The moment the last of them crossed the barrier, I let the air fall silent.
No more screams. No more chaos. Just me… and him.
Pyraethrax exhaled slowly, a plume of steam curling from his nostrils as his molten eyes locked onto mine.
The ember glow in his throat dulled for a moment—restrained, but not extinguished. The caution hadn't left him, but pride was already beginning to overtake it. That ancient, stubborn fury. He thought he could still win. That all he'd felt until now was only a bluff.
My feet shifted slightly.
In the span of a heartbeat, I had crossed the battlefield—again—this time with the shadows lashing from my back like broken chains. They wrapped around my arms, pulsing with a rhythm not unlike a heartbeat. Not mine. The Abyss'.
Pyraethrax reacted just in time. His claws rose, wreathed in searing flame, as his tail snapped into position behind him like a wall of razors. He brought a wing down like a shield.
But it was too slow.
My fist connected with the side of his snout, right below the eye.
A clean, echoing impact.
It wasn't just force—it was compression. The kind of focused blow that collapsed fire, folded mana, and ignored scale and resistance alike. Power without an origin. A strike from nowhere.
A flash of black energy rippled through the impact site, and Pyraethrax skidded.
His massive frame reeled sideways, carving twin trenches into the crater with his claws, his wings snapping out violently to keep balance.
A low, guttural sound tore from the dragon's throat—not pain.
Disbelief.
He caught himself, half-kneeling, tail coiled for balance. Steam hissed violently from his maw. He blinked, once, hard—like he still hadn't fully processed that he'd been struck.
And I just stood there. Arm half-lowered. Shadows slowly withdrawing.
"Still think I'm bluffing?" I asked.
His aura spiked, erupting outward in a storm of fire and fury.
"I am Pyraethrax! One of the World-Forgers! The sky burned for my birth!"
I raised my hand again, shadows dancing around my fingertips.
"And it'll dim for your death."
His roar shattered the air.
The instant his roar split the sky, fire surged.
Not just flame, but a calamity. A wave of heat so intense the world itself recoiled. Stone melted. Air shimmered. Colors distorted. Everything between us was swallowed in living, molten fury.
But I didn't move. The shadow at my feet stretched upward, blanketing me in a second skin. Not a shield. Not a barrier.
A declaration.
The Abyss didn't resist the fire. It devoured it.
The inferno smashed into me like a tidal wave meant to erase mountains. For a moment, it swallowed everything—me, the crater, the ground I stood on.
Then the flames began to flicker. Lurch. Fade.
And when they cleared, I was still standing. No burns. No ash. Not even a scuff.
Just smoke curling harmlessly around the coils of darkness that spun lazily off my shoulders like heatless tendrils.
Pyraethrax stared, mouth still cracked open, flame sputtering against a presence that refused to burn.
"What the hell are you?!" he hissed.
I didn't answer because I was already moving again.
This time, I didn't aim for his face.
I went low—appearing just beneath his forward claw as it raised to swipe. Before it finished the motion, I struck.
One palm down. Open-handed.
Shadow rippled beneath it—dense, invisible to anyone else. And then—
CRACK.
His leg buckled. Not shattered, but forced down—slammed into the ground like gravity had tripled in an instant.
He roared, not in fear this time, but rage. His wing snapped down in retaliation, a blade of solid flame meant to cut me in two.
I ducked under it, slid forward, and drove my elbow up into the soft joint beneath his scales—right where his ribcage and front leg met.
The sound that followed wasn't a roar. It was a grunt. A very human sound. A sound of pain.
He flung himself backward instinctively, massive form retreating in a rush of fire and wings, tearing chunks of rock from the crater in his wake. He landed hard, staggering once before steadying himself, chest heaving.
His pride had taken the hit as much as his body.
He breathed heavier now while I stood at the center of the ruined crater, arms lowered, shadows curling lazily upward like smoke from something long-dead but still dangerous.
"Come on," I murmured. "You're not done, are you?"
His wounds—still faintly steaming from where my strikes had landed—began to glow. Lava-red veins ignited across his frame, lighting the breaks in his scales like fault lines coming alive. His breathing steadied. The dents in his chest, the cracks along his leg… began to close.
Not rapidly, but deliberately.
"I see now," Pyraethrax rumbled, his voice lower, sharper, the pride in it no longer bloated by arrogance—but sharpened by something closer to respect. "You are no mere human. You who stumbled into forbidden power."
He straightened fully. The flame behind his throat bloomed again, but it didn't release. Not yet.
"All this time," he continued, pacing slightly across the broken crater like a beast circling another predator, "I believed the humans were stagnant creatures. Fragile. Predictable. Even your so-called apex—S-Ranks—were nothing but bright embers against my storms."
His wings flexed once, rising high behind him, casting vast shadows that stretched all the way to the far ridges of the crater.
"But you…" His eyes narrowed. "You cornered me."
A beat passed.
"You injured me."
He stopped.
Then grinned. It was a terrible thing, that grin—full of fire and reverence both.
"You're the first human in a thousand years worthy of what I'm about to become."
And then he roared again—but this time, it wasn't a blast of fury.
It was a signal.
His scales began to shift, not breaking, not sloughing off—but contracting. The massive horns at his head curved downward and reformed, spiraling into a crown-like structure. His colossal wings folded inward, compressing into ridged, blade-like appendages. Fire licked across his form—not as an attack, but as a forge.
He shrank, but the weight of him grew.
His mass condensed into a form halfway between draconic majesty and mortal design—a towering figure still fifteen feet tall, draped in glowing scale-armor that pulsed with barely-contained heat. A tail still coiled behind him, but his hands now bore five fingers tipped with obsidian claws. His faceis humanoid, but stretched and lined with draconic features—bore eyes that shone like twin suns.
And when he spoke again, it wasn't as a beast. It was as a king.
"This is no longer a hunt," Pyraethrax said, voice calm, regal, almost elegant. "This is war."