Of all the soldiers that had been manning the monolith, only Roderick remained.
The fire from the dragon had broken through in the sa instant the dragon had stopped, and it had left him with charred armor and one arm hanging limp, his sword clutched in his remaining hand.
He breathed raggedly, his eyes burning.
The dragon turned towards him, curious.
Roderick spat blood and raised his sword.
"If Calot falls tonight," he whispered hoarsely, "it won’t be because I ran."
He charged.
The dragon moved like lightning despite its size, its tail sweeping through the air.
Roderick dodged by inches, his sword slashing across its leg, and actually cutting through scale. Abyssal ichor splattered the ground, sizzling where it fell.
The dragon bellowed in pain, swinging its claw. It was still weakened from centuries of captivity. All it needed was the blood. And when it got it, it would crush any that stood before it.
Roderick ducked, rolling beneath the massive claws and striking again. His sword burned with his layered spells, glowing bright as the sun. He leapt, driving it deep into the creature’s chest.
The dragon roared, rearing back, its claws smashing into the ground. The shockwave sent Roderick flying. His sword tore free from the dragon’s flesh, spinning away into the dirt.
He landed hard, pain searing through his body.
The dragon’s eyes glowed faintly purple as it turned its gaze upon him. It inhaled deeply, then exhaled, not fire this ti, but raw force.
The blast sent Roderick crashing against a broken slab of the monolith, shattering his armor.
He slumped to his knees, coughing blood, his vision fading.
The dragon moved to stand above him, studying him with curiosity.
Roderick managed a weak smile. "You’re... magnificent," he whispered. Then, softly, "May the gods... forgive us..."
The dragon’s tail lashed forward, piercing through his chest.
Roderick’s breath hitched. He looked down at the spike of dark scales erging from his armor. Blood trickled down his chin. He raised his head one last ti, staring up at the stars.
"For Calot," he whispered.
The dragon withdrew its tail, letting the captain’s body fall lifelessly to the scorched ground.
Silence fell again.
The great beast spread its wings wide, each movent shaking the air.
Its scales shimred with the light of the broken monolith, catching the glow of both the abyss and the moon.
The faint scent of abyssal blood still drifted through the air, pulling at it, calling it.
Its nostrils flared. Its head turned.
There, beyond the hills, beyond the forest, lay the glittering capital of Calot.
The dragon roared once more, a cry of triumph, fury, and hunger that echoed for miles, and launched itself into the sky.
The heavens split apart as it flew, wings blotting out the stars.
And as it soared towards the capital, the wind carried the sound of its coming.
A low, rolling growl that promised the end of everything that stood in the capital.
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