Silenus had lived for four thousand years. He had seen empires rise and fall like waves upon sand. He had witnessed the birth of stars and the death of moons. He had catalogued in his mind, vast as a library, every war, every peace, every moment of glory and shame of his race. But in all those millennia, he had never felt the Chorus break like this.
It wasn't just silence. Silence would have been merciful. This was worse. It was as if nineteen souls had been torn from each other and now screamed in the solitude of their own guilt. He could feel them all, fragments of thought that scratched at his consciousness like glass shards.
*Pyrrhus wants to die.*
The youngest among them's thought was a burning blade. Pyrrhus was only five hundred years old, barely a hatchling in the eyes of the elders. He had been the first to strike, dragged by the Chorus's fury like a leaf in a storm. And now his mind was a vortex of images: elven faces dissolving, children trying to run, mothers attempting to protect their young with bodies that became nothing.
*I'll stop him,* thought Silenus, but the thought itself was tired. How many times could he prevent one of them from throwing themselves into the void? How many times could he force life into those who no longer wanted it?
He stood on his personal island in the Aetherium, a fragment of floating rock the size of a mountain, suspended ten thousand meters above the world they had just devastated. He called it the Memory Vault, and every surface was carved with runes that told the history of their species. Now those runes seemed to accuse him.
*Look at us,* they seemed to say. *Look at us, we who were gods. Look at us, reduced to weapons in cleverer hands.*
A tremor crossed the air, not physical but mental. Someone was coming. Silenus didn't need to turn to know who it was. After four thousand years, he recognized every dragon's mental signature like a familiar face.
"Aetherios," he said, his voice a deep rumble that made the stone itself vibrate. He didn't turn. He couldn't look their leader in the eyes. Not yet.
"We need to talk."
Aetherios's voice was different. Once it had resonated with the authority of one who had led their race through ages of glory. Now it was... empty. Like an echo in an abandoned cave.
"Talk?" Silenus laughed, a bitter sound that held none of its former warmth. "What should we talk about, brother? How we just committed the worst genocide in history? How we were manipulated like newborn hatchlings? Or perhaps how Vash'nil is no closer to us than he was this morning?"
He finally turned, and what he saw stopped him. Aetherios, the Sky Lord, who had faced the Leviathans in the Deep Wars, who had tamed the primordial storms... was crying. Tears of liquid fire ran down from his golden eyes, leaving smoking furrows on the silver scales of his snout.
"I failed," Aetherios whispered, and in those two words was the weight of four thousand years of leadership. "I led the Chorus to damnation."
"No." The word came out harder than Silenus intended. "No, you won't take all the blame. That's the easy way, brother. We were all in the Chorus. We all felt the rage. We all chose to act."
"But I gave the final order. I—"
"You did what any of us would have done." Silenus approached, his membranous wings opening slightly in a gesture of comfort he didn't really feel. "The problem isn't blame, Aetherios. The problem is what we do now."
A new tremor in the air. Others were coming. One after another, the surviving dragons materialized on the Memory Vault. Thargolion, Wings of Remorse, whose once-crimson scales now seemed faded. Umbraxis, Shadow of the First Error, who moved as if carrying the world's weight on his shoulders. Vashtara, Mother of Sorrow, whose eyes hadn't stopped crying since they realized the error.
And Pyrrhus. The young one was little more than a skeleton covered in scales, consumed by remorse in just a few hours. His eyes were dull, empty, like windows on an abandoned house.
"We must find him," said Vashtirel, Guardian of Lost Hatchlings. She had been the one to raise Vash'nil after his mother died in childbirth. Her voice trembled with a desperation Silenus had never heard from her. "We must find our little one."
"How?" Khorvane's voice was sharp as the stone she was named for. "We destroyed the only lead we had. Who will help us now? Who will trust us after what we've done?"
"The Leviathans," suggested Tharsilexa, Silent Flight. "They've always maintained neutrality. Perhaps—"
"The Leviathans hate us," Umbrikhor interrupted her. "They've always hated us, since the Deep Wars. The only reason they don't attack us is they fear our united strength. But now? Now that we're broken?"
Silence fell over them like a shroud. Silenus closed his eyes, immersing himself in his memories. Four thousand years of knowledge, of experience, of mistakes and successes. Somewhere in that vast mental archive there had to be an answer.
That's when he felt it. A detail, small but significant, that he had noticed during the attack but had been submerged by the Chorus's fury. He concentrated, bringing the memory to the surface.
The spell. The bait that had drawn them to Crysillia. There was something familiar about it, now that he could examine it calmly. Not in its structure, which was alien and corrupted, but in its... signature. Like a painter trying to imitate another's style but still leaving traces of their own touch.
"Death Angels," he whispered.
Everyone turned to him.
"What?" asked Aetherios.
"The kidnapping spell. Its signature... there's a trace of contractual magic. The kind only Death Angels use."
Death Angels. Entities that existed in the spaces between worlds, cosmic mercenaries who sold their services for a price measured in souls. If they were involved...
"But Angels don't kidnap," objected Pyrgholia, Fire of Remorse. "They kill. It's in their name."
"Unless," Silenus said slowly, as the pieces came together in his mind, "someone paid a price so high that even they couldn't refuse."
"How high?" asked Aetherios, though from his tone he seemed to already know the answer.
"Thousands of souls. Maybe tens of thousands." Silenus looked down, toward the world beneath the clouds, where Crysillia was now just a memory of ash. "The kind of payment only someone truly desperate or truly evil would be willing to make."
"Or both," added Silvashtir, Memory of Innocence, grimly.
A new silence, but this one was different. It wasn't the silence of despair, but of understanding. There was an enemy. A real enemy. Someone who had orchestrated all this, who had used their love for Vash'nil as a weapon against them.
"We must move," said Aetherios, and for the first time since they'd realized the error, there was a glimmer of his old authority in his voice. "If the Death Angels are involved, then Vash'nil is in mortal danger. They won't keep him forever."
"Where do we go?" asked Pyrrhus, and the fact that he was speaking, that he was thinking about something beyond his own death, was already progress.
Silenus looked east, where, far beyond the horizon, stretched the infinite ocean.
"We go to the Abyss," he said. "To the Leviathans."
"They'll kill us," Khorvane said with flat certainty.
"Perhaps," Silenus admitted. "But they're also the only ones who might have information about power movements this large. If someone paid the Death Angels with thousands of souls, the Leviathans will know. They feel every death that touches water."
"It's madness," someone murmured.
"Yes," Silenus agreed. "But what isn't, after today?"
He looked at his brothers and sisters, these ancient and powerful beings reduced to shadows of themselves by guilt. And in that moment, he made a decision that would change everything.
"I'll go," he said. "Alone."
"No." The answer came from all of them, in unison, an echo of the old Chorus.
"Yes," Silenus insisted. "Think about it. All together we're a threat. One alone... one alone is a supplicant. A penitent seeking help."
"They'll kill you before you can speak," said Vashtara.
"Perhaps. But if they don't, if they listen even for a moment... then we'll have a chance."
He turned to Aetherios. "You keep the Chorus united. Don't let it break completely. Pyrrhus needs all of us, and we need him. We are nineteen. We must remain nineteen."
"Seventeen," Aetherios corrected bitterly. "Vash'nil is lost, and you're about to—"
"Nineteen," Silenus repeated firmly. "Vash'nil is alive, I feel it. And I will return."
He approached the edge of his island, where the clouds opened onto an abyss of ten thousand meters. But before jumping, he turned one last time.
"There's something else," he said, and his voice was so low they had to strain to hear it. "During the attack... I sensed something. A survivor. An elf, young, with an unusual talent. She absorbed part of the Mother Crystal's corruption."
"And?" asked Aetherios.
"And now she's something new. Something we've never seen before. Her magical signature... has changed. She's become something that could kill us, if she wanted."
"Then we should—"
"No." Silenus shook his head. "We'll do nothing. We've done enough. But keep an eye on her. Because I have a feeling that before all this ends, we'll need each other."
"An elf? What could a dragon ever need from an elf?" asked Khorvane with disdain.
Silenus looked at her, and in his ancient eyes was a sadness beyond words.
"Forgiveness," he said simply. "We might need her forgiveness."
And with that, he threw himself into the void.
The fall was freedom. For a few moments, as he plummeted through the clouds, he could forget. Forget the guilt, forget the horror, forget the weight of four thousand years of life. There was only the wind, the void, the promise of an impact that could end everything.
But no. Not yet. Not until Vash'nil was found.
He opened his wings two thousand meters from the ocean's surface, the stretched membrane catching the air with a snap that echoed like thunder. He glided east, toward the deep waters where the Leviathans had reigned since before dragons learned to fly.
Behind him, in the Aetherium, eighteen dragons watched him go. And for the first time since the Chorus had broken, they shared a single thought:
*May the gods that no longer exist protect him.*
But Silenus didn't pray to dead gods. As he flew toward the unknown, toward a likely fate of death, he thought of only one thing. Not Vash'nil, not his brothers, not even his own survival.
He thought of a young elf, alone among the ruins of her city, with eyes that burned with a light that shouldn't exist.
*Forgive us,* he thought, even though he knew she couldn't hear him. *Or destroy us. But whatever you choose, do it quickly. Because I don't know how much longer we can bear this weight.*
The ancient wings carried him east, toward the abyss, toward a fate no one could predict.
And in the broken Chorus, for an instant, there was something that was neither hope nor despair.
It was waiting.
Waiting for a punishment they knew they deserved.
Or for a redemption they didn't dare hope for.
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*End of Chapter 4*
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