Somewhere on the Island of 'The Emperor'
The explosion shattered the morning calm like distant thunder.
A pillar of flame and debris shot skyward, painting the dawn gray. Smoke billowed outward in rippling waves, carrying the scent of rot and cooked flesh.
Slowly, the smoke settled.
Where forest once stood, a crater sat wide as a city block.
And there, sprawled across the ruins like a fallen monument, lay a giant serpent— what some called Leviathan.
The serpent's body stretched beyond sight—flesh and obsidian scales cracked like pottery. Eyes huge as airships stared sightlessly at the sky, white as milk. A tongue the size of a train sprang from jaws that could have swallowed buildings whole. Each scale, the size of a man, caught the morning light reflecting colours that shouldn't exist. Twin horns jutted from its temples like broken trees, still smoking from whatever force had brought it down.
