The Ruins groaned like a dying beast.
Dust rained from the ceiling, red cracks seeping fire through ancient stone. Heat pressed against Draven's skin, blistering, suffocating. The tremors had turned violent now — not the shiver of unstable walls, but the heartbeat of something vast, returning to its throne.
The Drake.
"Move," Draven growled, urging Feyra and Stonehide forward. His chest burned, lotus mark glowing with every thunderous quake.
The passage split into three, each choking with smoke. Draven hesitated only a breath before the Codex pulsed in his mind. Runes rippled across his vision, faint roots of light etching along the left-hand wall. Guidance. A path.
He didn't question it. He turned left.
The corridor shuddered. Phantom shackles, frenzied and blind, lashed across the stone, seeking throats and limbs. One coiled around Stonehide's leg — it roared, plates ringing as the chain tightened. Draven's halberd cut through, lotus flaring, and the shackle shattered like glass.
The air howled. Mutated Wildings burst from a fissure ahead — warped creatures, their hides half-melted, flesh glowing with ember cracks. They shrieked, eyes feral, dripping magma with every step.
Feyra darted first, Verdant Step flashing. Emerald pawprints burned in her wake, each one spilling a brief pulse of vitality. Draven dashed through them, breath easing as wounds knit along his arm. Stonehide thundered after, tail whipping down in an Earthrend Slam. The ground fractured, the first Wilding swallowed by collapsing stone.
Another lunged. Draven's halberd caught it mid-leap, the impact jarring his arms. His muscles screamed — then surged. Shared Vitality roared through his veins. The strength of two Nobles and six Servitors burned inside him, turning the blow into something greater. The Wilding crashed back, skull split.
The Codex pulsed again. More roots of light crawled across the walls, tugging him forward. He followed blindly. The heat grew unbearable, a furnace pressed against bone. Then it came — not sound, not sight, but weight.
An aura vast as mountains.
Draven staggered, knees almost buckling. Feyra whimpered, fur scorched by heat. Stonehide slammed claws into stone just to stay upright. The Magma Drake was awake. Its presence alone crushed lesser wills.
The lotus burned white-hot, Codex flaring within him. Pressure eased just enough for breath to return. Draven gritted his teeth, dragging his beasts forward.
The corridor ahead convulsed, stone screaming as cracks split wide. A wall of rubble and flame collapsed, sealing their only escape. Smoke bellowed, heat searing lungs raw.
Feyra whimpered, claws scraping stone. Stonehide slammed his tail, but even his strength faltered against the mountain of debris.
For a heartbeat, despair pressed heavier than the Drake's aura.
"No," Draven snarled, voice raw, tearing through the thunder.
The lotus mark seared his chest, not as a glow but as a brand of defiance. His halberd trembled in his grip, not from weakness — but from resonance.
Runes bled out from the weapon's edge, crawling over the stone like veins of emerald fire. The air vibrated, a hum deeper than sound, as if Theia itself leaned in to listen.
Draven did not strike. He did not beg.
He willed.
The Codex answered.
Emerald flares erupted across the rubble. Roots of light burst from cracks, twisting, crushing, tearing stone apart as though the earth itself obeyed him. The avalanche that should have buried them instead split and rolled aside, walls bending, ash scattering into the dark.
For an instant, he was not a man holding a book. He was not a bearer of records.
He was the Codex, and the world bent beneath his will.
The passage cleared, a raw wound torn open in the stone.
Draven stumbled through with Feyra and Stonehide, lungs searing, eyes watering — but alive.
And then the night sky opened above them.
But it was no true night. The horizon glowed red, ash swirling into storms. Embers drifted like snow, settling on broken ruins. Behind them, the earth itself quaked. A sound rolled out — not roar, not word, but a furnace drawing breath.
The Drake had returned.
Draven collapsed to one knee, Feyra pressed close, Stonehide heaving. His hands shook, not with fear, but with the echo of what he had just done.
The Codex flickered in his mind, a page half-burned, runes searing across thought itself:
Life endures. But fire remembers.
Draven raised his gaze to the horizon where smoke bled into the stars, where the sky trembled under heat.
The Drake was home.
And the world would never be the same.