Chapter Text
The wind whips through the shattered towers of Luminarth, carrying ash that tastes like iron and despair. I lean over the ruined balcony of the palace, eyes tracing the ruins of my kingdom. Smoke twists into black spires above every street. Fires claw at rooftops. Chaos reigns, and the city answers with screams. Above it all, a shadow moves. Scales black as obsidian catch the last light of the dying sun. Eyes green and merciless sweep over the streets. Wherever it passes, frost snakes across stone, snapping life into ice.
Other dragons follow, elemental forces unleashed—fire, stone, lightning—but the black one moves with purpose. Silent. Relentless. The guards arrive without ceremony, hands gripping my arms. My pulse hammers. “You know the drill,” one murmurs. Not a request. An inevitability. I do. I’ve rehearsed this every sleepless night atop these walls. The execution arena awaits. The people wait. The guards drag me through crumbling halls, past portraits of ancestors who failed as I have failed, past corridors choking on ash and smoke. My boots scrape stone. The city groans beneath the weight of flame and frost.
The arena opens before me. Faces blur in the firelight. Torches burn high, flickering shadows over the crowd. And there, at the center, stands the guillotine. Patient. Waiting. A blade poised like a silent verdict. The herald steps forward, voice ringing over the chaos: "William Glitchveil, former king of Vael’Raen… guilty of tyranny and crimes against the people… is hereby sentenced to death."
Silence hangs, thick as smoke. Frost hisses across the arena stones. My pulse rattles my chest. I glance at the horizon where dragons clash, fire and ice mingling, the black shadow circling above, unyielding. The executioner grip tightens on the rope. I hear the tension hum—a cruel, mechanical heartbeat. I look at the crowd, at the ruins, at the sky where apocalypse flares in green, red, and orange. Then the rope releases.
The blade falls.
A dull, final thunk echoes across the arena. The crowd gasps, shivers ripple through the ranks of guards, and the world tilts. The chaos outside feels closer, somehow sharper, hungrier.
And then the past reclaims me.