The words she’d never been able to say.
I’m sorry.
The words she’d never get to say.
The funnel roared, and her legs began to unravel, bones fragmenting into dust as they lifted from the ground.
Goodbye.
One last heartbeat.
Her mouth parted—she swore she could still taste him.
Then her teeth, her tongue, her voice were gone.
And she was nothing.
Adream.
She hurtled through the dark.
There was no horizon, no sky, no gravity, only endlessspace.
Every inch of her burned. Not like fire—fire would’ve been kinder. This was deeper. It raked through sinew and marrow, peeled nerves raw, gnawed through the fragile spaces thought and memory should’ve lived.
Movement was agony, but she kept moving.
Her limbs dragged through the void, each pull forward a war fought in silence. No light. No gravity. Just pain, everywhere, from all sides, smothering, choking thought.
The dark broke. And Earth hung below, deceptively whole. Green still clung to its continents. Blue shimmered in its oceans. But something stirred on its surface, subtle at first, like veins of decay stringing through fruit.
A sound thumped through the upper atmosphere, and the clouds shuddered.
Under her, a battlefield rose. Smoke drifted from newly lit fires. Bodies moved like insects over charred hills and shattered roads. Creatures—too many legs, too many mouths—rushed the front lines. Human and Elvish soldiers screamed into death, already losing.
Her chest burned.
At the heart of the chaos, the dragon waited.
Massive. Black. Wings stretched wide as a hurricane. Its scales gleamed with a sickly sheen, blood and flame already slicking its claws. When it roared, the sound carried like a death knell across continents.
She hovered above itall, muscles straining against invisible tension, the air vibrating around her. Fury quaked through her, and then the world spun.
When she looked down, golden talons, long and bright as blades, dripped black blood. It hissed where it landed, and the earth recoiled as fire ignited in her wake.
Buildings blackened. Trees fell in seconds, reduced to glowing embers before they even hit the ground. Ash spiraled into the air, the whole world consumed.
Time shifted.
The battle fell silent. Still, everything burned.
And then—life, crawling back from the dark.
Humans emerged from cracks and caves, gaunt and blinking, dragging their grief with them. They rebuilt in the rubble, not knowing what had come before.
An idea cried from within her. A way to end the agony and finally die.
A new scene flashed.
