The knight slowly sheathed his sword.
A heavy silence now hung over the sandy field.
The worm was dead. The slave too… probably.
But as he turned to rejoin the others, his breath caught.
A shiver.
An immense weight.
A primal instinct screaming through his flesh.
His eyes slowly turned toward the chasm.
Where the slave had just disappeared.
And then he felt it.
A presence. No—a pressure.
As if something colossal, ancient, was opening its eyes beneath the earth.
A heavy, burning, ageless breath.
Like… a dragon.
The knight froze.
A drop of sweat slid down his temple.
— …?!
The mage, still mounted above on her horse, turned her head toward him.
"Is there a problem, knight?" she asked, her tone calm but sharp.
He remained silent for a moment, eyes lost in the abyss.
Then, he looked away.
"…No. Nothing."
He took a deep breath, trying to erase what he had just felt.
"It was probably just… an illusion."
But he knew it wasn't.
He could still feel it.
There, in the shadow of the chasm, something was breathing.
Something forgotten.
Something… that had just awakened.
With the calm restored, the chains resumed their sinister clinking.
The surviving guards were regaining control of the column.
The giant worm was now nothing more than a smoking corpse, and the slave who had tried to escape… was nothing more than a memory.
Among the slaves, some collapsed to the ground, panting, exhausted—but… relieved.
"He got what he deserved," muttered an old man, his back hunched, his eyes burning with anger. "To think he could make it out alone? Hmph."
"A fool," spat another. "He wanted to break free? Leave us all behind?! He would've brought us more suffering."
"He ran like he was free," said a woman, bitterly. "Like he was better than us. Let him burn in that pit."
"Good riddance," someone else whispered. "He should've died long before that."
They didn't all agree, but fear and misery had extinguished empathy in many. In this desert, jealousy became armor. Survival instinct smothered pity.
A teenager, eyes filled with sorrow, murmured under his breath:
"…He looked different today. Stronger. Almost… alive."
A sharp slap echoed. It came from an old woman.
"Shut your mouth, idiot! Those who think like him die like him. Don't dream. You want to live? Stay down. And keep walking."
The boy lowered his gaze.
The desert wind blew again.
No one looked toward the chasm.
No one… except a little girl with strangely bright eyes, chained at the very end of the column. She whispered softly, as if she had heard something.
"…He's not dead."
---
Darkness swallowed him.
He was falling. Again. Still.
The wind howled in his ears.
His body felt both heavy and weightless, as if it no longer truly existed.
Am I dying now…?
All those days. All that suffering.
Only to end up… here.
In a bottomless pit.
What irony.
He had finally broken his chains… only to fall again.
To vanish like a grain of sand swept away by the wind.
His eyelids grew heavy.
His vision blurred.
Life was slipping away.
Then—
Everything stopped.
No more wind.
No more falling.
Nothing.
He was… suspended in the void.
His eyes widened.
What…?
The air suddenly grew dense. Crushing.
Every breath hurt, as if the very atmosphere weighed tons.
…What is this?
Something was approaching.
Something vast.
Terrifying.
Behind him, deep within the chasm…
A light.
Tiny white spheres danced in the darkness.
Ethereal particles, like stars torn from the sky.
He slowly turned his head.
And his breath caught.
Below, nestled in a massive cavern,
a colossal shape stirred weakly.
Dulled scales, the size of houses, reflected a dying glow.
Wings folded like ancient mountains.
Two half-closed eyes, glowing with a pale light.
A dragon.
Enormous.
Crushed by time, yet still… terrifying.
It seemed to be taking its final breath.
Impossible…
Dragons.
Mythical creatures.
As rare as they were fearsome.
Their reserves of mana surpassed anything that walked this earth.
And this one…
It was dying.
He felt it—a wave, invisible yet overwhelming, surging toward him.
The air vibrated. Mana saturated the space.
A dragon at death's door…
Releasing everything it had stored over centuries.
A torrent of raw energy, ready to reduce its own body to ashes.
But as the surge of energy washed over him,
something strange occurred.
The mana… didn't scatter.
It… flowed toward him.
"Wh… What?"
His body began to tremble.
The spheres of light swirled around him, piercing his skin, his veins, his bones.
It burns…
A monstrous heat erupted in his chest.
As if his insides were being torn apart, consumed from within.
He tried to scream… but no sound came out.
Each fragment of mana ripped something out of him,
then reattached it—twisted, altered.
He felt his bones crack, his muscles tighten, his organs scream.
Am I… dying?
Below him, the dragon exhaled one last time.
Its massive body began to crack,
disintegrating into glowing ash that engulfed everything around it with a muffled roar.
And he—
He didn't have time to understand any more.
The world became light.
Then pain.
Then, finally… nothing.
"Where am I…?" he whispered.
His voice vanished instantly, swallowed by the void.
No echo. No walls. No sky. No ground.
Just darkness. A darkness so dense it seemed alive, pressing on his chest like a mountain. There was no up or down, no time or space. He was floating… or falling… or drowning in something beyond comprehension.
But then, in the distance…
A flicker.
A black light.
It was a mask.
Suspended in the emptiness.
It shimmered with an inverted glow, as if the darkness itself recoiled around it.
A black mask.
Simple.
Mouthless.
Two empty eye slits—and yet… it was looking at him. He could feel it.
A shiver ran through him. Not of fear—
But instinct.
He had to go to that mask.
It was a truth etched in his bones, his flesh, the part of him that had always screamed to be freed.
So he began to run.
But how could he run?
There was no ground.
His steps made no sound.
And yet, he moved. Toward the object. Toward the end. Toward the beginning.
But as soon as he started, something grabbed him.
A hand.
From the void, it wrapped around his ankle.
Then another.
And another.
Dozens, then hundreds.
Whole arms—withered, burned, blackened.
Hands that belonged to no human form.
They clutched at his arms, his legs, his throat, his heart.
He screamed. Fought back.
But for every hand he tore away, two more emerged.
They whispered…
Acidic murmurs, twisted by hate:
— You think you can run?
— You're a slave.
— You'll never change.
— You're just trash.
— You should have died in the desert.
— Your existence is worthless…
His head spun.
He saw their faces—slaves who had betrayed him, guards who had beaten him, the voices of those he loved who had abandoned him.
And amid it all, a soft voice, foreign, ethereal:
— You've always been alone… so here I am.
He turned his head.
The mask was closer.
It glowed.
It waited for him.
He struggled. Screaming, vomiting hate.
Each movement was a nightmare.
He felt arms cracking his ribs.
Fingers sinking into his flesh.
The whispers becoming screams, insults, truths twisted by pain.
But he kept going.
He kept moving.
Crawling.
Screaming.
His eyes bled.
His muscles burned.
His mind fractured.
But he didn't stop.
And as he came within reach of the mask, he roared in a guttural voice, more beast than man:
"I AM NOT WEAK!"
In a burst of fury, he tore the final hands from his body and leapt toward the mask.
He seized it.
And everything stopped.
A breath.
Then an explosion.
The void cracked.
The nothingness was devoured.
Black lightning burst in every direction.
The world trembled.
As if reality itself rejected this contact.
He floated again, the mask in his hands.
He raised it slowly, staring at it.
And a voice echoed.
Not in the air.
But within him.
–You've found me… so let me embrace you. Together, we will be more than pain. More than hatred. More than weakness…
He closed his eyes.
And he put on the mask.