The first sign wasn't the roar.Not even the tremor.
It was a child screaming.
A single, high-pitched, tearing scream that cut through the main avenue like a blade:
"MOM… THE SKY IS FALLING!"
And everyone looked up.
The sky—normally blue above the city of a hundred thousand souls—was splitting open with black cracks, as if something enormous were tearing it apart from the inside.
The bells began to ring.First one… then two… then all of them.
RED ALERT.MONSTER ATTACK.
But no one was listening to orders anymore.Because between the parting clouds, three colossal shadows spread their wings.
Dragons.
One vast as a living mountain, its body covered in black stone scales glowing with veins of fractured mana.And two smaller ones—though no less monstrous—flying at its flanks.
When the main dragon roared, windows shattered across the entire city.Its breath was earth made sound—raw power vibrating through the air.
Citizens ran without knowing where to go.Mothers clutched their children.The elderly fell to the ground because the earth shook too violently to stand.
The walls trembled.Guards stepped back on pure instinct.
And then—
THE MAIN DRAGON DESCENDED.
Its shadow swallowed three city blocks.
A single beat of its wings unleashed a gale that hurled people into the sky like rag dolls, smashing them against walls, rooftops, lamp posts.
"TAKE COVER!" a captain roared from the western barricade.
But it was already too late.
The dragon opened its jaws—
And a dense beam of earthen mana, like a bolt of molten mountain lightning, fell upon the southern district.
An entire street vanished.Not destroyed.Not burned.
Erased.
Whole houses crushed beneath pillars of stone that erupted from the ground like colossal spears.
No one even had time to scream.
In the central plaza, two thousand rank-and-file warriors (low level, no solid aura) formed trembling lines, shields reinforced with weak runes.
"FORM BARRIERS! SHIELDS UP!" a captain shouted.
Aura plates flickered to life—faint sparks in the storm.
The Beta dragon descended—
And the shields turned to dust.
Literally.
Its first tail strike was like an avalanche crashing onto glass.
Thirty men disappeared in a second. No bodies remained—only a smoking crater where they had stood.
"REFORM THE LINE! DON'T LET—!"
A chunk of wall the size of a carriage fell and crushed the captain without even breaking.
The line collapsed.
Soldiers retreated in chaos.They tripped over one another.Some wept openly.
"THEY'RE TOO STRONG!""WE CAN'T EVEN HURT THEM!""RUN! SAVE YOURSELVES!"
From the northern corridor emerged an elite squad: Gamma Special Forces, black cloaks whipping in the wind, aura compressed tightly around their bodies.
"Gamma One, cross-barriers!""Gamma Two, target the secondary dragon's right wing!"
Gamma mages raised pillars of solid mana—hexagonal barriers, level forty to fifty, the most advanced the city possessed.
The secondary dragon exhaled a roar.
The barriers trembled like water about to boil.
One mage bled from the nose.Another dropped to his knees, gasping as if drowning.
"It won't hold!""IT WON'T—!"
The barrier exploded, sending a cloud of arcane debris that swept away half the squad.
Thunder fell like a spear from the heavens.
General Voltrax—level seventy-five, Delta affinity—appeared wrapped in a mantle of pure electricity. His aura roared like a contained storm.
The mere sight of him made fleeing soldiers stop in their tracks.
"EVERYONE BEHIND ME!""NOT ONE STEP BACK!"
The main dragon turned its colossal head.
Its magma eyes fixed on him.
It flew toward the plaza like a falling mountain.
Voltrax drove his spear into the ground.His aura detonated into a massive blue bolt that illuminated the entire city.
The impact struck the dragon's head directly.
The crash rattled windows for miles.The dragon toppled sideways, crushing twenty houses beneath its weight.
The survivors cried out in hope.
"HE WOUNDED IT!""THE GENERAL CAN WIN!""WE'RE SA—!"
The dragon rose.
There was a shallow burn on its cheek.
And it smiled.
A grin full of stake-like fangs.
Voltrax swallowed.
"…Damn it."
The main dragon's roar shook the entire city; two towers collapsed without ever being struck.
Amid the chaos, a mother ran with her daughter toward the East Bridge—the only access point still standing.
"HOLD MY HAND! DON'T LOOK BACK!"
The bridge trembled after another roar.
The girl sobbed, her voice breaking.
"Mom, I'm scared!"
"Almost there… almost…"
Then a Beta dragon landed before them.
The ground split beneath its claws.
The mother froze.
The dragon tilted its head, regarding them like insects unlucky enough to stand in its path.
The girl whispered,
"Mom… what do we do?"
The mother never answered.
Their lives went dark.
Voltrax continued fighting with everything he had.
Each discharge of lightning devoured mana at a terrifying rate.Each strike left the air trembling—yet the main dragon barely yielded.
Its magical core was simply too vast.
The Gamma squad was nearly annihilated.Warriors tried to close the distance, but a casual movement from the dragon sent them flying like dolls.
Civilians ran without understanding—
…why the earth swallowed them…why arcane boulders the size of houses rained from the sky…why three godlike creatures had chosen their city to crush beneath their wrath.
The sky burned.The city groaned.Hope shattered into fragments.
Humanity was in danger.
But they did not know it.
The imperial city continued to burn.
Smoke rose in black columns, blotting out the light of dawn.The corpses of monsters and humans formed mountains—but the ratio was overwhelming:
for every fallen dragon, there were hundreds of human bodies.
The ecosystem had changed.
And no one knew it yet.
Except the mana.
Because that afternoon—
The air pulsed.
Not like wind.Not like a tremor.
But like the heart of the world tightening and releasing, slowly.
The imperial mages felt it first.
"…Did you feel that?" one Gamma asked, trembling."That wasn't a tremor…" another whispered. "It was mana. The mana… breathed."
The sky shifted in color.The wind grew thick.A crying child fell silent, staring into empty space as if something unseen were watching him.
And then it happened:
The monsters stopped attacking.
All of them turned their heads in the same direction.
North.
Toward the forest.