873 C-3, Rain Month 4, Moon 9
Unrecognizable. Few other words could describe the state of a once lush field that’d been altered to a brutal scene of carnage and flames. Despite once being a place of peace, filled with nothing but the soft chirping of birds and gentle wind brushing through grass, this field showed no trace of that anymore. In their place was an eerie silence, only broken by the ragged breathing of an ancient winged creature—an elder dragon.
Each breath was agony as she lay, weakened, in a pool of her own blood, surrounded by the still lumps of meat that had once been her tribespeople. She stared daggers at the man standing before her, imagining all the ways she could tear him to pieces. She wasn’t ready to concede defeat, but the blade pointed at her throat told a different story.
The man cast a cold gaze on the creature’s war-torn body. “It’s over. The Alliance has won. The rule of elder dragons is no more. Justice has emerged victorious over your tyranny,” he declared.
“Justice... Justice?!” The elder dragon’s piercing golden eyes smoldered with rage at the lifeless corpses of her people. “There was peace... There was life before you arrived!”
“There will be true peace now in the wake of your demise.”
The elder dragon’s grip increased around a certain item in her hand. “Blade Saint...this is not over!” she wheezed, puffs of flame leaking from her mouth. “So long as there’s breath within me, I will not—” the dragon began to say before there was a new noise that filled the air: the sound of steel slicing through flesh followed by her disconcerting shriek.
“I’ll make sure you have no more breath left to breathe, then,” he said coldly, plunging the blade further into her thick neck.
But something he couldn’t have possibly anticipated happened: A bright red light enveloped the dragon, forcing the man to jump back before he could drive his blade deep enough to deliver what would’ve been the finishing blow of the war.
“Enjoy your victory while you can. But I wonder how the Alliance would fare if you’ve never lived long enough to become their butcher?” the beast bellowed as it began to rise into the air, the light becoming brighter around her.
The man’s eyes widened as he realized that she was clasping a certain item. “The Hourglass of the Ancients! Why do you have it?!” He knew he didn’t have a moment to waste. “Leviathan!” the man quickly yelled, and in the next moment, his sword transformed into a unique scimitar.
Above its hilt rested a glowing red gem, and the back of the blade was pierced with rings at even intervals that jingled in the wind as the man kicked himself off the ground and began to ascend. But as light as the blade made the man feel, the sobering reality that he was too late weighed heavily on him.
“We will meet again, Blade Saint! But next time, it’ll be my claws at your neck.”
As a last-ditch effort, he slashed into the air, but by then, the elder dragon had already disappeared. The man fell back to the ground and leaned on his sword in despair.
“I have failed... All is lost.”