This world has an end.
Not in the literal sense where tectonic plates abruptly cut off and seawater spills into a bottomless cosmic void. Nor is it an invisible wall bounding a simulated reality. The end of this world is a conceptual limit, a psychological and spiritual line of demarcation where hope stops breathing, and despair becomes the only air left to inhale.
On old maps drawn on sheepskin by brave cartographers—most of whom never returned home—this region was often left blank. Terra Incognita. Or, if the mapmaker possessed a bit of dark humor, the region was merely marked with a faint sketch of a skull or an ancient warning inscription: "Here dwell monsters."
However, for those who truly understood the history of blood and tears of this world, the emptiness on the map held a weight that pressed upon the soul. It was not merely empty land; it was a scar that never healed on the face of this Lower World.
At the northernmost tip of the continent, very far from the glittering magic stone lights of Orario's streets, and far from the ambitions of those chasing glory inside the Dungeon, lay a place forgotten by the gods.
Or perhaps, more accurately, a place feared even by those who claimed to be immortal and omnipotent.
Dragon Valley.
The sky here was never blue. It was as if bright pigments and sunlight had been forcibly scraped off the canvas of the universe by giant fingernails. Black clouds rolled permanently, thick and dense like spilled ink thickening, forming a massive cyclone vortex that seemed to want to swallow the earth whole. The clouds were so low it felt as if one could touch them if standing on a hill, feeling the wet and cold texture of death.
Behind those billows of clouds, lightning flashed in dirty purple and blood red. Its light illuminated the shattered landscape in a horrifying stroboscopic blink. Yet, strangely, no sound of thunder was heard.
The silence here was of an unnatural kind. The sound of nature's explosions was muffled, swallowed raw by the roar of a wind far more terrible and dominant. Wind that did not merely blow, but screamed. The sound of its friction against sharp rocks sounded like the wailing of millions of restless souls.
In the midst of that deadly elemental chaos, an anomaly occurred.
A beam of emerald green light shot through the storm, splitting the pitch darkness like a hot needle piercing wax. The light moved against the wind current, defying the natural laws governing this cursed valley.
It was not a comet straying from its orbit, nor a dying shooting star.
It was Barbatos.
The Anemo Archon, who had now shed his human mask as the bard Venti, had returned to his original form. He stopped right at the edge of a granite cliff overlooking the colossal valley, hovering inches above the scorched ground.
That form was a pure manifestation of freedom unbound by the material of flesh and bone. His body was made of wind condensed into a slender and majestic humanoid shape. There were no human facial features there; no nose to smell sulfur, no mouth to sip wine. Only a silhouette of light that constantly shifted and changed shape like holy incense smoke.
He wore a robe woven from cirrus clouds and remnants of starlight he had gathered from the upper atmosphere. On his back, a pair of giant aurora wings beat slowly. The wings consisted of feathers of light radiating a gradation of teal, white, and pale gold.
Every time the wings flapped, Anemo light particles fell like heavenly pollen. However, the darkness of Dragon Valley was so hungry that the particles were instantly swallowed, extinguished the moment they moved a few inches away from the God's body.
Cyan eyes shining brightly from behind his facial silhouette gazed downward. Those two points of light pierced the fog, dust, and darkness, seeing what mortal eyes could not see.
Usually, this entity was the embodiment of cheerfulness, song, and carefree freedom. Yet, for the first time since he arrived in this world, the figure who usually symbolized freedom froze.
The movement of his wings halted for a moment, hanging in the vibrating air.
The view down there was not merely a valley. It was a mass grave for logic and hope. A monument of destruction erected upon the carcass of human courage.
The valley, a giant crater spanning miles, was surrounded by an impossible wall of wind. Giant tornadoes that never stopped spinning formed an interconnecting natural barricade—an Eternal Storm Fortress.
The wind there did not blow; it tore. This wall of wind was so dense, spinning at a constant supersonic speed, that the air particles inside felt as hard as an iron wall. It would grind rocks into fine dust in seconds, and rip living flesh into red mist before they even realized they had died.
Barbatos knew this was no natural phenomenon. Nature, no matter how wild, has rhythm, cycle, and harmony. This storm was chaotic, dissonant, and full of hatred. This was the residue of broken magic power, a defense mechanism guarding the outside world from what was inside, while simultaneously keeping what was inside from getting out.
Barbatos reached out his hand of light, letting his fingertips touch the edge of the ferocious storm.
He was the God of Wind. All types of wind should have bowed to him, greeted him as ruler, or at least yielded him a path.
However, the moment he touched the storm wall, he jerked back.
Not because of physical pain, but because of an emotional pain that slammed into his core.
"This wind..." Barbatos's voice echoed.
The voice did not issue from a physical mouth, but resonated directly into the ether. It was a dual voice, overlapping between a clear youthful vocal and a commanding ancient echo, creating a haunting harmony.
"...this is not natural wind. This is not wind born of air pressure differences or the earth's rotation. This is Spirit wind."
He could feel it. Its texture, its scent, its sorrow.
The storm confining this valley, preventing anything from leaving and anything from entering... this was the manifestation of Aria's power.
Barbatos realized the painful irony. This storm was a cage, as well as a shield. Aria, the lost Great Spirit of Wind, was forced to use her own power to seal the monster inside the valley. She was forced to build her own prison, preventing the monster from destroying the outside world, yet at the same time, that act bound her inseparably to the monster.
She was the warden, as well as the eternal prisoner.
Barbatos shifted his gaze from the storm wall to the valley floor. His eyes pierced the darkness, seeking the source of all this suffering.
In the center of the vast ruined plain, where the ground had melted into obsidian glass from the heat of past battles, lay the nightmare.
The One-Eyed Black Dragon.
Seeing it in person was far more terrifying than merely hearing Alfia's stories. Its size was beyond human comprehension. Nearly five hundred meters from the tip of a snout full of spear-sharp fangs to the tip of a spiked tail, its body coiled like a living black mountain range.
Its scales were an anomaly in themselves. They were not merely pitch black; they possessed the property of absorbing light. No reflection, no sheen. Any light that fell onto their surface instantly vanished, creating a visual effect as if there were a dragon-shaped black hole in the middle of the valley. Its existence was the antithesis of light and life.
The monster was sleeping.
Or at least, in a state of post-war stasis.
Its single crimson eye was shut tight. Its breath was slow and heavy, escaping giant nostrils with a hissing sound like hot steam venting from a volcanic crevice. Every exhalation created a small dust storm swirling around its face, vibrating the ground for a radius of several kilometers.
Barbatos could see the gruesome wound on the left side of its face—an empty and shattered eye socket. The mark of the eye lost to the slash of Albert Waldstein's sword, the Mercenary King, a thousand years ago. The wound had not healed perfectly. The surrounding flesh looked rotting and pulsed with a dark purple hue, emitting poisonous miasma smoke.
That was proof that this monster could be wounded.
However, Barbatos did not waste time staring at the dragon's face. His elemental eyes, capable of seeing the flow of life energy, locked onto a specific point.
The giant dragon's chest.
Barbatos furrowed his brow—a metaphorical expression on his face of light.
There were no chains extending to a cave behind the dragon. There was no separate prison as he had previously suspected. The reality was far more horrific and invasive.
In the center of the dragon's chest, between the gaps of impenetrable steel scales, lay a foreign object.
A giant black crystal, the size of a small house, half-embedded into the dragon's flesh.
The crystal was no ornament. Thick, pulsing veins of dragon flesh grew around the crystal, penetrating into it, as if the crystal were an extra organ forcibly grafted on. The crystal pulsed in rhythm with the dragon's heartbeat.
Thump... Thump...
And inside that murky, pulsing crystal... was her.
Aria.
Time seemed to stop for Barbatos.
He realized a fatal misunderstanding in his plan. He thought Aria was imprisoned somewhere in this valley. But no.
She was inside the dragon itself.
Soundlessly, Barbatos glided down from the cliff. He manipulated the air density around him so as not to cause the slightest whooshing sound. He landed lightly, as light as a feather, atop one of the dragon's ribs that protruded like a stone pillar.
He now stood directly above the heart of the calamity. He was only a few meters away from the black crystal embedded in the monster's chest.
The smell here was nauseating. The scent of old blood, ozone, sulfur, and rotting despair. But Barbatos ignored all that. He stepped closer, gazing into the semi-transparent surface of the crystal.
Inside, a female figure floated.
Barbatos stared at that face. Memories from his old life on Earth, memories of the DanMachi story he had once read and watched, surged to the surface with full force.
It was the face of Ais Wallenstein.
The resemblance was extraordinary, absolutely identical. The jawline, the shape of the eyes, the sharp nose—everything was a perfect blueprint of the Sword Princess. It was no wonder a creature like Revis in the future would mistake Ais for Aria. They were like mirror images, separated only by time and cruel fate.
Aria wore a simple white dress. The dress that should have symbolized purity and grace now looked dull, gray, and almost transparent, as if the fabric itself was weary with age.
There was no flush of life in her cheeks. Her skin was deathly pale, nearly transparent.
What made Barbatos's core churn was what was happening to her body.
Aria's body was not free. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of fine red and black veins of dragon flesh penetrated the crystal, then stabbed into Aria's body.
The veins embedded themselves in her back, her chest, her shoulders, and her neck.
They fused with her nervous system. They fused with her divine blood flow.
Barbatos saw the energy flow with horrifying clarity.
Glug... Glug...
There was a constant stream of green particles—pure wind essence—being forcibly drawn from Aria's body, flowing through those veins, into the dragon's heart.
The dragon was draining Aria.
The monster was using Aria's infinite Great Spirit essence to heal its wounds, strengthen its scales, and maintain its immortality. Aria was a living battery. A food source that never ran out.
But that wasn't all. Barbatos saw an energy flow moving in the opposite direction.
There was a command impulse sent from the dragon's brain to Aria's body. A subconscious command forcing Aria to continuously project her wind magic outward.
The dragon was using Aria.
The monster utilized Aria's authority over the wind element to create the eternal storm surrounding the valley. It forced its victim to build a prison wall for herself. The storm protected the dragon from outside attacks while it slept, and prevented Aria from escaping because her power was diverted to maintain that wall.
Aria was the battery. Aria was the shield. Aria was the Seal itself.
The woman had been turned into a biological lock keeping the apocalypse contained in this valley. As long as Aria was there, the dragon would not leave, busy recovering. But if Aria were gone...
Aria's golden eyes inside the crystal opened slightly.
Her eyelids trembled softly, revealing golden irises that should have shone bright like the morning sun. But now, those eyes were dim.
Her gaze was vacant, passing through Barbatos's body of light without truly seeing him. No recognition. No hope.
She just... existed.
Like a broken doll forced to keep breathing. Her consciousness had been shattered, cracked into thousands of fragments by a thousand years of eternal torture. Inside her mind, perhaps she was still screaming at the sight of her husband dying. Inside her mind, perhaps she still hoped for her child's safety.
But in the real world, she was merely a machine component.
"..."
Above the sleeping dragon's body, the temperature dropped drastically in an instant.
Frost began to creep across the surface of the dragon's hot scales. The wind that usually swirled calmly around Barbatos's form now stopped completely, creating a suffocating vacuum within a ten-meter radius.
Silence. Absolute.
For the first time in the thousands of years of his existence—since he watched his bard friend die in Old Mondstadt—Barbatos felt pure anger.
This was not a fiery, explosive anger. This was a cold anger. Freezing like absolute zero.
Wind is the element of freedom. That is the law of the universe. Wind must not be bound. Wind must not be caged. And above all, the greatest sin in the eyes of the Archon is when wind is forced to become an instrument of torture against itself.
Enslaving the wind to restrain freedom? That was the antithesis of everything Barbatos stood for.
"What has..." Barbatos's voice sounded.
His voice trembled. Not out of fear. But because he was holding back a colossal power that wanted to explode out of his body. If he released his control even slightly, his Anemo shockwave would bury the entire valley.
"...this monster done to you?"
The desire to destroy the dragon exploded in his mind. He wanted to summon a typhoon-level Gale, he wanted to bring down a mountain and crush that damn lizard's head with it.
However, Barbatos held himself back. He took a deep breath—metaphorically speaking—he realized the precarious situation, the tactical trap set by fate (or the dragon's malicious cunning).
If he pulled Aria out now... the power source for the storm surrounding the valley would be cut off.
The wind wall would collapse. The seal would shatter.
The dragon would wake.
And with nothing left holding it in this valley, with no storm wall restricting its movement, it would be free.
It would fly south. Towards Orario. Towards human civilization that had just lost its strongest protectors (the Zeus and Hera Familia).
Taking Aria meant releasing a World Calamity. Barbatos would be the one opening Pandora's Box.
But... leave Aria here? Let her continue to have her essence milked, suffering in eternal silence just for the "safety" of a world that had already forgotten her?
No.
That was not an option.
Barbatos would rather destroy the world than let such injustice continue in the name of the "greater good."
Barbatos raised his hand of light. He lowered his body, kneeling upon the dragon's chest.
His palm touched the surface of the black crystal embedded in the monster's flesh.
Cold. Yet pulsing with the monster's slow and horrific heartbeat.
Ba-dum... Ba-dum...
"Forgive me, Aria," Barbatos whispered softly.
His voice was full of affection, in stark contrast to the murderous aura he projected toward the dragon. His eyes radiated an unshakeable determination of steel.
"The world may need this seal... the world may sleep soundly because of your sacrifice..."
Teal light began to gather at Barbatos's fingertips. His aurora wings spread wide, preparing to execute a high-level authority maneuver.
"...but you do not deserve to be the victim. No single soul deserves to bear the weight of the world alone forever."
Barbatos smiled—a cold smile of defiance, directed at the bleak fate and at the dragon sleeping beneath him.
"If plucking you out means waking this monster... if freeing you means destroying this natural prison..."
He pressed his hand harder against the crystal.
"...then let me take your place. I will build a new cage. A cage far stronger, one that requires neither blood nor tears to stand."
Atop the Black Dragon's chest, Barbatos prepared himself.
Not for a physical fight. But to pull off the greatest, most intricate, and most dangerous heist in the history of this world.
He was going to steal the key to the apocalypse, and replace it with a lock of his own making.
"Let's change the lock on this prison, you Ugly Lizard."