And now, in the Death Dragon's eyes, heaven and earth seemed to have plunged utterly into-
Boundless darkness.
Cold, deathly still, empty.
The pressure of a higher order, beyond anything the dragon could comprehend, bore down like the entire sky made solid, crushing the dragon's spiritual senses beneath its weight.
And in the deepest, most distant reaches of that darkness, something... awakened.
Three pairs of eyes, vast as suns and blazing with golden lightning, slowly opened.
Their gaze pierced straight through the clouds of the Material Plane and, like tangible shackles, instantly pinned the Death Dragon's core, barely pieced together from resentment and blood magic.
These were not the eyes of a living creature, but the "gaze" of some law of catastrophe itself, imbued with a cold majesty indifferent to all things.
"ROOOOAR!!!!!!"
An indescribable roar.
It was not a vibration in the air, but the lament and proclamation of space itself being forcibly torn apart and laws trampled underfoot, striking directly at the essence of existence!
Within that roar, the Death Dragon's consciousness flickered like a dying candle in a gale, on the verge of going out.
The dragon "heard" the rotten shell sustained by blood magic and the soul glued together from countless dead spirits creaking and groaning under an unbearable burden, about to disintegrate completely.
Under the gaze of those "suns," the churning clouds were no longer masses of water vapor. They boiled and swirled, becoming the backdrop and extension of something far more terrifying.
A Three-Headed Dragon Shadow that blotted out the sky was taking solid form on the far side of that dark void.
It overlapped eerily with the human body standing before the dragon, tiny as an ant.
Within the Death Dragon's crushed perception, how could the figure before the dragon still be that silver-haired mortal?
It was clearly a mythical behemoth towering between heaven and earth, its body vanishing into the storm clouds far overhead. Even the small portion of its outline that showed obscured the entire sky above the Blood Abyss!
The dragon could not see the full length of the Three-Headed Dragon Shadow's necks and heads, which pierced the clouds like pillars holding up the heavens.
The dragon could only "feel" that terrifying mass bearing down from above, as though the entire sky were collapsing.
Within the dragon's distorted perception, the projection of a single scale was like a moving mountain hanging upside down.
One of the dragon heads slowly emerged from the impenetrably thick clouds, its movement almost elegant in its lethal deliberation.
That motion alone generated wind pressure to rival a hurricane, whipping the remnants of the Blood Lake below into towering waves of blood.
The head was as large as an island, every ridge so sharp it seemed capable of slicing through space, its dark-gold exoskeleton encasing indescribable power.
It did not attack at once. It merely tilted its head slightly, and its slit pupils, burning with golden lightning, cast a contemptuous glance downward.
There was no anger in that gaze, no hatred, not even killing intent directed at a particular target.
There was only the pure, condescending attitude of a human who happened to notice an insect at their feet trying to raise its head and shriek, born of an absolute gulf between levels of existence...
Indifference.
Under that indifferent glance, the fragile blood magic structure within the Death Dragon gave one final, crisp crack-the structure Torregar had poured his life's work into, using the blood of hundreds of thousands of living beings to forcibly drag the dragon back from eternal deathly silence.
"Crack-"
Like glass falling to the ground.
The final thread of false "life" sustaining the dragon's existence, that blasphemous power which forcibly fused countless dead souls and defied the laws of life and death.
Under the "gaze" of this existence that stood above those laws, it crumbled and vanished in an instant, like snow meeting its natural enemy.
"Wooo..."
An impossibly faint lament, filled with endless terror, bewilderment, and release, seeped from the deepest reaches of the Death Dragon's consciousness.
Then that consciousness shattered.
Not burning, not corrosion, but silent annihilation.
Henry broke free of that brief yet seemingly eternal sense of crushing oppression, powerful enough to freeze his soul. His mind was blank, leaving only instinctive breathing and a heartbeat like pounding drums.
He blinked his eyes, caked with cold sweat and dust, and his vision gradually cleared.
Then he saw a stark contrast he would never forget, one that overturned everything he had understood throughout his life:
Before the mountain-sized, hideously terrifying Death Dragon, the silver-haired youth was as insignificant as an ant.
Yet this antlike figure merely lowered the tip of the longsword burning with strange flames in his hand, calmly pressing it downward.
A simple, casual motion, almost careless.
Then a sight made Henry's pupils contract sharply-the terrifying Death Dragon, which moments earlier had radiated monstrous menace and reduced Corlyon to ash with a single breath, suddenly seemed to have a towering, invisible mountain crash down upon the dragon.
The enormous body abruptly stiffened, and a short, piercing shriek rang out, unlike anything a living creature could make, filled with utter terror and defiance.
Then that hideous head slammed down in submission, striking the dry lakebed hard and raising a cloud of dust!
"..." Henry's mouth hung open, but no sound came out.
The scene before him was too overwhelming: a body as tiny as an ant had brought a behemoth low with one effortless movement.
Such absolute dominance in power lay beyond what his mind could process.
His gaze remained fixed on the Blue-and-Dark-Red Burning Sword in Aegon's hand.
Just then, an ancient legend he had all but forgotten, from his homeland across the Narrow Sea, flooded his mind like icy water. Without realizing it, he murmured it aloud in a trembling voice, almost as though talking in his sleep:
"The Prince That Was Promised will be reborn in the Land of Smoke and Salt... bearing a burning sword, he will awaken the Dragon in the Stone..."
The moment the words left his mouth, even he froze. The Land of Smoke and Salt? Wasn't that this very place, scorched by flames and filled with smoke and the reek of blood after the Blood Lake had boiled away? That sword... that sword burning in Aegon's hand...
The thought struck him like lightning, sending a shudder through his entire body.
And just then, the Death Dragon's collapse entered its final stage.
The enormous body, composed of decaying matter and undead energy, neither exploded nor burned.
Instead, an ominous, ashen light shone from within. Then, like a weathered sand sculpture, or a punctured sack full of ashes, the body began to crumble from the lowered head onward, disintegrating inch by inch into countless fine particles of black dust.
A chill wind swept through from somewhere unknown, and that dust, laden with countless grudges, vanished completely beneath the dim daylight, leaving not a trace.
One moment, a threat that seemed capable of ending the world; the next, nothing remained.
With the Death Dragon's complete annihilation, the ominous red comet in the sky had also slipped quietly across the heavens at some point and disappeared without a trace.
Pale, dim daylight fell once more upon the devastated ruins.
Deathly silence.
A silence deeper than before. Only a breeze swept across the scorched earth, stirring the scant black ashes left by the Death Dragon's annihilation with a soft rustle.
Aegon slowly lowered the crimson longsword in his hand.
The blue flames burning along its blade quietly went out.
The longsword returned to the appearance of mortal iron, though its entire length still retained the dark red of metal scorched by intense heat.
He turned. His silver hair stirred gently in the breeze, and the blood and soot on his face looked somewhat blurred in the dim daylight.
His violet eyes regained their usual calm and depth, though something indescribable seemed to have appeared deep within them.
He looked at Henry, Carl, and the other survivors, still sprawled on the ground, their faces blank as though their souls had left their bodies. His calm gaze swept over them.
Then he spoke, his voice quiet, yet reaching everyone's ears clearly:
"It's over."
After a pause, he added, his tone so even that he might have been speaking of something utterly trivial:
"Time to leave."
With that, he looked at no one else. Carrying the still-dark-red longsword, he turned and began walking toward the road beyond the ruins, strewn with rubble and scorch marks, its destination unknown.
Step by step.
Steadily.
He walked on.
Behind him, Henry stared at that retreating figure, shrouded in countless mysteries and terrifying power.
Recalling the miraculous scene he had just witnessed and the legend that had surfaced in his mind, he finally murmured, his voice trembling with suppressed emotion and overwhelming awe:
"Hayne... brother... just who are you...?"
Aegon's steps faltered ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly.
But that was all.
He did not turn back.
Before you continue