The wolf's massive head hovered just inches above him—frozen, motionless, as though seized by some invisible force. Its snout twitched once, then stilled again, suspended in the air like the pause before a storm.
Kealix's breath hitched. He dared to look up, and all he could see was the beast. Its mouth. Its teeth.
Each one was the size of a small child, except for the two enormous fangs toward the front—those were closer to the size of grown men. Each jagged, pristine tooth glistened like honed daggers. No decay, no wear—like they'd been sharpened deliberately. Maintained. They gleamed in the dim light, cruel and perfect, capable of impaling a man with terrifying ease.
Kealix's heart slammed in his chest. He stared into the dark void of the wolf's mouth—wet, cavernous, filled with saliva. A hot breath pulsed from within, humid and sour, brushing his skin like the prelude to death. This was it. This was where it ended. He would be devoured. Torn apart. But… why hadn't it happened yet?
Why was the wolf still hovering?
Did it want to prolong his fear? Was it savoring this moment, the way a cat toys with a dying mouse? No… No, this creature didn't feel intelligent. Not like that. It didn't seem capable of malice—not in the way a human would be. This thing was primal. Hungry. It would've devoured him already—unless something was stopping it.
I have to see. I have to understand what's happening.
He forced his eyes beyond the beast's enormous mouth, straining to see something—anything—beyond its bulk. But it was useless. The pressure, the sheer oppressive weight pouring from the monster, was unbearable. It pressed on his chest like an invisible mountain, crushing every muscle, every nerve. Even the unnatural strength he had gained through betrayal meant nothing against this creature's presence. He was a speck beneath a god.
Time crawled. Seconds stretched into eternities. The wolf's jaws remained open, suspended in the act of killing, saliva dangling from its fangs like strands of fate. Its massive red tongue pulsed, slick and wet, as if still eager to taste him.
Then… something changed.
Kealix's eyes sharpened. There—blood. It was faint, almost invisible at first, but it was there. Thin rivulets ran slowly down the beast's teeth, glistening crimson in the light. It moved like molasses, impossibly slow, as if time itself had chosen to grant Kealix clarity.
He blinked. Again.
Yes it was blood. Dripping from its mouth. And it was fresh.
A tremor ran through the creature. Its massive head twitched again, subtly. The pressure, that suffocating aura, began to lift—just slightly, like the loosening of a noose. It wasn't much, but it was enough. Kealix felt his neck unlock. Air rushed into his lungs as he slowly tilted his head up.
Relief surged through him—brief, disorienting. But along with it came dread. Because if the pressure was lifting… what had caused it? And what would he see?
He tilted his gaze upward, heart hammering in his ears. Time thickened. Every motion dragged like a dream.
The wolf's pitch-black fur glistened in the pale light, soaked with blood. It poured down from the top of its skull, running in streams across its snout and between its fangs. The beast's body trembled, not with rage—but with something else. Pain?
Kealix locked eyes with it.
And what he saw there rooted him to the earth.
The wolf wasn't snarling. It wasn't fighting. It wasn't even afraid.
Its eyes—those massive, gleaming orbs—were calm. Almost… relieved. As if the agony had released it from something deeper. It blinked once, slowly, and a final gush of blood spilled across its brow.
Kealix's breath caught. His mouth hung open, disbelief spreading like ice through his veins. The creature—this living nightmare—wasn't in control. It was being held here. Wounded. Powerless.
At the mercy of something else.
Something stronger.
But who?
Why?
Kealix stared, eyes wide, unmoving.
To an outsider, it might have seemed like minutes passed. But to Kealix, time had slowed to a crawl. Every heartbeat echoed like thunder in his ears, every breath was a struggle beneath the fading pressure that had kept him pinned. In reality, only seconds ticked by—but his perception, heightened by adrenaline and fear, stretched them into eternities.
That suffocating force—the crushing presence pressing down on his bones—was fading again. Gradually. Inch by inch. As if the world itself was loosening its grip.
And with it… the wolf.
The light in its eyes began to dim.
Not violently. Not with the desperation of a creature clinging to life. No… it was subtle. Peaceful, almost. Its pupils lost their sharpness. Their focus dulled. And in that last flicker of vitality, Kealix saw something he never expected.
Relief.
A glimmer of liberation. As if this monstrous beast, this towering nightmare, had just been freed from a lifetime of silent torment. From enslavement.
The emotion hit Kealix like a blade to the chest.
Pity.
Just for a moment, he felt sorry for it—this monster that had nearly devoured him. That had crushed the air from his lungs and held him in death's shadow. But that fragile compassion was instantly shattered by what came next.
He blinked.
Then looked higher.
And everything inside him froze.
That... that's what killed it? So easily?
His breath caught.
Above the dying wolf's head—looming above the entire battlefield—was another head. Vast. Alien. It had locked its massive jaws around the wolf's neck with terrifying precision. The teeth embedded deep into fur and flesh, unmoving, merciless.
And it was clear this wasn't a second wolf.
No.
This was something far bigger. Far worse.
The head was long and reptilian, snout covered in thick, gleaming crimson scales that shimmered like molten metal, pulsing with streaks of shifting black—like darkness made flesh. Six enormous horns spiraled out from its skull, each one crooked and brutal, angling in seemingly impossible directions, as if forged by chaos itself. Between those horns, eyes stared down—vast, unblinking voids of pure black. Like staring into an eclipse.
Kealix's thoughts stumbled over themselves.
That's… what a dragon looks like?
It made the wolf look small.
The dragon's fangs were longer than tree trunks, jagged and mismatched, pointing in every direction as if they weren't built to tear, but to ruin. Compared to the wolf's pristine dagger-like teeth, the dragon's were something else entirely—cruel tools of obliteration.
It didn't thrash. It didn't roar. It didn't make a single sound.
It simply bit down.
And waited.
Kealix couldn't understand why, and he didn't care. All logic, all curiosity, all fear—washed away beneath sheer awe.
The dragon dwarfed the beast it held, and the wolf itself had been at least 25 meters tall. That thing had towered over the buildings like a god. And yet now… it dangled like a broken toy in the jaws of a far greater predator.
So that's what we were up against all along, Kealix thought numbly.
Not this beast. Not the wolf. That was never the real danger.
He stared at the wolf's face, now slack with death's approach. Its eyes flickered, as if still trying to make sense of what had happened.
You were prey all along, Kealix continued in his mind.
You didn't stand a chance. None of us did.
His chest felt hollow. Not with fear—something heavier. He wasn't even sure what.
What a terrible fate.
And then the wolf twitched.
Once.
Twice.
Then all at once, it began to thrash violently, its body convulsing in primal terror. The calm was gone. The relief vanished. Now it knew. Now it understood.
It was going to die.
It shook its massive head back and forth with wild desperation. Blood splattered from the wounds on its neck, spraying into the air like crimson mist. Its claws tore at the earth. But the dragon didn't flinch. Didn't shift.
It simply bit harder.
Kealix could hear the pressure—bones grinding, flesh tearing. The dragon adjusted its grip just slightly. Just enough. The wolf couldn't escape. Wouldn't escape.
Then, with terrifying grace, the dragon lifted its colossal head—and with it, the entire wolf.
The limp creature rose like a sacrifice toward the heavens, mouth still slack, eyes wide with agony and disbelief. The dragon kept lifting, towering higher and higher, until its snout pointed nearly straight toward the sky.
Kealix's neck craned, eyes locked on the silhouette against the clouds, heart pounding.
Gods help us…
Kealix couldn't look away. Every part of him screamed to run, to hide, to do something—but he was frozen, not by fear, not anymore. No, what paralyzed him now was something deeper. A feeling older than instinct, heavier than terror.
Awe.
He watched the creature in the sky. At first, he had called it a dragon—but the longer he stared, the more wrong that word felt. This was no dragon. No mere beast from myth or story. It was… something else entirely.
The monster—no, the wyvern—was even more monstrous than he had first believed.
Two titanic wings stretched from its back like great veils of shadow and fire, each one so vast they could eclipse entire castles. They flexed slightly in the air, slow and deliberate, like sails catching wind from a god's breath. Below them, two legs—thick as castle towers and corded with muscle—hung in a poised, predatory stance. Its tail, long enough to coil around mountains, whipped lazily through the air, ending in a brutal, spiked tip that could skewer a giant clean through.
Its underbelly, which had once been hidden behind the glow of its chest, was layered in scales as pale and flawless as fresh snow. The contrast was almost beautiful—almost divine. But Kealix didn't mistake it for purity. This thing didn't shine with the light of salvation.
It burned.
From its back, jagged black spikes jutted out in chaotic angles like the spines of a demon. And in the center of its broad chest, just above where the ribcage would be, pulsed a radiant, otherworldly light—an azure glow that bled through its scales like a divine heart trying to break free.
Kealix felt his breath catch.
It's glowing…
At first, only its chest. Then, slowly, the glow began to spread—flowing outward, like light moving along the lines of a forgotten sigil. The edges of its crimson and black scales began to emit that same eerie, beautiful blue. As if they were being lit from within. Each scale began to shimmer—icy blue, near indigo—like the creature had been forged from dying stars.
The last scales to glow were those on its head. Kealix watched as the light traveled up the serpentine neck, creeping toward its monstrous face, toward the jaw still clenched tightly around the wolf's neck.
What is it doing…?
He didn't get an answer.
He got a miracle. Or a nightmare.
The wyvern opened its maw just slightly—still holding the wolf in place—and from the depths of its throat, a radiance began to grow. Brilliant, blinding, cerulean light poured between its teeth, like the heavens themselves were caught behind its fangs.
Then, without a sound of warning, it released it.
A beam of searing, blue-white energy erupted from its mouth like divine judgment. It wasn't fire. It wasn't breath. It was pure force. Reality bent around it. The sky itself seemed to tear.
The wolf never had a chance.
The moment the beam struck, its neck was gone—not torn, not burned—erased. Vaporized. Split from the body without resistance. One moment the beast had been whole, and the next… the head was falling, separated with absolute finality.
But the beam didn't stop.
It surged forward, extending far beyond its prey. It struck the edge of the dome—the same one Kealix had believed to be unbreakable. The blue light pierced it effortlessly. No crack. No delay. Just contact and annihilation.
The dome shattered like thin glass.
Its fragments scattered like meteors—but even as they fell, they crumbled into dust, dissolving before they could reach the ground. Not a single shard remained.
Kealix stared, wide-eyed, unable to move, unable to even process what he'd just witnessed. His ears were ringing. His heart thundered. The wolf's massive body tumbled from the sky like a fallen mountain. Its head—severed and lifeless—landed with a deafening crash only meters away from him, shaking the ground. The rest of the body landed a little farther off with an earth-splitting quake.
Still, Kealix didn't flinch.
Because the pressure—the crushing, suffocating weight that had pinned him earlier—was gone now. Gone completely.
But he didn't feel relieved.
Not in front of this.
The wolf, who had awakened its true form and toyed with them like insects, had been destroyed without effort. Without resistance. This wyvern hadn't struggled. It hadn't fought.
It had executed.
This is the real apex… Kealix thought, mind blank with disbelief.
That wolf—everything we feared—it wasn't even the main predator. It was just… food.
He swallowed hard.
We never stood a chance.
The wyvern turned its head slowly.
Its mouth opened.
And from its throat, a roar erupted—deep and raw, older than language itself. The sound didn't just echo—it shook. The very ground beneath Kealix trembled. The sky seemed to recoil. Trees bent. Air rippled.
He felt the vibration in his bones.
His soul.
Then, the wyvern's eyes shifted.
Downward.
Right at him.
Its neck lowered. Its great head descended like a falling star. And before long, those abyssal eyes—pools of endless darkness ringed with that unnatural blue glow—were staring directly into him.
Kealix couldn't breathe.
Couldn't move.
Couldn't think.
He was nothing before it. Just a speck. Just a breath.
The wyvern said nothing.
But it didn't need to.
Everything about it spoke.
You are beneath me.