Dawn revealed the scars of the night.
The capital lay in silence, no longer alive but smoldering in ruin. Smoke rose from rooftops, curling skyward as if the city itself begged the heavens for mercy. The once-proud towers of the palace stood shattered, their spires broken like the teeth of a corpse. Ash fell from the sky, drifting slowly, eerily, like snow that refused to melt.
Kaito knelt at the center of it, his sword buried in the blackened earth, his hands stained with soot and blood. His body trembled, not from battle, but from the hollow ache of what he had done.
Above him, Yù Lóng landed with a shudder that split stone. Her wings dragged as she folded them close, scales cracked and dulled from overexertion. Her breath came heavy, ragged, each exhale leaving fire glowing faintly in the ruins. She lowered her gaze to him, not triumphant, but sorrowful.
"You stand at the edge," she said, her voice low, ancient, and unyielding. "One step more, and you are no longer man… but monster."
Kaito's chest heaved. "I avenged him," he rasped. His throat burned with smoke, but his voice was steady. "I did what I swore. Adrian is avenged."
Her eyes glowed like molten suns. "Did you avenge him, graveborn? Or did you bury him a second time, beneath flame and ruin?"
Kaito's fingers dug into the earth. His oath had carried him here, yet the taste of victory was ash on his tongue. Around him lay corpses — not all soldiers, not all guilty. Their charred hands reached for one another, for the lives they had lost. And the silence of the city felt like judgment itself.
Adrian's voice returned to him, not as a ghost, but as memory — laughter in the mountain wind, words scribbled in journals late at night, a smile that had once been brighter than fire.
Kaito's grip on the sword loosened. His breath came ragged, and then — for the first time since he had knelt by his brother's grave — tears spilled down his face.
"I swore to protect you, even in death," he whispered to the memory. "But all I've done is kill."
Yù Lóng's head lowered, her massive eyes softening. "Then choose, graveborn. Let this be the path of vengeance, and I will burn the world with you. Or turn back, and his legacy may yet live."
The sword slipped from his hand, sinking deeper into the earth. His shoulders collapsed, shaking with grief. And for the first time, Kaito wept without holding back — not a warrior's silence, not a vengeance-driven scream, but the broken sob of a brother.
Yù Lóng spread her wings wide, ash swirling into the light of dawn. The shadow she cast fell over him, both curse and salvation, marking him forever.
The last dragon's choice was now his to carry.