The cave shuddered.
Not with thunder or collapse—but with breath. Deep, ancient, godless breath.
Fafnir hunted still, but the hunt had changed.
For days—perhaps weeks—Siege had wandered, tracing the dragon's movements by listening, mapping the labyrinth not with his eyes, but his instincts. Where the stone grew warm beneath his feet, he turned.
Where the air stank of sulfur, he held his breath and fled. Where the whispers grew loudest, he bit down on the inside of his cheek until the voices drowned in blood.
He was no longer a man.
He was instinct, determination, resolve carved raw.
The madness had sharpened Siege's mind.
And something old and cold had settled in its place—strategy. Not a brilliant mind's calculation, but the haunted instincts of a man who had nothing left to wager but his body and the memory of an old story.
And Fafnir, for all its cruelty, for all its power—had grown arrogant.
It thought him broken.
It was nearly right.
But Siege remembered something from old Ithaca. A tale spoken by an old blind archivist, long ignored. Of Sigurd. Of a man who slew a dragon not by strength—but by understanding its weakness. Fafnir, the greedy, the hoarder, the all-seeing. It saw all… but not within.
That was its flaw.
A heart buried beneath arrogance.
A wound waiting to be opened.
Fafnir had become bored. It slithered with mechanical certainty, searching for its prey in spirals, always ending at a buried vault to fondle its hoard with taloned reverence.
So Siege carved a plan—not of blade, but of bait.
Siege began the trap with small gestures. First, he made himself visible—but never entirely. He scratched symbols in English into walls with a broken dagger, a language Fafnir could not read, but one it would understand as madness.
He began walking in patterns. Retracing his steps. Leaving behind scraps of cloth soaked in his blood. He whispered to the dark, calling Fafnir by name, speaking of surrender, of madness, of offering.
He let himself be seen.
He let himself appear to fall apart.
He let the creature hear him muttering, sobbing, laughing. He dribbled his own blood through the tunnels, leaving a red thread as if drawing the beast deeper into delusion.
At night—if such things existed underground—he slept in damp pits wrapped in shivering silence, rationing his madness like fire in winter.
And Fafnir followed, patient, amused. As if grooming a pet. Toying with its future meal.
But Siege had chosen his battlefield well.
A chasm, narrow and jagged, split the floor of a collapsed hall, once used by dwarves or something older. Below it, shards of dark stone jutted out.
Just wide enough to catch the unwary. Deep enough to swallow a god... or a dragon.
He waited beside it, sword buried in ash, body pressed flat against the stone. Not moving. Barely breathing. The bait: a torn fragment of Beowulf's obsidian cape, planted in full view across the chasm's mouth.
It worked.
The ground shook as Fafnir emerged, coiling through the ruins with quiet contempt.
"Still playing your little games, mortal?"
Siege said nothing.
"Come then. Let me see the last gasp of your courage."
The dragon moved closer.
And then, in a flash of fury and grace, it struck at the cape.
The stone crumbled beneath its talons.
Fafnir snarled—but far too late.
Its massive weight crashed through the weakened floor, collapsing the chasm beneath it. Wings snapped open in reflex, but the narrow space betrayed it. The ceiling collapsed with a roar, stone raining down like divine judgment.
Fafnir fell—screaming.
It thrashed, crushing itself against the jagged walls, and as it struggled to pull free, Siege acted.
He leapt.
Straight into the chaos.
Sword in hand, he landed atop the dragon's side and ran—sprinting across blistering scales, smoke choking his lungs, flame licking at his heels.
Fafnir turned, maw opening wide, but Siege plunged the blade deep within its open jaw.
The beast shrieked, rearing back, slamming its skull against the rock. Siege flew from its back, slamming into a crag. Bones cracked. Blood filled his mouth.
But Fafnir bled.
Gold-red ichor gushed from the wound, steaming and corrosive. It flooded the cavern floor, pooling like molten lava. The dragon roared again, flailing, trying to claw at the gash.
And Siege… laughed.
A mad, broken sound.
He rose to his feet, barely standing. His blade was gone, lost in the pit. He didn't need it.
He ran.
And dove.
Straight into the wound not fully healed wound Beowulf managed to leave on Fafnir.
The heat was unbearable. The blood clung to him, soaked into his skin, into his mouth. It burned—but not like fire. Like every pain he'd ever suffered, returning to claim him.
Siege's skin began to melt, but he knew this was his only opportunity.
He screamed, clawing forward with one hand, kicking his legs with all his might.
He pushed deeper, crawling, squirming through muscle and cartilage. The world outside was nothing but muffled earthquakes. The world inside… was a furnace of rage and pulsing, primordial life.
And then, he found it.
The dragon thrashed wildly now, bashing against the stone walls in a frenzy. The cave began to collapse around it.
Still Siege climbed.
He reached the heart.
It was not red. It was stone. It pulsed not with blood, but with greed—a black, shining core veined with molten gold. A great, pulsating thing of fire and stone and wrath. Every beat shook the air.
With broken fingers, he dug into it.
With bleeding nails, he tore it open.
With an anguished roar he bit into it.
He broke the heart apart, screaming, choking on the dragon's essence. His skin and muscle bubbled, his bones cracked open, but still he clawed—until the core split.
The scream that followed was not heard—it was felt. Through bone. Through soul.
The dragon shrieked in death. Not rage. Not fury.
Regret.
It understood, in its final breath, that it had been tricked.
And then the world went silent.
Fafnir died.
As it's heart burst, coating him in steaming gore. He was flung from the wound as the dragon collapsed into the pit, its body twitching once, twice, then going still.
Siege lay in its blood, unmoving.
Time passed.
The blood soaked into his skin. Into his eyes. His mouth. It reeked of poison—but also of clarity.
He understood it.
Fafnir's greed had not been for gold, but for permanence. For control. It had hoarded time, hoarded power, hoarded fear.
But in the end, it had died like any beast.
And Siege… was still breathing.
Barely.
He laid near the carcass, swaying, broken and reborn.
Not a hero.
Not a victor.
Just the last one left.
The cavern above had collapsed, leaving a hole that showed the grey sky beyond. Light poured in—not golden, not warm. Pale. Cold. Real.
Siege cried.
When he looked at the sky the world seemed no different.
But Siege was.
His soul burned with invisible wounds. His eyes glowed faintly in the dim cavern-- the dark-golden color of molten copper. He had been baptized in the blood of an ancient sin.
And now he carried it with him.
Both a man and a monster.
The blood had changed him.
Not into a dragon.
Into a man who had killed one.
A voice clawed at the edge of Siege's fading consciousness.
[Trial Completed]
[You have slain the Goliath level lesser Dragon of Greed Fafnir as a mortal.]
[Initializing result....]