The border camps were places of desperation.
Isoprism was no different — a patchwork settlement of torn tents, rusted barricades, and watchtowers made from scavenged steel. Beyond its walls stretched endless wilderness, crawling with beasts. Inside, the people lived like shadows: thin, weary, and afraid. They knew they were not soldiers, nor heroes. They were bait — the outer skin of the human fortress.
When monsters came, it was the border camps that bled first.
Mahima lived there, a woman whose body carried both exhaustion and a fragile flame of hope. Her belly was swollen with new life, and though many told her a child in this world was a curse, she refused to believe it. Each day she pressed her hands gently over her stomach and whispered:
"You will live. You will see a better world."
The camp had no luxuries. Water was rationed by the cup, food by the mouthful. Mutant meat was forbidden for the border folk; only the stronger within the central camps were allowed to consume it, to keep their strength. The border people were left with scraps: roots, stale bread, sometimes even weeds boiled into bitter soup.
But Mahima endured. Her strength came not from her body, but from her will.
Rumors traveled like wind in places like Isoprism. People spoke in whispers of a creature darker than night itself — a dragon whose wings blotted out the sky, whose breath was death. Some called it a myth, a nightmare told to keep the weak in line. But the elders swore it was real.
The Black Dragon.
Every story ended the same way: no one had ever survived seeing it. Entire battalions had disappeared without a trace when it came. Even the espers, with all their power, spoke of it in silence.
Mahima prayed she would never see it.
The night it came, the sky split apart.
A roar, ancient and thunderous, rolled across the plains. The very earth seemed to tremble. People rushed from their shacks and tents, eyes wide in terror. A shadow passed over the moon — vast, winged, monstrous.
Then came the flames.
The Black Dragon descended like a storm of darkness, its scales swallowing the torchlight, its eyes burning with malice. The barricades of Isoprism melted like wax under its breath. Watchtowers crumbled, and with a sweep of its tail, entire rows of huts were flattened.
Screams tore through the camp. Some tried to flee, others fought with rusty blades and makeshift weapons. None of it mattered. Against the dragon, they were nothing but paper before fire.
Mahima ran. Not for herself, but for the child she carried. Her lungs burned, her legs faltered, but she forced herself onward through the smoke and chaos. Around her, people fell, swallowed by flame or crushed beneath wings that stretched wider than houses.
She reached the edge of the camp when the shadow fell over her.
Mahima turned, clutching her belly, and saw the dragon looming above. Its maw opened, the heat of its breath suffocating, its teeth like jagged spears. She knew then that her story would end here.
But even in her final moments, she thought not of death. She pressed her hand against her stomach one last time. she whispered "I'm sorry… I couldn't save you."
The Black Dragon's jaws closed around her, and the world went dark.
Isoprism was erased that night.
When dawn broke, nothing remained but ash and ruin. The camp, its people, even its memory — gone. And with it, Mahima.
A few days later, a government rescue team arrived at the site, searching for survivors. They walked among the rubble, the burnt husks of buildings, and the scorched earth. Smoke still rose from smoldering ruins. The team found no life left to save. Only the silence of death and destruction remained.
The legend of the Black Dragon began here, whispered in fear — a story of fire, destruction, and a camp that had vanished in a single night.