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Chapter Text

“…but if I should die before you continue…”

The virulent flames swirled around the fighters like shadows as Yharon readied another blow, the swift Terrarian easily dodging each and every one of his attacks. They were a flash of light, a blur in the wind as Yharon clawed the air in desperation, his side bleeding with a huge gash that even his power over rebirth struggled to mend. How could this be, Yharon thought. He was a dragon who had bested gods. How could a mere mortal ascend beyond anything he thought possible? With his final breath, Yharon wrung out one last verse of his message to Yharim, summoning all the strength he had left.
“YOU SHALL HAVE HEARD MY FINAL—” Yharon’s voice broke against the relentless agony. He had to do this for Yharim. What would all this progress have come to? What calamity would everything they had made cause if it all came crashing down?

“Dying…”

“Roar…”

Yharon gasped for breath as the Terrarian struck forward again, slicing at his exposed throat, the flames pounding like drums in his ears. Yharon had already accepted defeat. If I go down, he thought, at least I go down in a blaze of glory. He felt a sickening crunch as he slammed into the ground, causing an earthquake to erupt around him.

With his last thoughts, he fell silent on the ground. The wind would retake him, and he would be reborn anew in a decade. He hoped, with his final words, that Yharim would finally crush this exponential terror like an ant.

He lay there for ten seconds, awaiting the final slit of his throat. Any second now, and the ark of the cosmos would come slicing down.

But no pain came.

Yharon fluttered open his eyes.

His wounds were rapidly regenerating. The Terrarian, wreathed in scales from the Nameless Serpent, simply stood there, their back turned to him, blade in hand.

Yharon blinked twice. This couldn’t be. After everything he had done, after genocide after genocide he and Yharim had caused, was the Terrarian just going to spare him? This was a trap. It had to be. Yharon wanted to rip the tiny mortal into pieces right now. But lying prostrate on the ground with bleeding gashes carved into his wings, seeing double, he couldn’t muster any strength at all to do so.

He rasped out a whisper. “You could have gorged yourself upon my Auric Soul and become a god, and yet you chose to stay mortal?”

The Terrarian said nothing. Taking off their helmet, they twisted around to face him.

A hideous sight they were indeed. Their eyes, nearly lifeless, twitched—ceaseless voids of blackness. Their face was scarred and warped; the entire left lobe was gruesomely mangled with obvious deep burns from countless gouts of profaned flame, burns so deep they carved valleys into flesh and formed an estuary between mortal and monstrous; the other cheek ripped by maws much like those of the Nameless Serpent. Could they have done it? Could this puny mortal have slain the Nameless Serpent, the Devourer of Gods himself?

Questions raced through Yharon’s mind like incessant flies. This mortal, this frail, fleeting insect—how could they have slain god after god? He racked his mind for an answer, but the only thought he found, looming and undeniable, was that the Terrarian was exactly like Yharim, the maligned prince-turned-Godseeker himself, his dearest companion, even in death. The mortal bore the same scars, the same bloodlust that he had. He struggled against his own thoughts as the world faded to black, too much agony for a millennia-old dragon to contemplate. He felt the world closing in. He fought, defiant to the end, but it was all too late.

It all faded to black...
...
...

...

Yharon opened his eyes with a jolt.

He was dead; he was sure of it.

Had it already been ten years? Was it time to trailblaze into the world anew, to desperately search in the hope Yharim wasn’t slain?

No, it wasn’t. He was sure of it. The thoughts still echoed in his mind, the faded screams seared there as if etched in stone.

His senses overwhelmed him. Was that… grass? And a clean, blue sky, untainted by sulfuric waste or vile corruption? And… a town? How could a town have survived the Godseeker’s purge? Birds were chirping in the trees above, and his draconic ears picked up on the splash of a babbling creek, peacefully rolling on even amidst the fallout.

“Look, Connor! The chicken nugget came to life!” a sound like the voice of a little girl rang out.

CHICKEN NUGGET? Yharon roared in his thoughts. He wanted to spread his wings wide, to roar in his mighty voice that he was Yharon, Dragon of Rebirth, Resplendent Phoenix, slayer of gods, protector of Yharim the Godseeker, and could easily burn the mortal to a crisp in a second. Yet, no matter what, he couldn’t bring himself to move; his head was still spinning from the impact.

“Did you know that harpies can sometimes drop chicken nuggets?” another voice chimed in, not calm but not frantic either, knowledgeable like a guidebook. “You can find harpies in—”

“No, not harpies. That animal the hero tied up in the field! You know, I feel kind of bad for it. Should we let it go?” the child asked. Yharon could clearly see them both now. The little girl was short and plump, wearing a pink ball gown and tiara. The man was more simply dressed, with a short, tousled mop of brown hair, a gray worker’s tunic, and faded blue jeans, holding a guidebook in his hands.

“Oh! Ha! I didn’t notice that.” The man combed his hand through his hair. “I really just got lost in my thoughts, huh?”

The girl was about to reach out, pressing her finger to his feathers as her hand glowed with healing magic. Just as her hand nearly grazed him, the temperature began to drop around them. Frost licked the air as snow gathered on the ground. Recognition sparked in Yharon’s mind. That was the unmistakable chill of the mage he’d once worked alongside.

A low, steady voice, tinged with a hint of cold and calculating frostbite, interrupted the serene scene. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

A man stepped into view, holding a cryogenic scepter between his hands. He was cloaked in icy robes, his hair a tangled mess of frozen shards, and he wore a long beard that reached to his knees. “Pardon the frost. It’s an unfortunate side effect of… being imprisoned inside the Cryogen for so long.”

The Cryogen. The words seemed to leap into Yharon’s mind. Where had he seen this man before?

“Hi, Permafrost!” The girl jumped into the air with joy. “Can you teach me another magic spell?”

Permafrost scoffed, narrowing his eyes slyly at Yharon. “This is no time for frivolous tricks. This here is the mighty Yharon, Dragon of Rebirth. I know him well, children. We… worked alongside each other in the past.”

He muttered something under his breath. “Can’t believe… blinded by tyranny…”

The girl gasped, eyes wide, her genuine innocence replaced by fear. “B-but he’s hurt! We can’t just let him die! He looks so friendly… and soft!”

“Yes, he looks soft. Harmless, even,” Permafrost remarked. “But don’t be fooled. This ‘dragon’ is a monster, a loyal weapon of the Tyrant. While Calamitas and I chose to walk away, Yharon remained—faithful to a man whose promises rot like fruit of the profaned garden. I knew Yharim’s fate was sealed the day he summoned the Devourer of Gods. That was the moment he crossed a line I refused to follow.”

Permafrost gestured contemptuously toward the horizon. “Look at the world he’s broken. Seas tainted with sulfur, crimson blight choking the land, and astral sickness corrupting every inch. And yet this creature serves, like a sheep trailing after a shepherd of ruin.” He locked eyes with Yharon. “Don’t touch a dragon that allies with a tyrant. His loyalty is no better than his master’s lies.”
Yharon mustered a glare, barely managing to tear apart the ropes around him. Permafrost’s words stung like ice. Was there truth in what he had said? Had he stood too strong in the lies of Yharim? But something in him resisted. Yharim had been built on noble intentions, aiming to cleanse a world of corruption. His descent into madness hadn’t come from his own desires; rather, it was a natural consequence of witnessing the toll of battle and the rivers of blood. He had slaughtered the wickedest of gods, after all. Compared to the mindless devastation wrought by Providence, the Profaned Goddess, his conquests held brutal but righteous retribution.

Providence. Where had she been? Yharon hadn’t heard word of her for quite some time now. Had that Terrarian… slain her? They were, indeed, scarred by that profaned flame…

Permafrost turned his head. “Alas, even the worst people can change… given enough time. I just hope that Yharon, now that he is captured, learns his way. Go, youths. You have a world to inherit that might heal itself thanks to our hero.”

He muttered again under his breath, “I just hope they don’t go the way of the Godseeker…”

As the three parted, with the princess still trying to catch a glance of Yharon, another figure stepped into view as the sun began to dip below the horizon, the sunset shimmering on their unmistakable armor. Now that he wasn’t bathed in his own flame, Yharon saw it more clearly—indeed, that mortal had crafted the Nameless Serpent’s scales into a set of armor. Their helmet obscured their mangled visage, which made them look far more intimidating under the gentle twilight.

Yharon managed to lift his head, moving out of the shackles with trepidation. The Terrarian approached Yharon in a quiet, assured sprint, carried by the gentle hum of their elysian tracers, neither hurried nor hesitant, their expression as inscrutable as ever. Yharon gave a wary look, half-expecting the Terrarian to taunt him in his weakened state, but the Terrarian simply beckoned him toward the town, which lay just off a green hillside overlooking a verdant forest with a crystal-clear river flowing through it.

Yharon hesitantly stepped forward, wandering down the hill toward the town—a modest settlement nestled under the warm, open sky that knew neither smog nor corruption. Yharon took in his surroundings with great interest; he’d never heard of a surviving town anywhere after the deific purges. There was a certain humble beauty to the place—not that of grandiose valor like the ancient cities of Azufare or Ilmeris, but rather, a rustic sense of peace and tranquility that was hard to come by in times like these. A dryad gathered for a ceremony with a masked Lihzahrd as a nearby tavern lit up with activity, a gathering of people holding a celebration. People pointed and watched the dragon in awe as he stomped through the town square. Yharon watched hesitantly, his mighty footsteps causing the ground to tremble, as lanterns began to dance through the night sky, the same ceremonial lanterns that people would release when a great calamity had vanished.

Was he that great calamity?

Was this… a public execution?

No, it couldn’t be. This Terrarian wasn’t Yharim. Not exactly.

This Terrarian knew about mercy and forgiveness—something Yharon was all too unfamiliar with in the centuries of the Godseeking apocalypse. This seemed far too genuine to be a betrayal.
As they neared the edge of the settlement, the Terrarian stopped, and Yharon’s eyes widened. Just beyond the edge was a magnificent roost that stretched into the clouds, carved from ashen wood and infernal suevite, woven together with an elegance that only a skilled craftsman could achieve. Perches of living fire spiraled up the structure, each wide and strong enough to hold a creature of his size, and the flaming peak caught the moonlight, casting a warm glow over the entire town.

He wondered why they would build something so grandiose for someone like him.

Were they like Yharim? A manipulative tyrant?

No, they weren’t like Yharim.

Yharim, in the heat of his bloodlust, only sought to destroy. He ravaged the land, sea, and sky alike, torturing his prisoners until they assembled into wrathful coalescence, recruiting the mindless machine of war, Draedon, and slaughtering millions in his wake. And worst of all was what he did to Calamitas. She was only fifteen, and Yharim forced her to incinerate an entire civilization. Yharon, in that moment, saw her. He heard the screams of suffering that Calamitas had to endure. And Yharon himself was the one to oversee it—blinded by loss, blinded by a fleeting wish that he felt compelled to uphold for his master and the race of Auric dragons. Complacent in the face of genocide. Monster, monster.

The Terrarian was in the wrong, in both ways. They had spared a monster. They had spared an enabler of countless atrocities. Why? Yharon wanted to scream.
He both loved and hated the Terrarian. And he hated himself more. He loathed deciphering that silent, inscrutable mortal, that Terrarian who hid behind a wall of silence to disguise their motives.
The Terrarian left as silently as ever, and Yharon watched them go, his mind swirling with countless thoughts he couldn’t name.

For the first time in his life, Yharon felt more loyal to another than to Yharim.

Chapter Text

Yharon slept in his roost uneasily, eyes flickering open and closed, the world shifting between serene darkness and distortion. The new roost, strange yet familiar, did nothing to shake off the visions that harassed him like worms. Breathing heavily, he sighed. How could a being as powerful as he be so tormented?

“Yharon… Little Yharon… Loyal as ever…”

A low, hissing voice—arrogant and conceited, oily and slick, echoing and filled with the venom of a thousand serpents.

You aren’t real. You aren’t real. You aren’t real, Yharon repeated in his dream-thoughts.

The voice ignored his pleas. Memories trailed forth. Destruction. Ruin. The Godseeker in his scarred and emaciated form. The blight of the gods cast into the Abyss, where the seas stank of rot. The calamity that reduced cities to scorched ash. The voice coiled around each memory, a serpent, a noose that seemed to drag him further and further into distortion.

“Did that hurt?” the voice hissed. “This Terrarian is so noble, aren’t they? So much better than that butcher king and his lies… which is exactly what you thought of Yharim himself when you rescued him from the wrath of the gods… and Zeratros, that foolish dragon king you felt so loyal to, vanquished by a mortal just like that? These pitiful insects will betray you the first chance they get.”

Yharon’s body tensed, even in sleep. Something snapped inside his mind.

“You dare whisper your serpent’s tongue to me, spirit? You were slain long ago by that Terrarian whom you scorn!” Yharon roared.

The voice seemed to pause as a brief moment of peace coursed through his thoughts, but it lashed back moments later, more virulent than before.

“Delicious… and you think you can escape your fate?” the shadow of the Devourer of Gods hissed. “You, Dragon God. You have endured everything, and yet you can’t muster the strength to slay this insignificant morsel. It’s clear to me. This youth means to betray you, oh great Yharon. A fatal mistake… trusting this child when they have slaughtered all in their way. What makes you different? What about you would compel them to spare you?”

“How hilarious,” Yharon replied dryly. “You think me a tool. A puppet. As Yharim declared, destiny is for the weak. Only a fool would choose to believe your nefarious lies.”

Yharon waited for the retort, for the Devourer to snap and charge forward in his god-slaying dash, for an opening he could easily exploit with his infernal flames. But no one came. Instead, from the shadows, a faint, ethereal voice—softer and echoing, entropy itself tearing at the seams—emerged with a whisper.

“They… will… betray… you. They… always… do.”

The voice echoed on and on, growing fainter with each recurve, fading like entropy into the void. Yharon’s mind felt heavy, drifting back into reality as he felt the familiar stone beneath his claws, burning, solid, and real. He knew he was back in the present. His eyes opened slowly, and the warmth of the morning sun’s rays cast over him. He sighed. Even in death, the Devourer never ceased to torment him. Yharon had grown accustomed to understanding nightmares over his thousand-year life, but never had a memory manifested so vividly, so absolutely potent, that it infested every corner of his mind.

Yharon craned his neck and stared into the sun, then at the town below him, buzzing with activity. It was only a matter of time before word spread of an infamous dragon—the last of his kind—being taken into town to live among the common folk. Yharon was still in awe of just how magnificent a city one Terrarian could construct. Was this… entity truly mortal, or something beyond comprehension?

He spread his grand feathered wings and soared off his perch; he flew higher and higher to survey the area, casting a shadow over the sun as if he himself were an eclipse. The townsfolk pointed, their mouths agape in awe as some cheered and others booed. He then dove at a breakneck speed toward the town square, the Devourer’s voice still fresh in his mind… and all the memories he had to bear.

With the air coursing over his head, he widened his wings to slow his descent, landing softly in the middle of the town, where the Terrarian seemed to be constructing some incomprehensible supercomputer, loading one final bulb-like object into the control panel. Technology and its bizarreness, Yharon thought. He was fonder of magic, arcane yet familiar, much easier to grasp than long sequences of zeroes and ones.

It was clear what he had to ask the Terrarian. This question had burned itself into his mind many times over, but he could never form the words due to his injury and fatigue.

“What game are you playing with me, mortal? Why would you let me live?”

The Terrarian said nothing.

Yharon huffed. Of course. It was clear that words weren’t going to move this wall. In the days of Yharim, Yharon would have simply called Yharim to order a regiment of shock troops for intimidation… but those days were long gone, and Yharon already regretted the atrocities he used to commit.

“I was a monster! I was a razer of cities, a proponent of genocidal ideology! How could you spare someone like me?”

The more he mentioned it, the more he felt his bond with Yharim stretching further and further, to the point of no return. His allegiance had already been shaky by the time he flew out to fight the Terrarian, and now it was on the verge of breaking. Yet, he still didn’t fully trust the Terrarian, for their actions mirrored those of the Tyrant. Caustic as his words were, the forgotten shadow of the Devourer still knew exactly how to get to him. Suddenly, a voice rang out behind Yharon.

“I don’t think you’re a monster! You’re… you’re just a big fluffy boy!”

Yharon immediately recognized the voice. It was the princess girl from yesterday, the one who hadn’t flinched even when eye-to-eye with him. Slowly, he turned around, meeting her gaze with confusion. Around them, the rest of the crowd had already fled, their fear plain and simple—a sting he desperately tried to push to the corner of his mind.

But perhaps there was some truth in innocence, some message to be found in someone who hadn’t yet been cast into the cruel world. Perhaps, for these people in dire need of a saving grace, in dire need of someone to find comfort in who wasn’t another Yharim, he could be someone’s “big fluffy boy.”

As he thought, he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that the princess’s eyes widened. She pointed and gawked at something. Yharon instinctively looked back toward whatever it was that had captured her attention.

It was an astounding sight.

A brilliant, blinding beam of light had erupted from a dial on the supercomputer, its intensity simply seeming to grow and grow as it flew upwards with incredible speed. Even the Terrarian, normally unflinchingly resilient, paused to stare upwards and shake momentarily.

Yharon knew what this was. Was this… Draedon’s doing? Only Draedon could build a communication machine this impressive, if that was even what this thing was. No, this mortal couldn’t, right? How would they even have known of Draedon’s existence?

Seconds later, a signal beeped on the LED screen.

SIGNAL RECEIVED.

Yharon didn’t like this at all.

Would they really be communicating with that horrible robot, that amoral machine beyond all compare? At least the Devourer of Gods had a conscience, had a soul, however twisted it was. Yharon wasn’t even sure if Draedon was aware of his existence. He simply appeared to research, to improve, and to replicate, and with these simple steps emerged machines with the power to shatter worlds.

“I have waited long for this moment,” droned the robotic engineer as he descended in his metallic throne with the hiss of hydraulics.

“Your nature fascinates me, for I do not understand it. It seems that you have also managed to becalm the dragon, a most improbable outcome.”

Yharon narrowed his eyes, fire simmering in his throat. He was prepared for Draedon to take the pragmatic approach and overrun the town in an instant with a mechanical invasion. But the engineer merely continued, his tone as flat as ever.

“Statistically insignificant. The probability of this event happening would be over four standard deviations. Regardless, my machines possess the capabilities to adapt to any variable. You will face my creations, which have surpassed gods. And you will show me your disposition through battle. Now, choose.”

Three bright holograms flashed orthogonally to the Terrarian, and Yharon knew exactly what Draedon was planning. He glared at the screen with anticipation, ready to bathe the mechs in fire.

As the Terrarian made a selection, Draedon raised his hand, and a barrage of sparks erupted around him as his chair thrust into the sky. From the shadows emerged a monstrous mechanical skeleton, cloaked in steel and armed with four incredibly deadly superweapons.

The Terrarian readied their blade and charged headfirst at the mechanical beast with no hesitation. They were absolutely terrifying, Yharon thought to himself. Just like Yharon.

“But for the dragon...” Draedon’s steel throne approached Yharon, the faintest flickering of calculation crossing Draedon’s metallic visage.

“Yharim received your message. You appeared to have sung that you would win his war, correct?” Draedon would have narrowed his eyes if he had any. “It seems you have not, in fact, adhered to protocol,” he said slowly, as if each word weighed as much as an Exo superweapon.

Yharon gulped. This could not be happening. Was this part of the Terrarian’s plan? Were they secretly going to betray him? Was Draedon allied with the Terrarian the whole time?

But it wasn’t fear of betrayal that stopped him from torching Draedon on the spot with a gout of flame. It was something deeper, older—a thread of loyalty, fraying at the seams but still unbroken. Yharim. The name rebounded in his mind. Even now, with all the words and all the ploys and the dream of the Devourer, he wanted to believe his master could be redeemed, that this war could end in salvation, not ruin. That the Terrarian’s act of good was a ploy. For now, he thought, he might bide his time and watch this entity as they continued a path that was uncannily like Yharim’s.

“No, no. You see,” Yharon nearly tripped over his words. “The Terrarian is no ally. This is a calculated maneuver, one that shall bait them into overconfidence,” he stated, half-truthfully. “And then, the fish will arrive at our lure, and we shall snap our trap shut and close around it.”

“Acceptable.” Draedon barely even stayed to listen. “I shall oversee the battle now. It is of utmost importance to observe these machines in combat. The performance of my machines takes precedence over the enaction of your plan. You will not fail, Dragon. You will not,” he trailed off with the barest shred of bitterness in his mechanical voice.

And with that, his steel throne took off with a blast of wind, racing towards the Exo Mech just like that. Yharon’s fire simmered, his feathers stiff even in the morning breeze. His mind burned hotter with all manner of emotion. Loyalty. Betrayal. Redemption. The most burning thought in his mind, though, was Draedon’s supposed loyalty to Yharim. Hadn’t he left the Godseeker’s side a decade ago to pursue research? Something wasn’t right here. He would much rather devote his life to seeking apotheosis than focus on juggling a dragon’s loyalty.

With a heaving sigh, Yharon took off into the clouds to observe the battle. He would not interfere; he would stay a third party and merely scout from the sidelines.

Yharon watched the calamitous terrors and the fleeting Terrarian clash. From the mechanical skeleton, the field just outside the town was bathed in a devastating barrage of lasers. Two eye-like mechs circled around at incredible speeds, firing blasts of energy from their pupils that left gaping craters in the forest, leaving the air reeking with the scent of ozone and charcoal. And from the ground, a serpentine terror, armed with innumerable laser turrets, burrowed in and out of the soil, showering the fields in a deluge of ions. And, in the midst of it all, the Terrarian, the fleeting figure, weaving and ducking between the storm of electricity and steel like a single raindrop.

At one moment, the Terrarian lunged towards the serpent’s spine, throwing their ark of the cosmos as it flew and rebounded, splintering into fragments of godly energy. A shower of steel flooded the sky, and Yharon pondered how this Terrarian was completely unfazed by the choking haze of ionized air. But just as they seemed to be able to press the advantage, the skeletal automaton returned to the battlefield, and its blinding beam forced them to jump away, just as the massive eyeballs each unleashed a quintet of blinding sparks from their pupils. All the while, Draedon was droning on about the Terrarian’s remarkability.

As the Terrarian began to whittle down the mechs, it became clear of something. They were losing.

It wasn’t mere intuition, either. Yharon was absolutely positive that they were being harrowed by the mechanical beasts, that their health potions were causing them to retch harder each time as even their myriad of healing accessories wouldn’t be able to sustain them.

Yharon watched as they landed a surely fatal blow into the core of the large skeletal automaton. Just as the blade was about to pierce its heart, the other mechs retreated as a jolt of electricity blasted them away, the mech’s heart releasing a cavalcade of enormous laser beams. The Terrarian, massively scathed, barely managed to decapitate the skeleton as the eyes and serpent rejoined the fight.

The eyes went down, one by one, as they morphed into gaping maws releasing torrents of sparks. The Terrarian, battered and sluggish, flew through the onslaught, their movements growing sluggish, their injuries too great to ignore; not even the potion that they chugged in an instant could save them now.

But it was the worm that sealed their fate.

The serpent surged upward, its segmented body coiling, strangely familiarly, just as the Devourer of Gods once did to intimidate Yharon. Its maw opened wide, revealing a cannon glowing with unrestrained energy. And then, with a deafening crack, it unleashed a beam of destruction so massive it seemed to rip through the heavens themselves, its light piercing the zenith of the sun. The earth trembled beneath the blast, the force obliterating everything in its path. The villagers gathered within the safety of the town’s walls, marveling at the heaven-scorching light.

Yharon held his breath. He knew that the Terrarian would not survive. He did not want to save the Terrarian, and yet, he could not ignore the imminient beam. The beam roared towards them, unstoppable, razing everything in its path. He had no time to ponder his decision nor regret it.

With a beat of his wings, Yharon swooped towardes the scene, the serpent’s blast tearing into his side with raw pain. He could feel his regeneration surging, the bones in his body crackling and reforming as they were ripped apart, his flesh scalding right off. He reached for the Terrarian, claws outstretched, feathers falling through the air like rain. Gripping the Terrarian tightly, he swooped back into the heavens, the wound mending, the beam scorching beneath. He watched as the mech, having used up the last of its power, fell like a limp noodle.

Yharon exhaled deeply. The Terrarian was alive. Battered, armor broken, but alive. They seemed to be completely nonchalant, as if this was all planned and premediated.

The air seemed to crackle as Draedon’s throne descended, the gears grinding furiously.

“You. You intervened.” Draedon said in a frigid monotone.

Yharon turned to face him, no longer concealing his motives behind a facade of lies. “I acted as I saw fit. I acted with justice.”

“Justice?” Draedon clanked with calculated anger. “You were a variable that ascended beyond our control. You were meant to die. You were meant to grant this entity with a myriad of riches. Your Auric Soul. The draconic-infused ore that your death would scatter throughout the world. Everything I did was premeditated. I specifically acted in a way to fool you. Yharim did not recieve your message. Yharim does not even know of your whereabouts. He may not even ‘care’ as you living organisms say. This Terrarian would have been the perfect test subject had you died. But now? They are far too weak.”

Had you died. The words stung with the bitterness of cosmic disgust. Now was not the time to ponder over where his loyalty fell. Now was the time to end this.

“I am not a variable!” Yharon roared over Draedon’s droning. “I am not a formless mass of data, subject to the expunging of your mechanical whims! I am no machine! I am Yharon, Dragon of Rebirth, Resplendent Phoenix, slayer of gods, and though I may have been complicit in sin, sin still eclipses pure apathy!”

He bellowed, a mass of flames swirling through his mouth, spewing them right towards Draedon’s mechanical body. It began to liquefy, the chair melting, the face popping clean off, the wires and gears clanking as the entire heap sputtered to the ground.

As Yharon complacently tore up the molten metal, a hologram appeared beside them, the figure inside bearing an odd resemblance to...

“Pathetic,” whirred a familiar voice, the cold truth sinking into Yharon’s heart. “You lifeforms think you know everything. I shall display my fabrications of apotheosis soon, and you, Yharon, you shall die.”

And with that, the hologram faded, the Terrarian getting shakily to their feet.

Yharon’s chest heaved as the molten remains of Draedon’s physical body sputtered and hissed against the ground. The battlefield was silent save for the faint crackling of smoldering wreckage. He turned to the Terrarian, who was now shakily standing, their armor fractured and glowing faintly from residual energy burns. Despite their injuries, they stared nonchalantly—calm, resolute, as if the devastation they had just endured was nothing out of the ordinary.

But Yharon’s eyes lingered, quivering on the spot where the hologram had been. Draedon’s parting words hung in the air like mechanical smoke.

“You lifeforms think you know everything. I shall display my fabrications of apotheosis soon, and you, Yharon, you shall die.”

His claws flexed instinctively, the residual heat of his flames still radiating from them. Draedon’s mechanical corpse was meaningless—just another synthetic body. The realization churned Yharon’s insides. This was no victory.

Dark, heavy thoughts began to cloud Yharon’s mind. This was his own doing. What if he had died? What if Draedon was correct? He had always looked toward the worst, as it was often the truth in this cruel world. He began to plod away, nearly shedding a tear, but he resolutely clung on. I should have died, he thought. I should have died.

Yharim saw it as betrayal.

Draedon saw it as disruption.

But what did he see? Rebellion? Destruction? A new beginning?

A rustle broke his thoughts. He jerked around, ready to answer whatever threat there was.

But there was no threat.

Instead, there was the child in the pink gown, holding their scepter, quivering. “You s-saved us... big fluffy boy.”

Yharon blinked twice. How did they view him as a hero? He wasn’t used to being seen as anything other than an asset, a monster, someone who spitefully mocked the gods and caused a crusade to vehemently silence them.

A woman donning a fancy hat and wielding a device stepped forward. “S’pose it’s time you did something to help us, big guy.”

An old man, weary and haggard as if he had just bore the weight of an unbearable curse, spoke up. “You have done it, dragon. You have saved the hero. You have saved the lives of many innocents. Without you, we would have all been smothered by silicon.”

More lines rang out. Yharon hated being called a “big fluffy boy,” but in circumstances like this, they almost brought tears of joy to him.

The only one, still standing in the frozen shadows, scrutinizing him, was Permafrost, the Archmage. Yharon swore that he heard the man whispering something about keeping an eye on him.

Yharon turned his gaze to the horizon as the crowd cheered.

A faint red glow, the dying light of day. Yharon saw the sun, slipping down into the ether, fly over the moon, turning it red as blood.

Yharon didn’t believe in prophecies. Red. The color of blood. The color of calamity. Raw and unfiltered, stained and brutal.

No. Now was not the time to think about the future.

The townsfolks’ voices spoke for themselves. Their gratitude flew back and forth where there was once doubt and apprehension.

It was clear of one thing, amongst all of Yharon’s thoughts.

He had made his choice.

Chapter Text

Yharon was flying.

As he soared over the vast plains, wind racing past his head, the shrieks of harpies and wyverns piercing his ears, the events of the previous few hours ran over him like a landslide: the mechanical monsters, the gratitude, the irony, the betrayal.

He flew faster, hoping he could outrun his thoughts, that they wouldn’t rip and tear at his conscience. Yharim. The Godseeker. The defiled prince. The one who saved his life.

The Terrarian was going down an eerily similar path.

Yharon flew over the festering crimson mire left by the Godseeker. The air reeked of blood and ichor, the essence of those pernicious so-called gods seeping deeper into the terrain. The land was bloodied and bruised, rivers of flowing gore cutting through the cavernous terrain like veins. From the mire leapt writhing monsters, overflowing with spilled ichor, tunneling through the cursed ground. A bursting cyst released a malformed lump of flesh covered in eyes and mouths. It shrieked, a horrible, grating sound, and launched itself directly toward Yharon.

He merely swatted the thing away with one flaming claw. It was no match for the Dragon of Rebirth. Neither this beast nor the terrain itself concerned Yharon—it was an early mistake, a thoughtless decision to bury the body of the slain god in the swamp. No, what gnawed at him was Yharim’s negligence toward the fetid landscape—he had let it swell, completely ignoring the draining effect it had on its surroundings.

In the Godseeker’s care, Yharon had seen Yharim’s choice as strategic, even prudent. But now he realized that in his pursuit, fueled by only rage and adrenaline, his only goal was vengeance. In his blind loyalty, Yharon had thought this indifference was wisdom.

Foolish. How easily he’d trusted a human.

He swore not to make that mistake with his new ally.

Continuing on his flight, feathered wings casting a shadow onto the defiled lands below, Yharon flew. Each stretch of purity was interrupted by rapidly spreading wastelands, visions of the destruction left by his former allies. Yharim… Draedon… and Calamitas. He thought of Calamitas—the young woman who had once fought beside him. Where was she now? Had she fallen as deeply into madness as the others, or was she still searching for her own redemption?

Past the crimson lay the hallowed lands, the supposedly pure crystalline grass twisting and fighting endlessly with the crimson, the borders rolling back and forth like tides. Yet beneath this supposedly holy exterior was the domain of the profaned goddess, an unholy insurgency burning all in its wake, reducing everything to sinless ash and pure simplicity. A landscape that seemed reinvigorated, even from attempts to purge it, as if something deep within the earth’s death had brought new life to it.

Purity, Yharon thought bitterly. Was this what Yharim sought? Providence had reduced the land to this mockery of holiness, and Yharim had allowed it, just as he had allowed the crimson to fester. Ignorance masquerading as vengeance. And even now, he was not able to defeat Providence—that was what the Terrarian had done.

The hallow breached slightly into a barren, scorched crater, ruins left by Calamitas, the Brimstone Witch. This had once been Ilmeris, the great oceanic city that had put up resistance to the Godseeker’s purges. The emptiness was silent and eerie. Yharon had not been one to witness the devastation wrought by Calamitas—when she had burned the city to the ground, Yharon had cheered from the Godseeker’s domain, finding it worryingly easy to disassociate himself from the news. He had cheered at the destruction, that their enemies had fallen. But now, now that he witnessed naught but endless sand and bones of sand sharks and husks of great sea crabs, he found himself abhorred, curling his claws, cringing at the landscape. How could he be any better than them if he took pleasure in this genocide? There was no glory in war, only death.

As Yharon landed, he noticed the husk of a great sea serpent, much fresher than any of the sea remains strewn through the desert, its flesh not quite eroded off its carapace. This had piqued Yharon’s curiosity, so he approached the fallen beast, running a claw along its carcass. This was clearly a recent kill, perhaps not even a month prior. Its hide was barren and sand-bleached, fallen off in some places, the inside of its body carved out and the sea remains that it would normally have eaten completely excavated. It was very obvious to Yharon who had done this, who had begun their conquest of slaying greater and greater beasts for more power. Someone very similar in motive to Yharim. Someone like the Terrarian.

Yharon spread his wings wide, burning embers trickling off his feathers. He launched himself upward, refusing to let his eyes look down on the Terrarian’s destruction. The wind roared, but his mind was sharper now. This was no longer an aimless wander to gather his thoughts. He knew what he was looking for.

The Terminus.

He kept flying, fueled by bitterness. Long buried in the deepest echelon of the abyss, the stone had once belonged to Xeroc, the mortal—his former friend—who had betrayed Zeratros and ascended to godhood. The artifact could pierce the heavens, speak to Xeroc himself, and summon fragments of memory, they said. Xeroc could speak volumes to the Terrarian, could give them the hunger for vengeance that the event had generated in Yharim, now fueled even further by their reckless determination. And if the Terminus fell into their hands...

The Terrarian was safe as a friend.

But they would surely be a monster as a god.

Yharon flew onward as the skies darkened, crossing the infected jungle. Below him, the plague writhed in thick, fetid clouds, its toxic reach spreading into every crevice of the dying rainforest. Draedon’s biomechanical abominations, so horrific that even Yharim could not bear to look at them, infested every corner. Beyond the jungle lay the caustic sulfur sea. This dumping ground was overcast by a torrential acidic downpour, irradiated beasts streaking through the skies. Briefly, he froze. What if Draedon was here, dumping sewage into the sea as he always had, searching for him, cold and calculating as ever?

The air answered, clawing at his lungs, and even his hardened scales tingled under the corrosive rain. But adrenaline surged through him, dulling the sting. He pressed forward, his mind set, trying to ignore his intrusive thoughts. The abyss awaited, and within it, the Terminus.

He pressed downward, ready to hit the sulfuric acid.

Suddenly, movement.

At first, it was subtle, just a ripple in the water. But the seas soon began to bubble, and a figure slipped out of the water, vast and piscine, wings beating against the rain amidst the darkened sky. It was a horrible beast, slick and slimy, heaving out of the water as it struggled to become airborne. The beast’s scales were dulled and patchy, streaked with sulfuric grime, and its body was a grotesque patchwork of features—a dragon’s head, jagged and malformed, bearing two sharp tusks, sat atop a bloated, sharklike body with four rapidly flapping wings, its snout and ears pushed outward like a pig’s. It would have been comedic if not for its uncanniness, its body sagging, warped by radiation into something haphazard, eerily wrong, almost a joke.

A Fishron. An impure, inbred nightmare, a disgrace to dragonkind, yet somehow one of the last of all draconic offshoots to survive into the modern age. Somehow, this twisted joke of a creature had lasted longer than any of his draconic brethren.

Yharon bared his teeth, but he did not attack. It felt like it was placed here deliberately. A vision, a mockery of him, a demonstration.

Was this how they saw him before the attack on the mechs? Twisted, monstrous, no better than any other of the spawn of his allies?

The creature tilted its head. They locked eyes, Yharon feeling like a stranger in its domain. This was surely an incredibly old creature, perhaps even half as old as him, having lived through this intense radiation. Yet even if it was a living legend, it was still a crude mirror image, a hideous perversion of himself. It did not seem dangerous, merely inquisitive as if looking toward its ancestor in admiration, yet Yharon could not bear to look at it.

He growled and took the plunge, attempting to shake off the thoughts just as he had the others.

Fishrons. And wyverns, and follies. All mere savage, mindless beasts. Nothing more.

He kept moving deeper, ignoring the burning of the caustic seas against his scales. The sea stretched downward, yawning out into a wide trench, blacker than night, bubbles of acid emerging and popping every so often. Further down, the pressure grew tougher, and he could see the beasts, elongated and bioluminescent, deformed by the essence of Silva.

Scoria formations, black as night and burning with cracks of fire, jutted out of the abyssal walls, some already mined. Yharon already knew who had done so. He needed to stop this person... this entity, now.

The trench widened and the rock formations were no more—deeper down was an endless chasm that monotonously carved into eternity, the void peering back. Yharon could barely see now, the glow from his body not strong enough to create more light.

As Yharon descended further, the sounds began. Creaks, calls, threats from the ocean floor. He saw shapes that glowed in the gloom spawned from enormous worms and jagged sharks. A hum louder than the rest emanated from somewhere in the abyss, a primordial, eidolon presence almost like that of a dragon.

Then, he saw it.

A jagged, rocky structure sat atop the very bottom of the pit, spiraling up and branching into a single point, a small treasure coffer barely strong enough to resist the artifact’s effects. He clawed through the pressure, barely managing to reach the box and claw it open. The artifact emerged, seemingly larger than the box itself.

The Terminus.

He would have breathed a sigh of relief if he wasn’t holding his breath at the bottom of the abyss. The Terrarian hadn’t gotten to it.

The artifact seemed to speak to him. Visions clouded his mind. Xeroc. Zeratros. Yharim. Calamitas. Draedon. And an unusual voice like the Devourer of Gods, but far more distorted. For a moment, Yharon faltered. He clenched his jaw. He would not let the abyss and Silva break him.

He clutched the artifact.

The glow of the Terminus dimmed, pushed once more, and then stopped entirely. A sound began to reverberate through the abyss, a sound so deep and ancient that it felt like the entire world was growling. The darkness began to stir, and an ancient wyrm emerged from the shadows, its whole body crisscrossed by crystalline formations of blue and golden glowing scales. Its four eyes were golden points that stared right at Yharon, lighting up the water of the abyss with an unnerving glow.

The creature began to speak, not through voice, but through the ancient Draconic language, an intangible language passed through the mind that Yharon had nearly forgotten; he had thought the language useless as he was the last of the dragons.

“You stand before the apotheosis.”

Yharon’s breath caught in his throat. He had thought this creature to be a myth, its draconic blood and supposed auric soul being the very last of its kind. Well, except for Yharon himself. And yet, here the wyrm was, its aura completely overpowering.

The beast lowered its head to stare at him again, eerily silent, the only words being the telepathic draconic speech.

“You come to tamper with the fate intended by the Darkness. You come to bring this item to the light, that wretched primordial, that false god.”

Yharon curled his tail, his gaze firm. “I seek this item... not for myself. I seek it to stop another from following the path that Xeroc and Yharim wrought.” He struggled to muster the words, reviving some form of ancient conjuring somewhere in the back of his psyche.

The wyrm’s eyes glowed brighter. “You tread a path of temptation, dragon. The same path they walked. You are not worthy. Leave this place before you fall to the same fate.”

Yharon stirred. Something within him faltered. He thought of Yharim, the Terrarian, and their standings on a narrow pinnacle that could save or doom the world. He thought of his own fears, his purpose in this divine game, the twisted reflection of the Fishron, and the pursuit of power. His time was running low, he could feel it. The pressure was beginning to cloud his mind. Even a dragon who could hold its breath underwater for eons like he would eventually succumb to mental destruction.

“I am not worthy,” Yharon mustered in the Draconic language. “But I do not want worth or power. I am treading a new path. I will not let the Terrarian fall as Yharim did. I will not let them stand face to face, on the Aerie, to fight for who is the better architect of genocide.”

The wyrm did not respond for a while. The silence trailed ahead, the glow of the wyrm’s eyes unbroken. Finally, it responded.

“Brave words. But you have forgotten, Yharon, that it was you who inspired Yharim in the first place.”

And with that, the primordial wyrm lunged.

Yharon barely had the time to react as it surged forward with terrifying speed, thunderbolts and icy mists spewing from its maw, the eidolists of the abyss springing to its aid. He surged upward, ignoring the drastic difference in pressure, twisting and desperately attempting to outpace the ancient wyrm.

It followed, relentless.

Yharon surged from the deep trench, swimming higher and higher toward the rocky scoria zones. The wyrm weaved through it effortlessly, as if it knew each formation perfectly, which it probably did.

“Run, dragon,” the wyrm spoke in his mind. “But there is no escape from reality.”

A bolt of lightning ricocheted toward him, and Yharon barely dodged out of the way.

Yharon hovered, wings spread, his auric soul burning faintly in the suffocating water. He glared at the wyrm, his breath steady but his mind racing.

The wyrm regarded him with a predator’s patience. “There is no escape, dragon. You cannot outrun what you are. You cannot outrun me.”

Yharon bared his teeth, fire flickering brighter now. “I wasn’t running. I was buying time.”

With a powerful flap of his wings, Yharon streaked upward, a radiant glow erupting around him. The water hissed and boiled as his fire burned impossibly bright, lighting the cavern like a second sun.

The wyrm recoiled in pain.

Yharon didn’t hesitate. He dove straight toward the beast, twisting at the last moment to streak past its head. His claw that wasn’t holding the Terminus scraped against the wyrm’s jaw as he shot through the narrow gap between its coils. The eidolists chased after him, void tendrils extending, attempting to bridge the gap.

The wyrm roared, its body thrashing, spasming violently as it tried to turn around, but Yharon was already moving. He pushed himself harder than ever, flames blazing brighter with each stroke of his wings. The pressure of the abyss pressed against him, but he didn’t falter. The surface was ahead, his escape route now apparent.

The wyrm surged after him, but it was just a fraction too slow. Yharon shot into the sulfurous surface layer, his flames leaving a blazing trail in the dark. He felt the wyrm’s presence receding behind him, its roars growing fainter as the burning sulfur forced it to slow.

Only when he was certain the wyrm had stopped following did Yharon pause, hovering in the crushing depths. His flames dimmed, flickering faintly, as he turned his gaze back toward the trench.

“Run while you can, Yharon. You cannot escape your own actions.”

Yharon exhaled slowly, landing on the shore, the Terminus still gripped in his hands. “No,” he muttered. “But I can fight it.”

And with that, he turned and ascended beyond its control, the sulfurous sea vanishing into the horizon.

Chapter Text

It was the dead of night. The moonlight cast its glow over the myriad lakes of Terraria as the trees blew gently, serenely in the breeze. All was at peace. The cruel, calamitous world, for a split second, seemed as if its cancer had healed.

Yharon knew this was a fleeting moment.

The Terminus was recovered. But hidden in the open, disaster could easily strike from anything that encountered it. Yharon had seen what had happened when such dangerous artifacts were disposed of with such negligence: the crimson, the plague, the astral meteor. Each was a haunting reminder of such work that Yharim had done.

Yharon curled his talons. His duty would never tire. Restlessly, he kept flying onward, eyeing the horizon. The scar-marked map did nothing to ease the pressure. Eyes flicked in and out. Maws.

Hallucinations.

The voice of the Devourer rang in his ears. “Foolish dragon… how pathetic. You think your attempts to meddle with fate will conceal your recklessness?”

Yharon merely continued to press on, steadfast as ever. “You are but a false memory of a dead god.”

“Oh, but here I am, whispering in your ear… I am no mere corpse…” the voice continued, oozing with acidity. “You think me that serpent that your so-called ‘hero’ slayed.” The voice seemed far closer now, far more palpable, as if it were right there, observing, staring down.

Yharon winced, doubtful, pausing momentarily, still pressing on. “Merely a figment of my lassitude.” But he had already realized something. That voice was now all too familiar. A figment of memory, reborn anew just as he was, and coming from the Terminus itself, which seemingly began to glow as it trickled a stream of thoughts into Yharon’s thoughts. But then, doubts.

“The Xeroc I knew would never be so dry,” Yharon drawled, the thoughts beginning to cloud his flight.

“One may change in two thousand years…” it chided like a bereaved old man. “You certainly have, old friend.” It flinched at the words “old friend” as if they were the jungle’s plague.

Yharon’s thoughts were muddying over; he craned his neck upwards to stare at the light of the moon. It was deceptively peaceful yet a nightmare at once. And with the voice whispering over, it made even the serenity of moonlight carve into recollections long forgotten.

“Bless the Moon… thanks to that lord from the dark side, I am God,” the voice snidely hissed. “What is a dragon to a primordial God of Light?”

Yharon didn’t waste his words. “Coward. You will choke on your arrogance, just as the last Gods did.”

He wanted to throw that Terminus against the ground and incinerate it with scalding breath, to see that figment of a festering monstrous god disseminate into pious shards. He could have done so. In the old days, he would have seen Xeroc awakened, and the full brunt of Yharim’s might would collide with Xeroc. Yet now that he changed… he was sure of it, but his doubts still lingered, he reminded himself. Do not break the seal, he murmured in his thoughts. Do not break the seal.

The voice seemed to pause, and Yharon pulled together for one last burst. He could do this. He saw the faint glow of the town in the backdrop, one glimmering star in the void of dark. He still wondered how such a marvelous feat was possible, why Yharim was biding his time with destroying this one.

Could Yharim have changed alongside him?

He certainly hadn’t been wreaking havoc over the past few weeks.

In fact, it was he himself that had launched into the battle with the Terrarian. Was such an interaction completely necessary for his former master’s fate?

He did not know.

For now, his great wings carried him over the town, scattering his auburn feathers in his wake. Townsfolk cheered and pointed. He heard their cheers and saw their faces, but what were they cheering for? His return or his distance? A child tugged at their mother’s sleeve, pointing at his wings. A bandit shielded her eyes from the golden glow of the dragon’s passing. Yharon couldn’t tell if it was awe or terror that filled their eyes. He attempted to conceal the Terminus to the best of his ability, to not alert the townsfolk of any of his intentions. These people, these innocents, their fate would also be decided by a foe of similar scale to Yharim.

He caught an updraft and glided over the roost, dredging the stone straight into the center and covering it with the suevite tile. Obviously, to his mind, planning ahead, this was a complete failure. But his body was giving way under him, to the point where he let himself believe it was safe. He plummeted to sleep.

He slept for less than a second.

The wail came. The scream of agony. The Terrarian standing in the town square, arms flailing in the sky with an impression of silent maniacal laughter. Or, to Yharon’s collapsing thoughts, descent into madness. All of his suspicions kept flooding in and out.

An altar, perched atop a meticulously constructed spire, began to glow. The bright orb atop it blazed like a miniature sun, sending waves of light into the dark night.

The calamity began.