Several hours before dawn, the rings of Thareon gleamed faintly in the breaking light of its mother star, their celestial arcs casting pale refractions across the shattered bones of the Valley of Ryn.
The village was broken. Smoke and dust drifted like mourning veils through the ruins. Homes reduced to heaps. And everywhere—silence, pierced only by the slow rhythm of those still alive trying to dig through the debris.
A child cried out from beneath a fallen beam. Two elders, bloodied but breathing, worked desperately to lift it, their hands raw. Others searched hollow-eyed, pulling bodies—some limp, others lifeless—from the rubble. A woman knelt beside a crushed cart, rocking gently, whispering the name of her husband.
Beside a twisted arch of wood and stone, Fen stumbled forward, legs trembling beneath the weight of grief—and of Nerissa, limp in his arms.
His eyes were open, but he did not see.
Dust clung to his skin. His breath came shallow. His hands clutched her too tightly, as if afraid that letting go would unravel whatever thread of hope remained.
She stirred only slightly. Her eyes half-lidded, her body cold with shock. Her lips trembled—not from fear, but from something unseen, unfelt by those around her.
Alfazar had gone silent.
The vast presence she once felt like a heartbeat behind the sky had vanished. Where once she found strength in that link, now there was absence. A quiet, suffocating void.
And into that silence crept another kind of weight. Grief. Not immediate. Not loud. But slow and drowning.
Her mother's scent and voice were gone.
And so, something inside her began to fracture.
Elsewhere on the ridge, a mass of torn ground and shattered rock lay still.
Then, movement.
Belligarde rose from the rubbles, blood trickling from her scalp. Her cloak was torn, one arm bruised and stiff. She winced but pressed on. She had been lucky—quick enough to scramble up an old tree as the first wave hit. It had cracked under the weight, but not before shielding her from the worst.
She took a breath, coughing through dust. Then she ran, limping down the slope toward where her sister's home once stood.
What greeted her was ruin.
The foundations were there. But the warmth, the laughter, the woven mats and ringlight-washed walls—gone.
"Lira!" she screamed. "Nerissa! Fen!"
No answer. Only the low groans of the wounded and the crackling of settling stone.
Panic surged in her chest.
She turned, saw villagers limping toward the Long Hall, some dragging stretchers, others crying names into the wind.
She followed.
At the far end of the valley, Talyri lay buried beneath the collapsed archive chamber, blood matting her silver hair. Her breathing was faint. The sacred stone tablets once hidden in this place were all gone.
On the edge of the forest, Maelhan found the survivingscouts.
Their leader sat slumped against a tree, one eye swollen shut, arm clearly broken. Several of their lizard-mounts were dead nearby. Another scout knelt by a comrade whose chest no longer rose.
Maelhan's voice cut like a blade. "What have you done?"
The scout looked up, face etched with pain and dust. He said nothing.
Only stared.
Maelhan clenched his fists and turned away, the sound of the village's devastation ringing in his ears.
Inside the crowded Long Hall, chaos ruled.
Survivors packed the space. Some lay curled in corners, whispering to the gods. Others screamed for healers, blood staining the wooden floor. The cries of children, the wails of the grieving, the clamor of confusion—it was a chorus of despair.
Belligarde shoved her way through.
"Nerissa! Fen! Lira!" she shouted, her voice raw.
Then she saw him.
Fen, seated on the floor, Nerissa in his lap, holding her like something sacred. His eyes met hers—wide, empty, sunken. A single tear traced down his cheek.
"Fen…" she choked.
She knelt beside him. "Nerissa?" She gently cupped her niece's cheek. "Where's—" Her voice caught. "Where's Lira?"
He opened his mouth, but no words came.
Only a hollow, shaking breath.
Inside Nerissa's mind, the voices around her were muffled, like echoes across a vast chasm. The pain. The grief. The names. They were sounds without form.
But beyond that veil—
There was a presence.
Familiar.
Wounded.
Distant.
She floated in a place of shadow and ash, surrounded by curling tendrils of thought not her own. An ancient consciousness, vast as oceans, slumbered beneath.
Alfazar.
She did not see him. Not with her eyes.
But she felt his shape in memory—immense and unmoving, wrapped in stillness that echoed grief too great for words.
She tried to reach out. He did not reach back. But her presence lingered in his stillness like the warmth of a fading flame.
Back at the mountain's heart, the dragon's den was a cathedral of ruin.
The once-grand inner chamber, carved in sweeping arcs and ancient fireglass, now lay broken.
The Armored platoon—those who had dared enter Alfazar's sanctuary—were decimated.
Some were dust, bodies turned to ash mid-step. Others lay frozen in twisted agony, calcified, their weapons fused to stone. One figure was crushed beneath a jagged slab, armor cracked like a broken shell.
But four remained.
Three crouched near the collapsed central altar, armor scorched and dulled. Their leader, wounded and barely upright, touched the large, glowing crystal shard. His voice rasped in a tongue that scraped against the laws of sound.
They were not here to destroy.
They were here to retrieve.
And they had not expected to be wiped out by a grief-stricken god.
Far above them, perched motionless in the shadows of a fractured alcove, Alfazar remained.
Stone-veined wings curled inward.
Eyes dimmed but faintly glowing with forgotten stars.
His colossal form—part flesh, part calcified monument—rose like a fallen deity sculpted from the world's first breath.
Motionless. Dormant.