The air reeked of smoke, ash, and blood.
Mountains burned like candles in the distance, their molten tears lighting up the crimson sky. The land itself screamed, torn apart by claws of divine beasts, wings of demons, and the endless roar of collapsing heavens.
Among the dying and the damned stood a lone warrior, his sword half-buried in the blackened earth.
Nazeku Draeven.
A nameless soldier. A forgotten man. A survivor of nothing.
His armor was shattered, his aura dim. Every breath felt like grinding glass through his throat. Around him lay the remnants of his unit, faces twisted in fear, torn by beasts he could never defeat.
"They're all... gone."
His voice cracked, low and hollow. "Even after all that effort..."
"Silver Three... and still nothing."
He had trained for ten years.
Ten long, miserable years of sleepless nights and blood-soaked dawns, all to climb from Bronze to Silver. All to prove he wasn't trash. And yet, when the Calamity came, he was powerless.
The sky split open like glass shattering underwater.
From the crack poured them, entities that weren't beasts nor men. The gods had returned.
And the world began to die.
Nazeku fell to his knees, his sword slipping from his grasp.
The battlefield was silent now, except for the low hum of the dying wind.
His aura had burned out. His limbs were numb.
He had fought, not for glory, not for the world, but to survive one more breath.
But that breath was gone.
"So this is it," he muttered, blood leaking from his mouth.
"Even after all this... I'm still weak."
The ground beneath him cracked. A tremor rolled through the wasteland, opening a chasm that swallowed light itself.
From within that endless blackness, something moved.
A pulse.
A heartbeat.
No, a presence.
The air grew heavy. Reality itself seemed to bend.
Then, before him, in that endless darkness, he saw it, a colossal dragon, bound in infinite chains of light and shadow, its scales a shimmering crimson-black, like molten obsidian.
Its eyes opened, twin infernos burning through time itself.
Nazeku couldn't move.
He couldn't breathe.
He could only feel it, the sheer weight of its existence crushing everything that made him human.
"W-What... are you?" he whispered.
The dragon's voice didn't echo through sound, it tore through his soul.
"A question from one who crawls between life and death."
"I am that which the gods feared... that which they bound."
Its gaze pierced him.
In that instant, Nazeku saw it, endless battles, burning worlds, the betrayal of gods and beasts alike.
And then the dragon spoke again, softer, but heavier than any scream.
"Mortal... your struggle amuses me."
"You, who fought not for faith... not for love... but for survival."
"Your will... refuses to die."
The chains rattled, splitting the void with soundless thunder.
"It is to you... I bestow my will."
The dragon raised its colossal claw. Chains shattered like glass. A single fragment of crimson light shot forward, striking Nazeku in the chest.
He screamed, not from pain, but from rebirth.
His heart ignited. His veins burned with molten energy. His left eye turned black, the pupil slit into a sharp crimson glare.
And as the world collapsed around him.
As the heavens caved in
As the gods laughed above the ashes of men
Nazeku vanished.
To be continued...