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The pulses fizzled harmlessly against his field
The dragon's body was already surpassing the interference.
His reactor burned too hot, too fast, its force spilling outward in a swelling corona of blinding radiation.
The tundra itself responded. The snow hissed to steam.
The permafrost blistered.
Stones cracked and glowed red, bursting into flame.
Then came the fire blanket.
The ground around him ignited all at once, a sea of flame spilling out in every direction.
Western Siberia, frozen an hour ago, now writhed in fire.
The land blackened, molten veins spreading like an open wound, the sky itself smeared with choking smoke.
The dinosaurs watched from a distance, eyes wide.
"…He's burning the world," whispered Grey, blood dripping from her jaws.
Raptors flattened themselves to the ground.
Pterosaurs circled higher, unwilling to be near.
Even the mighty Spinosaurus, scarred but alive, backed away, his eyes narrowing with something dangerously close to fear.
On the Monarch observation deck, silence reigned.
Alarms blared, instruments overloaded, Geiger counters fried.
The technicians tore off headsets, shielding their faces from the blinding glow on-screen.
"Oh my God…" whispered Graham.
"He's entered… something else."
On the field, the change became visible.
Red lines carved themselves across Miraluz's silver scales, glowing like molten veins of magma.
Smoke vented from his body in massive white plumes, trailing skyward like volcanic columns.
His wings glowed at their edges, their membranes smoldering like banners of fire.
He had entered Red Lotus.
The Queen MUTO's screeches became frantic.
She limped backward, her broken arm dragging in the dirt, mandibles clicking in rising panic.
Around her, the surviving MUTOs trembled.
Some still fired EMP pulses.
Others tried to flee. But all of them felt it, the heat. The impossible, suffocating heat.
Miraluz's chest swelled. His throat vibrated with power too vast for words.
"Listen," he whispered. His voice was no longer a roar but a law.
"Listen to the silence of destruction."
The world seemed to hold its breath.
Then came the fire.
BOOOOMMMMM!!!
The burning ray ripped from his jaws like the scream of a sun, a column of pure thermonuclear energy.
The ground beneath it vaporized instantly, melting into rivers of magma.
Soil and stone bled red like torn flesh.
The Queen MUTO didn't even have time to run.
The beam struck her first. Her carapace blackened, bubbled, and collapsed in less than a heartbeat.
The heat didn't burn her; it annihilated her, atom by atom, flesh and bone erased into ash.
One moment a titan, the next a memory.
The males and females nearby fared no better.
Their shrieks cut off almost instantly as their bodies disintegrated.
Armor plates split. Internal organs boiled.
Cells burned away. In seconds, there was nothing left but drifting shadows, black flakes rising into the inferno.
And then,
A broken roar.
From the edge of the molten crater, the MUTO Prime raised her battered head.
Her body refused to obey her, legs twisted, chest collapsed.
But her eyes burned with disbelief.
She saw the dragon in the sky, wings spread, body blazing, the earth itself bending beneath his fury.
And at last, she understood.
So this… this is what it means to be Alpha.
Her mind flickered with bitter clarity.
'I am called Alpha only because of my strength… strength that ends here.'
The dragon's shadow loomed, brighter than any sun, hotter than any star.
'But he… he is Alpha, because there is no higher place to ascend.'
The MUTO Prime tried to roar again, but only a rattling gasp left her throat.
His head dropped into the molten earth, sinking into silence.
The swarm was gone. The hive was gone. The world was fire.
Above it all, Miraluz floated, burning, eternal.