The Trial of Wind and Flame
Time stretched like molten glass - an entire incense stick's worth passing as Drakon remained imprisoned within the wind's relentless grip. Each attempt to break free proved futile; Dawnbreaker's slashes found only air, his fiercest flames extinguished by the swirling tempest. His breath came in ragged gasps now, muscles burning with exhaustion, the once-proud Martial God disciple reduced to desperate defenses against nature's fury.
Then -
A flicker of white in the storm's chaos caught his eye.
A single dandelion seed.
It danced gracefully where wind blades sharp enough to slice stone whirled, yet remained untouched, unbroken. Drakon's draconic pupils tracked its impossible path - how it yielded without surrendering, how it flowed with the current yet maintained its course.
"Oh...so that's it," he whispered, the revelation cutting through his fatigue like dawn through stormclouds.
With deliberate care, he sheathed Dawnbreaker in one fluid motion, the crimson blade whispering against its scabbard. Closing his eyes, he stopped resisting the storm's scream, instead letting its rhythms vibrate through his bones.
"Fire is rage," he murmured to himself. "But wind...wind is patience."
As his palms lifted upward, the flames that erupted weren't weapons but wings - a phoenix's controlled ascent rather than a dragon's uncontrolled fury. Through this newfound calm, he felt the storm's hidden patterns - not as an enemy to conquer, but as a dance to join.
"There." His eyes snapped open, draconic irises flaring. "The vortex's weak point shifts...here!" He pointed toward a shimmering discontinuity in the whirling winds.
The Wind Guardian's voice boomed like an approaching monsoon: "Insight alone won't free you, little spark. Can you walk the path you've seen?"
As if in response, the maelstrom's walls convulsed. Dozens of figures condensed from the howling winds - elemental warriors with bodies of translucent mist, moving with the liquid grace of a breeze through grass. They struck in perfect unison, their freezing touches leaving trails of frost in the air. Drakon barely twisted away, his boots skidding across stone now cracked from countless impacts.
"Damn it!" He spat blood from a split lip. "Fire techniques fail against wind's nature, and steel can't cut what it can't touch...what options remain?"
A memory flashed - his recent victory over Killer of the Armored Ones, that flawless battle where every strike found its mark. The contrast with his current helplessness burned worse than any wound.
Then - a realization. When he'd instinctively swung at a near-miss earlier, the displaced air had...
"Pressure!" He grinned fiercely. "You don't cut wind - you displace it!"
Spotting a gap in the elemental assault, he chambered a punch not at the warriors, but at the air itself. His fist moved with perfect economy, every ounce of his Martial God training concentrated into a single motion. The resulting shockwave ripped through the wind constructs, scattering them like autumn leaves before a gale.
"Clever boy." The Wind Guardian's chuckle vibrated through the storm. "But cleverness burns bright and fast."
Above them, a hundred new warriors materialized, then a thousand - an entire sky teeming with translucent foes.
Drakon didn't hesitate. Drawing Dawnbreaker once more, he willed the flames along its edge to merge with the very wind that opposed him. The blade became a living thing, crimson fire weaving with stolen gusts in a deadly helix.
"ONE SWORD BECOMES A THOUSAND WINDS!"
Each swing released razor-edged gales that multiplied midair, becoming a storm of his own making. The flaming cyclones devoured the wind warriors in bursts of scarlet light, their dissolution sending shockwaves through the artificial tempest.
In that moment of rupture, Drakon moved. Mounting a flame construct, he rode the updraft through the storm's collapsing crown - through the eye of the needle he'd identified earlier.
The silence was sudden and absolute.
Before him stood the fully manifest Wind Guardian, no longer just a voice but a towering figure of shifting mist and moonlight. "Well fought, Drakon of the Draconic Seal." Its voice now carried the gentleness of a zephyr through spring leaves. "Remember this lesson when next you face the Bound Demon King: The storm cannot be broken by force. Only understood, only traveled."
Drakon bowed deeply, his entire body trembling with exhaustion and hard-won insight. As he rose, he noticed the dandelion seed resting unharmed in his palm - its delicate fibers untouched by all that fury.
Whole.
Unbroken.
Like him.