This arc is coming to a close very soon. Let me know your thoughts on how you found it?
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As the battle loomed ever closer, Isylith, the White Lady, stood atop the snowy peaks of her frigid domain, a solitary figure carved from ice and shadow. The wind howled around her, swirling through the frozen trees, whipping at her long, flowing white hair, but she stood unmoving, her alabaster scales gleaming like a sculpture of frost under the pale moonlight.
Her thoughts, however, were anything but still. The weight of the coming war pressed heavily on her shoulders. She finally got aid from the fragrance queen but Artorius, the scaleless one had proven to be an unpredictable force, one that she underestimated at her own cost and even now could not fully fathom how he appeared from nowhere.
She had been looking into him, what his lineage was, which brood was he from, but she came up short in everything. He was a total unknown, someone that seemed to appear from nowhere.
With a steady breath, she raised her arms, her fingers tracing intricate, frozen sigils in the air. The winds calmed. Snowflakes danced around her, forming ethereal patterns as she called out to the deep, ancient power within her bloodline.
"Mother..." she whispered, the word laced with a quiet desperation, carrying with it the weight of a thousand years of expectation. "Father..." The cold air seemed to stir, as though the world itself acknowledged her call.
Her voice quivered slightly as she spoke again, this time louder, with more force. "Mother, Father. I need you now." She had never called upon them before not directly. There were... risks and this was not allowed but what options did she have when everything was on the line.
Her mother, the Dragon Lady of Frost, was a great dragon lady of ice and winter, capable of manipulating the very coldest reaches of the world. Her presence was commanding, her strength unyielding.
And then, there was her father, the Dragon Lord of Bone. An even older entity, a figure born of death, darkness, and decay, long gone into the shadow of forgotten legends. A tyrant and warlord in his prime, he had ruled over a kingdom of bones, the remnants of his enemies' fallen corpses becoming his army. It was said that he had been lost to time.
Isylith clenched her fists. Her heart thrummed with fear, desire, and determination. If she could draw upon their power, she would tip the scales in her favor. "Please... I need strength. I need power..." Her voice cracked with the weight of her plea.
The world shifted. The winds picked up once more, but this time, they howled in a different cadence. Then, from the depths of the frozen earth, an enormous clawed hand burst through the ice, skeletal and jagged, stretching toward the heavens. The fingers were long, like the gnarled roots of a dead tree, their surface covered in ancient runes.
The hand slowly curled open, dropping an item onto the ground.
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Artorius and his army moved steadily into the Pale Snowfields, the ground beneath them cold and unforgiving. Snow and ice stretched endlessly ahead, a land of eternal winter that seemed to whisper with the promise of impending death. The icy winds howled through the barren landscape, cutting into their skin like knives. Artorius pulled his mist cloak tighter around him, the sensation of cold deep in his bones a reminder of what was to come.
The final battle, the culmination of many battles and bloodshed, was just ahead. Every step taken, every breath drawn, seemed heavier than the last. Artorius felt the weight of it, the power, the responsibility, the uncertainty.
He glanced to his side, his commanders moving with him. Ouroboros, as usual, was floating lazily nearby. Viserion, Zoklath, and Raijin marched in tight formation behind him, their expressions grim, the gravity of the upcoming battle weighing heavily on their shoulders.
The army was ready. His dragon soldiers were assembled, their wings poised for flight, their hearts set on victory. Artorius could sense their eagerness, but also their fear. Fear of failure. Fear of the unknown. But fear was nothing new to him. It had been his constant companion for him as long as he could remember when he entered this Nest.
"We're close," Artorius muttered under his breath, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the horizon. The air felt… different. Heavy with an unnatural tension. His instincts, honed by many battle and struggle, prickled in response. Something was off. The world itself seemed to be holding its breath, waiting.
A sudden roar of wind shattered the moment, the sound so violent and thunderous it made even the most battle-hardened warriors flinch. Artorius looked up instinctively. His gaze locked on the sky. The stars, usually so calm and distant, were shifting. "Look!" Raijin shouted, his voice sharp with awe and fear.
Above them, a new star had appeared, a blinding light that had not been there moments ago. It burned like a beacon, its glow piercing through the cold darkness of the sky, casting an eerie shadow across the world below.
Artorius felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as the brilliant light in the sky intensified. It wasn't just a star. It was something more. A streak of fire, cutting through the heavens like a comet, its shape and intensity unlike anything he had ever seen before. A massive force, far greater than anything the world had known in a long time.
The army, too, had stopped in their tracks, gazing upward at the burning brilliance. There was a hushed silence that swept over them, the kind that only happens in moments when destiny shifts.
"What in the hells…" Zoklath whispered, his voice reverberating with awe and trepidation. "That's not natural."
Raijin, ever the storm-bringer, his body crackling with energy, squinted into the distance, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. "That light, it's too steady to be a star... It's descending."
A familiar voice broke through the stillness. "Ahh, what a glorious age that is upon us! Ouroboros started laughing like a mad man. "What you're seeing there children… that's no ordinary falling star. That is a dragon's corpse."
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The Dragon Nest had always known storms, calamities, world-shaking battles where powerful dragons and broods went to war with one another in contests of pride. A continent-wide cradle of half-formed empires and young blooded monarchs and noble brats, still learning the weight of their titles. Fires rose, storms came, rivers of mana shifted and bucked like wild serpents. The Nest was a place of beginnings, not endings.
Young dragons brawled in ravines and cracked boulders with careless flame. Fledgling rulers measured territory with roars and small scale wars. Lords-in-training scorched forests over petty slights. Storms came and went. Volcanoes erupted. Miniature wars broke out between clans every few years.
But today a terrible sight, one not witnessed by any hatchling in the Nest now blazed across the heavens. At first, it looked like a new star. Bright. Sharp. Wrong. Then the brightness grew too fast, too steady. The sky seemed to stretch around it, like a wound pulled open by unseen claws.
Dragons across the Nest paused mid-flight, mid-meal, mid-argument. Something crawled under rocks as an instinct older than their culture, older than any clan, older than the Nest itself. A feeling they had no name for at first. Dread.
Not from a predator. Not from an enemy. From something so old their bodies barely remembered it. A shape appeared within the burning light. Massive. Winged. Broken. A falling body. A dragon's body. A corpse.
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In the eastern lands where petals bloomed year-round and the air shimmered with illusionary scents, a young monarch-blooded ruler lifted her head.
Her wings were delicate curtains of pollen-dust. Her breath carried venom disguised as perfume. She lounged upon a throne woven from living vines until the sky cracked. Her pupils dilated. The falling corpse reflected in her eyes like a god descending.
Around her, courtiers gasped. Servants dropped nectar cups. Flowers wilted from the sudden shift in mana. The queen leaned forward slowly, her voice soft, almost trembling with delight. "So… it begins."
To the west, in halls carved from saltstone beneath the ocean, another monarch-blooded dragon watched the sky from far below the waves. Even the sea reacted. Tides pulled back unnaturally. Currents bucked and twisted. Sea dragons fled. The water itself seemed to vibrate in fear.
The ocean queen rose from her throne of coral, crest of fins rippling in agitation. Her reflection warped across the surface high above her palace as she gazed upward toward the glowing streak in the heavens.
"Mobilize the Tide Legion. Every noble-blooded. Every pearl-born. We move inland." The water darkened as her mana surged. Thousands of soldiers stirred in the trenches and reefs. The sea roared back at her command.
In a mountainous caldera where rivers of magma lit the night like arteries of stars, a forge-king lifted his hammer mid-strike. The metal beneath it sang wrong. The sky pierced his vision even through the thick smoke, he saw the burning corpse descending like a shard of the sun. He tightened his grip.
His smiths, younger dragons barely old enough to hold proper flame, stared up with slack jaws. The heat of the world shifted their heat, their fire, suddenly felt tiny. The forge-king's chest rumbled with excitement and fear.
"Ready the warbands. Stoke every volcano. If the Nest wants a war, they will get one."
In a kingdom carved from dunes and ruin, where time felt slow and the sands shifted like thoughts a dragon raised his head from meditation. He felt it first as a pressure behind his skull. Then as a shift in the dunes. Then as a ripple through ancient bones buried beneath the earth.
Only then did he open his eyes and see the falling corpse. He exhaled through his nose, dust billowing out. "So fate stirs again," he murmured. He did not panic. He did not rush. He simply stood. And the desert shifted with him. Grains of sand slithered into armored formations.
High in the drifting archipelago of sky-islands, a sky queen was holding a gathering for a festival, games of flight, contests of wind-sculpting, races through the cloud labyrinth. Laughter filled the air. Until the sky tore open.
Dragons froze mid-flight. The wind spiraled out of control. The floating islands tilted toward the incoming light as air pressure shifted violently. The sky queen gasped and nearly lost altitude as she stared upward. "That's— That's not possible…"
Far on the fringes of the Nest, where the horizon blurred and the world thinned into half-reality, a quiet, masked dragon watched from a cliff.
No attendants. No court. No kingdom. Just shadow and silence. He watched the burning corpse fall. Not with fear. Not with awe. But calculation. "So that is how they intend to steer us," he murmured.
In the heart of the Nest where banners of crimson hung and arenas roared with the cries of spectators and fighters a sword wielding dragon presided over the bloodsports. Below him, the arena shook from the combat of young drakes battling for honor, for rank, for the right to one day stand among his elite legions.
But then the crowd's roar faltered. Warriors looked up. The air turned sharp, cold, vibrating with an ancient tremor that did not belong to the world. The sword king felt it before he saw it. He lifted his head.
The sky above the open coliseum bloomed with impossible light. A burning wound in the heavens. A falling shape. A massive, broken, winged body trailing cosmic flame. The arena fell silent. Every fighter froze. Every spectator held their breath. Even the beasts chained beneath the arena snarled uneasily.
One of the Sword-King's generals whispered, "My liege… is that…a dragon corpse?"
"A Dragon Emperor," he whispered. Not in fear, not awe, not reverence. Hunger.
Another general came up with news, "Your highness, we just got word that the Fragrance queen sent her lieutenant and soldiers to deal with something new that has arisen."
"Really now? Well then let's mess with her schemes!"
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Author Note: Final Battle is here!
You guys might be able to tell what Arc 3 will be about.
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Chapter 30 Recap!
Leveled up Archetype: Leader to Lvl. 20!
+1 INT, +1 WIL, +1 CHA
Gained New Trait: Ambitious
Gained New Skill: Training Regimen