Nightfall blanketed Magnolia in a hush of moonlight and muted shadows. The Fairy Tail guild hall had long since emptied, leaving only candlelight and the creak of old floorboards in its wake.
In the Master's chambers above, Makarov Dreyar stood at his desk, thumbing slowly through a weathered parchment sealed with three crimson wax marks.
The seal had not been broken in decades.
Not until now.
The moment Ren and Erza had returned from the Library of Forbidden Magic, Makarov had locked himself in this room.
He'd felt it.
Not in the air—but in the ground.
The void magic that Ren awakened in the chamber below had stirred something ancient beneath Fairy Tail itself. Something sealed.
And it was reacting.
He set the parchment down and reached into the drawer, pulling out a second scroll—a Map of Etherial Leylines, drawn by the first Guild Master, Precht. It showed the natural flow of magical energy beneath Magnolia, including the convergence point directly beneath Fairy Tail.
A convergence point that now pulsed with anti-magic energy.
"Damn it," Makarov muttered. "So it really wasn't destroyed."
---
Down below, far beneath the guild's stone foundation, a room lay sealed by layers of ancient enchantment. Few in the guild even knew it existed.
The Vault of Silence.
Its door bore no keyhole. Instead, six glowing glyphs—each representing a school of magic—hovered in a circle. And at the center, a black brand shaped like a dragon's eye.
The brand pulsed now, awakened by Ren's magic.
Inside the vault, shadows twisted across walls covered in runes that had no translation.
A sigil of a dragon—its wings skeletal, its mouth open wide—was carved into the far wall. Around it, a warning etched in flame glyphs:
> "Do Not Unseal. Not While The Void Lives."
A crack formed through the center of the carving.
A whisper echoed into the dark.
> "The seal is weakening..."
---
Above, Ren tossed in his bed at the dormitory, his body glowing faintly with dull, flickering light. The events of the day haunted his dreams—spectral mages, forbidden tomes, a dragon of darkness whispering in a voice he had never heard, yet somehow remembered.
Then the dream shifted.
He stood once again in that same cavern he saw in the library vision.
But this time… he wasn't a boy.
He was a child—small, weak, trembling as the creature before him loomed high above, its eyes burning with dark starlight.
> "Do you understand now?" the dragon asked, its voice like the cracking of glass and thunder combined.
"You were not born. You were made. You carry me in your blood."
Ren clenched his fists. "What are you?"
The dragon smiled. Not cruelly—almost... proudly.
> "I am Nulligar. The Void Eater. The dragon who devoured time, gods, and stars."
It lowered its head.
> "And you, child... are my last roar."
Ren woke with a gasp, drenched in sweat.
---
Later that morning, Ren stood before the guild's old archive vault, summoned privately by Makarov.
The old man sat in front of the ancient seal, cross-legged and solemn.
"You feel it too, don't you?" Makarov asked without looking up.
Ren nodded.
"It's under us," he said quietly. "Something old. Something wrong."
Makarov turned, eyes narrowed with a weight few could match.
"When I first took over as Guild Master, I was warned never to break the seal below this place. Not even on pain of death. The first Master believed it was a fragment of a greater calamity. Something left behind by a dying dragon—one that fed not on nature, but on absence."
Ren didn't answer. His hands trembled slightly.
"It didn't just eat magic," Makarov continued. "It ate possibility. Whatever it touched, it unmade. Not killed, not destroyed—erased. Even memory couldn't escape."
Ren clenched his jaw. "And now I've reawakened it."
"No," Makarov said firmly. "You inherited it. There's a difference."
Ren stepped closer to the seal. The glyphs glowed faintly as he approached—except the central one. The eye.
It pulsed. Responded.
"I saw its name," Ren whispered. "Nulligar."
Makarov's face went pale.
"That name was lost before the age of Alvarez."
Ren looked at him. "It called me its last roar. What does that mean?"
Makarov stood slowly, placing a hand on the young man's shoulder.
"I think it means you're more than just a Dragon Slayer, Ren. You may be the final echo of something the world tried very hard to forget."
---
That evening, the crack beneath the seal widened.
In the far-off wilderness, near the ruins of a forgotten temple, a cloaked figure knelt before an ancient altar. Eyes glowing blue. Teeth bared in a grin.
"The seal weakens," she whispered. "Soon, the Void will walk again."
She reached into her robe and revealed a glowing crystal.
Inside it swirled the stolen remnants of null magic—taken from an ancient relic thought lost centuries ago.
And in the shadows behind her… a creature growled.
Not quite alive.
Not quite dead.
But very, very hungry.
---
Back in Magnolia, Ren stood at the window of his room, staring into the stars. The silver-bound book from the library rested on the table behind him, open to a page that hadn't been there before.
A single line had appeared on the paper, scrawled in void-dark ink.
> The seal will not hold forever. When it breaks, you must choose: contain the roar... or become it.
He didn't know who had written it.
But he knew one thing:
The countdown had begun.