The beast's roar split through dimensions, rattling even the farthest edges of the void. Stars flickered out in its wake. The tree itself thrummed, as though recognizing the oath its sentinel was bound to.
Lucien tilted his chin slightly upward, silver eyes gleaming. "I see… you're no mere dragon. Name yourself."
The guardian's wings unfurled, eclipsing whole galaxies like a curtain of living night. Its voice carried with it the age of countless eons, every syllable older than civilizations themselves.
"I am Veythar, the First Wyrm. For one hundred and thirty billion years, I have been the Fang of the World Tree. Since the first sap bled into the void, I have torn down gods who dared approach."
Lucien chuckled faintly, the sound low and arrogant. "One hundred and thirty billion years? Then you've waited your entire existence for me."
The dragon's eyes narrowed. "…Arrogance. Just like Him."
Lucien's smirk froze. "…Him?"
The void shook as Veythar's voice thundered again.
"The White. The Eternal Hunger. The first fracture before creation. It devoured without end until the Tree bound it. Even so, it left a scar… a scar named you."
Lucien's expression sharpened, but his aura remained steady. The dragon had peeled back a truth even he had not fully known: that The White was not simply void-born chaos, but the opposite half of the World Tree's being.
"Then I am not its scar," Lucien replied coldly, his aura spilling like molten inevitability. "I am its answer."
The wyrm hissed, flame erupting from its maw — but this was no ordinary fire. It was origin flame, the raw breath that could erase the laws binding reality itself. Whole constellations folded into ash as the blaze raced toward Lucien.
Lucien's shadow surged. A flick of his hand unraveled the inferno, bending it into nothingness. His voice cut through the roar:
"You've guarded the roots long enough, beast. Let's see if time has made you sharp — or brittle."
The clash that followed could never be witnessed by mortals. Lucien moved, and void itself trembled; Veythar struck, and the bark of the Tree rippled with primal force. For every strike Lucien delivered, the wyrm countered with eons of honed savagery.
It did not fall easily.
As they fought, the wyrm revealed more between its thunderous bellows.
"The branches uphold the dimensions — sever one, and worlds fall into the void."
"The roots feed the flow of power — drink from them, and one could bend reality itself."
"And should any master both branch and root… they would surpass gods. They would not rule reality. They would be reality."
Lucien's silver gaze burned brighter, inevitability pulsing from him like a law rewriting itself in real time. The implications were clear: whoever seized the Tree's power would not simply reign over creation — they would become the axis around which creation turned.
For once, Lucien's smirk softened into something sharper, hungrier.
"Interesting," he said, as inevitability rippled through the dragon's scales. "You've done well to guard it, Veythar. But nothing is inevitable… except me."
The final blow was not a strike of power, but of essence. Lucien stepped forward, his aura pressing into the wyrm's being, forcing it to kneel. For the first time in one hundred and thirty billion years, the Fang of the World Tree bowed.
Its voice came low, begrudging but reverent.
"Then take what you came for, Sole Exception. The Tree has chosen you… just as The White once chose hunger."