The horizon split with fury.
The sky didn't break with thunder. It fractured like glass, lines of light crawling outward. Dragons wheeled above, their cries shaking the ground, their fire washing the horizon in molten gold. And in the midst of that ruin stood two figures.
One was a man — Vyomar, the last Dragonlord. His armor was scorched, his sword chipped, his breath ragged. But his eyes still burned, and in them was the fire of every dragon that still followed him.
The other was Asurendra, the Devourer of Sun, stretched across the battlefield like a living eclipse. Its wings blotted out the stars. Its voice was a shadow that crawled under the skin.
"You stole their fire," the Devourer said, its words rolling like thunder. "You thought you could bind them. You thought they were yours."
Vyomar raised his sword, gripping it with both hands. "I did not bind them. They chose me."
Flame wrapped the blade, a thousand roars echoing with him. He charged. The Devourer met him.
Their battle tore the world apart. Mountains split, rivers boiled, the sky screamed. Vyomar's sword bit into shadow, Asurendra's claws ripped through steel. For three days and nights they fought, man against nightmare, fire against hunger. And on the third day, Vyomar struck true. His blade pierced the Devourer's heart.
The beast shrieked, its voice shattering the heavens. Light burst across the battlefield. The shadow fell.
Vyomar fell to his knees. His sword dropped from his hand. For a moment, he allowed himself to breathe. He had won.
But the silence was wrong.
The dragons circled above, not triumphant, not relieved. Their eyes burned with something he had never felt before through the bond. Hunger. Rage.
"No," Vyomar whispered, reaching upward. "Stay with me. Please."
The bond snapped.
One by one, the dragons broke free. They screamed, and the sound was not the song of allies but the howl of beasts. They turned, wings folding into dives, fire pouring indiscriminately onto city and field. Villages burned. Armies scattered. Men and women screamed beneath the fire of creatures they once worshiped.
Vyomar screamed with them. "No! Stay with me!" But they no longer heard. His bond was gone.
And mankind, desperate, turned on the dragons.
The Five Houses rose. Together, they swore unity, not from loyalty but from fear. Spears pierced scales. Chains dragged beasts to the ground. Flames were drowned in rivers of blood. It was not battle, it was slaughter.
When the last dragon fell, the Houses made certain its memory would not return.
They carved its heart from its chest, still pulsing with fire. They fed it to a forge, mixing blood and emberstone until a throne of obsidian emerged, veins glowing faintly with heat.
They called it the Vyomkara Throne — the Throne of the Sky-Maker.
House Vale claimed it, crowning themselves the Flamebound Kings. On that seat they declared dominion, not only over men, but over fire itself.
The other Houses followed, carving their own empires from the bones of dragons. Thalrien, the wolf and the frost. Gravemourn, the tide and the storm. Kharovar, the mountain and the rune. Elaren, the shadow and the dream.
Five Thrones. Five Houses. Five crowns forged from betrayal and fear.
The dragons were gone. Vyomar was dead. And history itself was rewritten.
He was not remembered as the savior who slew the Devourer. No — the Houses named him betrayer, tyrant, curse. In their stories, Vyomar was the Devourer, and his death their victory.
Five hundred years passed.
Children grew beneath skies still scarred, faint cracks glowing above them. No one living had ever heard a dragon's roar. The Houses ruled, their banners rising from flame and frost and tide and stone and dream. And deep within Emberhold, the Vyomkara Throne pulsed faintly, its ember veins whispering as though the heart within it still remembered.