High above the world, past the drifting clouds and shimmering winds, the Sky Islands floated like scattered jewels across the azure sea of the heavens.
And tonight… they were trembling.
A thunderous fracture tore across the air — CRRRAAAACK — the sound loud enough to make the floating islands shudder, the waterfalls freeze mid-fall, and the wind currents distort.
The massive dungeon suspended beside the central island — the same one Arata visited years ago when he initiated the era of dungeons — was splitting open.
Not glowing.
Not flickering.
Breaking.
The runic shell around it was not normal.
Not S-rank.
Not EX-rank.
It was an Untiered Cataclysm Dungeon — a dungeon that shouldn't exist in this world at all.
And now it was rupturing.
Crimson vapor poured from the cracks.
Then came the first roar.
A monstrous silhouette, twenty meters tall, ripped through the shell and dropped onto the edge of the island, shaking the sky itself.
Then came another.
And another.
And another.
Until the entire horizon turned black with gargantuan beasts diving out of the cracked dungeon like meteors of flesh and teeth.
The warriors of the Sky Islands mobilized instantly.
These were the same descendants Arata once protected, the same people he told stories to around the communal fire, the same children who watched him vanish into legend.
Now grown.
Now strong.
Now terrified.
Sky Knights mounted airborne drakes.
Star Weavers conjured radiant constellations.
Levitation Mages erected floating barriers.
But it wasn't enough.
A leviathan-class monster — its body made of obsidian spikes and living sand — slammed into the western island, crushing dozens instantly.
A burning colossus made of liquid metal incinerated a squad of Sky Knights in a single breath.
A serpent with crystal wings tore through floating towers like paper.
And then…
blood began raining from above.
People screamed.
Warriors fell.
Children ran.
Homes shattered.
The Sky Islands… were being devoured.
Down below, in the desert beneath the floating lands, beasts that slipped through the cracks landed and caused chaos, ripping caravans apart, flattening dune villages, creating trails of destruction across the sand.
It was a massacre on two levels of existence.
FLASHBACK — ARATA'S STORY
A warm wooden room.
Children in pajamas sitting around Arata.
A soft glow from a lantern.
"—and then," Arata continued, smiling gently, "the heroes of the sky rose to defend their home."
One little girl raised her hand.
"Arata, who won?"
He chuckled with that calm, knowing smile of someone who had already seen too much of the future.
"That night," Arata said softly, "the Sky Islands learned that some things… are beyond even them to control."
The lantern flickered.
The scene faded.
Back in the present—
On the highest floating platform of the central island, a single man stood tall, covered in blood, his armor shattered, one arm nearly broken, but his eyes — burning with unyielding defiance.
Kaelis Vrion.
The strongest man in the Sky Islands.
Ruler.
Guardian.
Before him towered the dungeon boss —
a colossal, four-armed behemoth made of volcanic bone and storm-energy veins.
Each step it took cracked the island further.
Kaelis's breathing was ragged.
His grip on his spear trembled.
His body was on the verge of collapse.
But he stepped forward anyway.
"Not… one… more," he growled.
The monstrous boss charged.
Kaelis roared back and erupted in a final burst of sky-aura — the very essence of the floating islands themselves — and impaled the boss through its core, riding the thrust all the way through as the monster detonated in a blinding shockwave.
Silence.
Then—
THUD.
The giant boss collapsed.
Kaelis remained standing, blood dripping down his chin, the wind wrapping gently around him like a mourning shroud.
Because behind him…
The bodies of his people lay scattered.
The monsters had slaughtered nearly everyone but him.
And as the dungeon cracked open fully and dissolved into ash, golden runes appeared before Kaelis.
[DUNGEON CLEARED]
[REWARD: ALL BOUNTY CLAIMED BY — KAELIS VRION]
He did not smile.
He did not celebrate.
He simply looked at the devastation, pain filling his eyes.
The Sky Islands had survived…
But only through him.
And at a terrible cost.