Later...His voice, when he found it, was the rasp of grinding stone. "Why?" he asked the cosmos swirling before him. "Tianlong... why is my existence a tapestry woven only with suffering? Every choice, every battle... it leads only to a deeper darkness."
The galaxies within Tianlong's form stilled. The Thought-Dragon's voice was not a thunderous boom, but a sound as intimate and vast as the space between stars. "Before I answer, you must answer me. After all that I have told you, all that you have endured... do you still trust the path I illuminate?"
There was no hesitation. No doubt. The answer was the one constant in his fractured existence. "I do."
A silence stretched, pregnant with the weight of ages. Then, Tianlong's voice returned, laced with a sorrow that seemed to dim the very stars within him.
"Then see," he commanded gently. "See the month before the sky burned through my words. Before Kar Seraphiel."
The void shifted. Nameless's breath hitched as the obsidian corridors of the Vault materialized around him, the air thick with frost and unspoken promises. He saw himself—a figure of shadow and simmering rage—and he saw her, though he couldn't imagine her face entirely, he tried to with tianlong narrating it.
Elara.
The memory was not told; it was felt. He relived the impossible tenderness of those days. He watched himself, a being forged for destruction, attempting the clumsy, beautiful art of comfort. He saw his hands, built to shatter worlds, gently tracing the lines of her face. He heard his voice, meant for war cries, whispering assurances he didn't fully understand.
And he saw her, the Keeper, chained by a curse yet unyielding in her spirit. She reached for him not with passion, but with a desperate, sacred reverence. Her hands, trembling with the force of the cosmos she held in balance, would press his to her forehead as if he were a prayer against the coming doom. She was the anchor in his storm, and he, the single, violent hope in her gilded cage.
The memory dissolved, leaving Nameless shaking in the void, his hand clenched into a fist so tight his knuckles were white. The phantom warmth of her touch lingered on his skin.
A single, desperate question clawed its way from his throat, raw and broken. "Tianlong... before you show me the war. Tell me now. In this present moment... is she alive?"
The galaxies within the great dragon churned. The silence that followed was not empty; it was an answer in itself. It was a chasm of unspoken truth, a void of cosmic uncertainty. It was the sound of a god admitting its limits.
A tremor ran through Nameless's frame, a wave of cold dread that eclipsed all physical pain. "You... you don't know." It wasn't a question. It was a realization that shattered him more than any blade. His crimson eye, which had faced down gods and beasts, glistened with a sudden, terrible moisture.
"Then my heart will fear for her until I can see for myself," he whispered, his voice trembling with a resolve forged in that fear. "Show me. Show me how I fell. Show me the war."
Tianlong's form swelled, and the memory exploded into being.
"The day came," the dragon's voice boomed, now resonating with the thunder of battle. "You stood alone on the Plateau of Fallen Wings, but you were not alone. I became your shadow, your fire, your storm. I became your wings, and together, we met the Seven."
Nameless felt it. The memory was a torrent, and he was swept away. The sky above Kar Seraphiel was a canvas of bruised violet and burning gold. He saw himself, a singularity of righteous fury, surge forward. Blood was his weapon. Shadow was his shield. He commanded an orchestra of annihilation, each strike a note in a symphony of doom. He was not a warrior; he was like a final boss, an inevitability.
The Seven, in their arrogance, met him one by one. And one by one, their divine light fractured. Their confidence shattered against his relentless assault. Panic, an emotion they hadn't felt in millennia, began to fester in their immortal hearts.
"They faltered," Tianlong narrated, his voice a low growl. "Their pride could not withstand your purpose. And so, they abandoned it. They abandoned honor. They became one."
The memory flared. The seven gods merged, their forms melting into a blinding nexus of divine energy. Their seven voices chanted in unison, a chorus that bent reality itself. They spoke the words of creation's most terrible law: the Rune of God's Prison.
It was a spell not meant to kill, but to unmake.
The sky cracked open. The very firmament screamed as chains forged from divine law and absolute despair erupted from the rift. They were not metal; they were concepts. A chain of stolen memory. A chain of severed power. A chain of shackled will.
They struck him.
The first chain ripped his connection to Tianlong away. The second tore the fire from his soul. The third shattered his command over shadow. Each impact was an agony beyond comprehension, his body and spirit being systematically partitioned, carved into pieces like a conquered realm.
He saw one of the Seven, Eryu, her face a mask of horror. Tears streamed from her divine eyes as she stood apart, powerless to stop the atrocity her brethren committed. She honored her King, but her heart broke for the weapon they were destroying.
His power, his very essence, was being cleaved and cast into seven prisons across reality. But through the torment, through the unmaking of his being, one thought burned with the intensity of a dying star.
Elara.
The thought of her, alone, facing the wrath of these cowards because of his rebellion—that was the one pain he could not endure.
His body hung suspended, pierced and bound by the divine rune. The Seven, reformed and triumphant, circled him like vultures.
"You are nothing now but dust and echoes, weapon," sneered the eldest, his voice thick with victory.
Nameless's head lifted, his jaw clenched, blood and tears mingling on his mask. His voice, though torn and ragged, roared across the ruined plateau, a sound of pure, unbroken defiance.
"You think this is your victory?!" he bellowed, his body trembling violently. "You can shatter my soul! You can steal my name! You can chain my power in a thousand hells! But you have forgotten one thing!"
His crimson eye blazed, locking onto each of them. "Every chain you wrap around me is a link in the leash you have just placed around your own necks! I will return! Fate does not forget a righteous cause!"
He felt a final whisper escape his lips, a command carried on the winds of his own destruction, meant only for the hidden dragon. "Tianlong... hide. Wait for my return."
A single tear, born of grief for her and fury for them, finally broke free. It traced a path down his mask, a silent, burning vow against the cold backdrop of his ruin. The chains tightened, pulling his existence apart, silencing his voice, and dragging him into a fractured oblivion.
But his last thought was not a scream of agony or a curse of hatred. It was a promise, clear and absolute, echoing in the ruins of his mind as everything went dark.
Elara... I will find you. I will reclaim all that was taken. And I will burn this creation down to save you.
The cosmic memory faded, leaving Nameless adrift in the silent void with the crushing weight of a thousand years of another's suffering. The rage was there—a white-hot supernova threatening to detonate within his chest. The grief was a black hole, threatening to swallow him whole. But he let neither consume him. Instead, he compressed them, forged them down into a single, diamond-hard point of resolve.
His voice, when he spoke, was devoid of the tremor it held before. It was chillingly calm, the sound of a storm that had passed its peak and now possessed a terrible, focused clarity.
"The shattered pieces of my power and memories can wait," he stated, his crimson eye fixed on Tianlong's galactic form. "They are useless to me if I don't find out what happened to Elara. My first and only priority is Elara."
The galaxies in Tianlong's eyes swirled in understanding. "A noble goal. But the Seven have hidden her behind walls of silence and forgotten time. To find a single soul in a creation that has forgotten her is a near-impossible task, I do not know what exactly happened to her."
"But not impossible," Nameless countered, taking a step forward. "I have been awake, in this current time, for a short while. I was summoned. My journey began somewhere. The answers, or at least the first thread, must lie there." He raised his head, his gaze unflinching. "Read my memories. Start from the moment I awoke in this era and see everything that I have seen. Find a clue. A name. A location. Anything that can lead me to her."
A profound stillness fell over the void. Tianlong's cosmic form seemed to shrink, the light of his stars dimming as he considered the gravity of the request.
"Nameless," the dragon's voice was a solemn whisper. "What you ask is not a simple viewing. To find what you seek, I must do more than watch your memories. I must enter them. I must feel what you felt, touch the fractured edges of your soul, and walk the broken pathways of your mind. There will be no secrets between us. I will see every scar, every doubt, every shard of you that still remains. Are you prepared for such a violation?"
Nameless did not even blink. He thought of Elara, alone in a lightless prison, her mind chained while her soul still fought. He thought of his vow, the one constant that had survived the ruin of his own being.
"My soul is already an open wound," Nameless replied, his voice absolute. "There is no violation greater than what has already been done to her. If you must see my scars to heal hers, then look. See everything."
Tianlong's stellar eyes pulsed once, a silent acknowledgment of the trust being placed in him. The vast, cosmic dragon began to coil, his form descending, the light of a billion stars focusing into a single, piercing point aimed directly at Nameless's consciousness.
"Then close your eye," Tianlong commanded, his voice the last thing Nameless heard before the universe dissolved into light. "And let us begin."