There was no sky, only a dome of unmoving twilight. The stars were frozen, hanging like flecks of glass within a hollow sphere.
Altherion stood barefoot on a soft carpet of soil, but it was not soil from any world he knew. It pulsed faintly beneath his feet, as if breathing.
Around him stretched a boundless garden. Flowers of impossible shapes bloomed with hues that could not exist in nature... deep violet, trembling azure, and black so absolute it seemed to drink in all surrounding light.
Each petal shimmered like it remembered sorrow. Each stem whispered with a voice too low to hear but too persistent to ignore.
In the center of the garden rose a tree made of translucent crystal, glowing faintly from within, as if lit by a heart that no longer beat. Its branches curled skyward like the arms of a forgotten monument. Hanging from it were not fruits, but shards, broken memories frozen mid-fall.
As Altherion approached, the wind stopped. The garden held its breath.
Then came the sound: not one, but many. A baby's first cry. A young girl's laughter. A scream muffled in water. A tired sigh. The sounds came from nowhere and everywhere, curling into each other like smoke, drifting among the flowers.
Some of the blooms wilted as they echoed, their color draining like ink in rain.
Then she appeared.
A figure stood beneath the crystal tree, cloaked in shimmering shadows, her back turned. She was motionless, yet the garden seemed to bend gently toward her, like everything was quietly drawn to her presence.
Altherion couldn't see her face. Her long hair swayed, but her body remained still, as if even time hesitated to touch her.
He stepped closer. The soil beneath him cracked, but there was no sound. The moment he neared, the petals around the tree fell in a slow spiral, turning into ash before they touched the ground.
The woman's voice came softly, not spoken aloud but bleeding into his thoughts like a memory that never belonged to him.
"If they won't remember me... then let them all remember my ruin."
The tree behind her fractured. A web of cracks spread across its crystal trunk, each one glowing a dull red before fading into nothingness.
The garden caught fire, not a fire of heat or light, but one of stillness, frost, and silence. Purple flames danced across the ground, turning the breathing soil cold. The flowers, the sky, the stars, all were consumed by the quiet blaze.
Altherion looked down. His reflection shimmered in the shards of the burning tree. But it wasn't him.
It was a child.
Then a stranger.
Then no one at all.
The ground trembled. Above, the heavens opened to reveal three moons hanging in eerie formation. Lunareis, Noctyros, and an unfamiliar third moon, dim and shrouded in a halo of shadow. They rotated around each other unnaturally fast until they collapsed inward, becoming a swirling eye of void that began pulling the garden, the tree, and the very air toward its center.
Altherion called out, but the figure didn't answer.
Instead, slowly… so slowly… she began to turn her head.
Just as her face was about to be revealed-
Altherion's eyes opened as though dragged through water.
Everything was wrong.
The air smelled like scorched metal and damp moss. Light fractured across the ruined ground, bent by something unseen in the sky. His limbs were heavy. His vision trembled, colors too sharp, shadows too deep.
Above him, the stone ceiling was half-collapsed, vines wrapped in ash clinging to shattered archways. Sparks floated lazily, like dying fireflies.
Then came the sound.
A guttural crack, like bones twisting inside a furnace, followed by a blast of air that sent dust cascading in sheets from the broken pillars.
Somewhere nearby, something roared, if it could be called a roar. It was wet, hollow, impossible. As if the world itself had been forced to scream through a mouth that no longer existed.
A figure dashed past the corner of his vision. Blonde hair. Panic. Liesette.
"Altherion!"
Her voice cut through the veil like a blade, high with fear but firm enough to ground him. He blinked rapidly, the fog clearing.
She was running toward him now, skirts torn, arms flailing, face twisted in terror not for herself, but for him.
She dropped to her knees, fingers digging into his shoulder. "Altherion! Wake up, come on, please! Get up, get up-"
"I'm here, I'm-"
But then he saw it.
Behind her.
It towered in the center of the fractured courtyard, a colossal dragon, flesh blackened like charred roots, wings of smoke and bone spread wide. But where its head should have been… there was nothing. Only a writhing cyclone of black fire, swirling out of its neck as though reality itself bled from the wound.
The flames crackled in reverse, folding inward, devouring light.
It should have been dead. It had no eyes, no brain, no means to perceive. But the creature turned. It felt them.
And before it, shining like a blade of starlight in the abyss, stood Arviel.
The boy spun through the air, white coat flaring behind him, blades of luminous energy orbiting his body.
Each swing carved glowing sigils into the air, each movement was like dance, beautiful, impossible, desperate. But the dragon didn't flinch. Its wound didn't close. Its fire didn't dim.
It moved with the grace of a god and the wrath of a nightmare.
Altherion tried to rise, his legs weak, balance uncertain, but Liesette was already hauling him up with both hands, panic sharpening her voice.
"We need to run," she said breathlessly, eyes flicking back to the battle. "He told me... he told me if you woke up, we'd only have a few minutes. Maybe less."
Altherion staggered, then caught himself. "Arviel's fighting that thing alone?"
"He wanted to buy time for us!" Liesette snapped. Her grip on his wrist tightened, and she pulled. "You want to honor that? Then move!"
As they fled, the ground behind them buckled a massive tremor shaking the ancient stones. Cracks spidered beneath their feet as they dashed past fallen statues and burning foliage.
From the corner of his eye, Altherion saw the dragon launch a burst of black fire into the sky, scorching the clouds into a violent whirlpool. Arviel met it mid-air, hurling a sphere of condensed light straight into the dragon's torso, a direct hit.
But the beast didn't scream.
It laughed.
Not with sound. Not with voice.
With vibration. With presence. With madness.
Liesette pulled him down a flight of cracked stairs hidden beneath a broken shrine. "There's a tunnel under the altar, Arviel found it. Said it might lead out. Or deeper. Either way, we're not surviving up here."
Altherion glanced back one final time before the shadows swallowed them. He saw Arviel standing on the beast's back, cloaked in a blizzard of light and symbols. The dragon's flaming neck coiled up toward him like a serpent made of hatred.
Then they vanished into the dark.
The roar that followed shook the mountain.
***
The tunnel beneath the shattered altar was narrow, damp, and breathing.
Or at least it felt that way.
Every step echoed against ancient, bone-pale walls, lined with forgotten glyphs long eroded by time and moisture.
The air grew colder with each meter they descended, as though the earth itself rejected their presence. Dust clung to their skin like a second layer, and the faint stench of old magic lingered beneath the scent of mildew and blood.
Liesette led the way, torch in hand, her breath ragged but focused.
Altherion followed behind, one hand steadying himself on the curved wall. His legs still trembled from whatever poison or curse had knocked him unconscious earlier, but his mind was rapidly clearing.
They walked in silence for a while, save for the faint groans of stone settling overhead. Then, Altherion broke it.
"Why did he do it?"
Liesette didn't turn around. "Do what?"
"Arviel," Altherion said, voice low. "Why did he help us? Last time we met, he looked at us like we were trash, like saving us would be a waste of breath. And now he's up there... throwing himself at that thing just to buy us time?"
Liesette slowed, her footsteps faltering. The torchlight flickered as if uncertain.
"I don't know," she said, softly. But I think... maybe he saw something in you."
Altherion narrowed his eyes. "In me?"
She glanced over her shoulder, her expression unreadable in the dim light. "He stared at you for a long time when you were unconscious. Said nothing. Then told me to run. That was all."
Altherion digested her words in silence. His fingers traced the cracks in the wall, his mind sharper than it had been in days.
Something about Arviel had always felt off, not just in his power, but in the weight he carried, the way he moved like someone detached from consequence. If a being like that had chosen to help them, there had to be a reason. And if that reason could be understood... it could be used.
He looked forward again. "Then we're going back."
Liesette turned, alarm flashing across her face. "What?"
"We're going back," he repeated, calm but firm. "We're going to help him."
"Are you out of your mind?!" she snapped. "Did you see that thing? It burned the sky, Altherion! One blast and we'll be-"
"I'm not suggesting we charge in like heroes." His voice was steel now, refined and cold. "I'm suggesting we don't waste an opportunity."
Liesette stared at him, the fire in her hand reflecting the conflict on her face. "Opportunity?"
Altherion's eyes gleamed with clarity. "If someone like him is fighting something like that, and still chooses to save us... that means he's alone. Or desperate. Or both."
He took a step closer, the tunnel narrowing between them.
"And if there's one thing I've learned about people like him, powerful, arrogant, godlike, it's that they never ask for help unless they have no other choice. Which means we have leverage."
A silence settled between them, heavy and unsure.
"I'm not doing this because I want to be noble," Altherion said quietly. "I'm doing this because if we can get him on our side… surviving this world gets a lot easier."
Liesette's eyes softened just slightly, though doubt lingered in the curve of her lips.
After a beat, she turned and resumed walking. "You have a funny way of showing gratitude."
"I'm still alive," Altherion muttered. "That'll have to do for now."
***
The air cracked like broken glass, and fire bled from the sky.
Arviel danced between ruins and rubble, his blade drawn, a long, narrow weapon that shimmered faintly like a mirage, warping the air around it.
Every motion he made was precise, calculated, and beautiful in its brutality. Yet no matter how fast he moved, the beast remained faster.
The headless dragon snarled without a mouth, screamed without lungs.
A twisting mass of black sinew and molten bone, it moved like it had no weight, each limb crashing down with the force of a mountain, yet vanishing in an instant like shadow.
Arviel spun away from a searing sweep of its claw, his boots skidding across fractured stone. Debris showered the plaza. What remained of the temple behind him collapsed in a thunderous groan.
This was not a beast of flesh and scale.
It was a memory of wrath, of war, of something ancient that had never truly died.
And for the first time in years, Arviel grimaced.
His blade sang against the creature's side. Sparks flew. No wound. Not even a mark. The dragon twisted mid-air and slammed its tail into the earth, sending out a shockwave that turned a nearby obelisk to dust.
Arviel landed hard, knees bent, one hand pressing against the cracked stone to steady himself.
He looked up again. The dragon hadn't moved.
It was waiting. Watching. Even without eyes, it watched.
Arviel narrowed his gaze. "You shouldn't exist," he whispered.
Then he sensed it, them.
Footsteps, faint but distinct, from below.
He didn't need to look to know. He already knew.
They hadn't followed his orders.
Altherion and Liesette were moving away. Escaping underground.
Cowards. Fools.
For a brief moment, emotion broke through the mask Arviel wore like armor. His lips curled. His jaw clenched.
"I told you to run," he muttered under his breath. "So do it properly."
A blast of dark flame tore across the sky, barely missing him. Arviel hurled himself aside just in time, the heat licking the edge of his cloak. He didn't stumble. He never stumbled. But something in him broke a little more.
He was not their guardian. He was not their guide. He had no duty to keep them breathing.
And yet...
Somewhere inside him, in the parts he never spoke to, a voice whispered: Why are you angry, then?
He ignored it.
He stood once more, blade steady in hand, watching as the beast raised its claws for another strike.
"I'll end this quickly," he murmured. "And when I find them again... I swear-"
But the dragon lunged before the threat could be finished, and Arviel disappeared into the storm of teeth and flame.