Far beneath the Heaven's Gate Monolith, where sunlight had never touched and where even sound seemed afraid to travel, the earth trembled.
Deep within that ancient darkness lay a creature older than Camelot itself. A dragon of impossible size, sealed away in the ages when men 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 memory. Memories of skies torn apart by wings, of firestorms that drowned kingdoms, of gods who had dared to call themselves rulers.
It remembered 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 time itself.
But now, the air around it stirred.
A familiar scent reached its nose, carrying the faint, corrupted sweetness of abyssal blood.
