Chapter 134: 134. The Will’s Reckoning

The deep shelters hummed with desperate life.

Owen moved through the tunnels, past huddled families, past wounded dragons lying on stone floors, past hatchlings who didn’t understand why the world had suddenly become darkness and whispers. The shelters had been designed for exactly this…emergency evacuation, long-term survival, waiting out catastrophe. But no design could prepare for the weight of what had been lost.

Three hundred dragons remained. Three hundred out of thousands. The rest were dead on the battlefield above, their bodies cooling under a sky that no longer belonged to them.

Chronara sat apart from the others, her ancient eyes fixed on nothing. She’d been like that for hours—since the last survivors sealed the shelter doors, since the celestials’ victory chants faded into distant echoes.

Owen sat beside her.

“You can feel it too,” she said quietly. “The pressure. The weight.”

“Yes.”

“The Will is waking. All this death, all this destruction…it’s drawn its attention. Like blood in water.” Her voice was distant. “I’ve seen this future. Many times. Never clearly. But always the same outcome.”

“What outcome?”

“Everything ends.” She looked at him. “Not figuratively. Not metaphorically. Everything. The celestials. The demons. Us. The Will will look at what we’ve done…what we’ve become…the chaos…and decide we’re too dangerous to exist.”

“There must be something…”

“There isn’t. I’ve looked. Through every future, every possibility, every thread of fate I can follow.” She grasped his arm. “But I saw you. In all of them, I saw you.”

“Me?”

“Not here. In the future. Standing in an empty Drak’thar, surrounded by sleeping eggs, waiting.” Her grip tightened. “You’re the last. The only one who will survive what’s coming.”

—

Above, on the surface, the celestials celebrated.

The angelic host gathered in Drak’thar’s central plaza, their light illuminating the broken buildings, their hymns filling the wounded sky. The human crusade joined them, priests leading prayers of thanks, knights kneeling in devotion.

An archangel addressed them, its voice carrying across the assembled multitudes.

“DRAGONKIND IS BROKEN. THEIR KING FALLEN. THEIR FORTRESS TAKEN. THE ARBITER’S JUSTICE HAS BEEN SERVED.”

Cheers erupted. Humans wept with joy. Angels sang praises.

“BUT OUR WORK IS NOT FINISHED. THE DEMONS STILL FESTER IN THEIR REALM. THE NON-HUMAN RACES STILL CLING TO THEIR HERESIES. WE WILL PURIFY THIS WORLD, FROM THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN TO THE DEEPEST CAVERN. WE WILL—”

The archangel stopped.

Its light flickered.

Around it, the other angels began to flicker too. Their forms wavered, distorted, became less solid.

“What—” the archangel started.

Then it was gone.

Not killed. Not destroyed. Erased. One moment there, the next—nothing. No light. No sound. No evidence it had ever existed.

The other angels followed. Thousands of them, blinking out simultaneously, their hymns cut off mid-note, their light extinguished mid-beam.

The humans screamed. Priests called on the Arbiter for protection. Knights drew weapons against enemies they couldn’t see.

The Arbiter didn’t answer.

Because the Arbiter was gone too. Deleted. Retroactively erased from existence, along with every celestial, every angel, every divine being that had ever touched the mortal realm.

The humans on the surface didn’t understand what was happening. They only knew that their gods had abandoned them, that the light had failed, that darkness was falling.

Then the darkness reached for them.

—

In the deep shelters, Chronara stiffened.

“It’s starting.”

The pressure that had been building for days suddenly released—not as an explosion, but as a change. Reality itself shifting. Rules being rewritten.

“The celestials are gone,” Chronara whispered. “All of them. The Arbiter. The angels. Every divine being who walked this world.” She paused. “The demons next.”

Through some connection Owen couldn’t explain, he felt it happen. Across the world, on the continent where demons had gathered after exiting the nether realm, a barrier snapped into place. Not a physical wall…something deeper. A metaphysical seal that would take millennia to weaken.

The demons who had survived the war, who’d fled back to their realm, who’d thought themselves safe, were all drafted out of the nether and into that continent, they were trapped now. Locked in. Cut off from the mortal world and nether realm entirely.

“Sealed,” Chronara breathed. “The Will sealed them. Not destroyed like the Celestials? But For how long?”

Owen knew. Centuries. Millennia. Until Vorthraxx’s seal weakened and the demons found a way to follow their master.

And then…

The Will turned its attention to dragons.

Chronara’s grip on his arm became crushing.

“It’s looking at us. At all of us.” Tears streamed down her ancient face. “It sees what we’ve done. The war. The destruction. The power we wield. It’s decided we’re too dangerous to exist.”

“No—”

“Watch.”

Around them, dragons began to flicker.

Not all at once—one by one. A dragon in the corner, gone. A mother holding her hatchling, gone. A young dragon who’d survived the battle, who’d thought he might live to see tomorrow, gone.

The flickering spread.

Chronara’s form began to waver. “The egg,” she said urgently. “The egg in the Hatchery. It’s protected…the shelters were designed to shield it. When I’m gone, you need to find it. Need to make sure…”

“Chronara—”

“I’ve seen you. In the future. Standing in Drak’thar. The egg hatches. You are the egg. You’ll carry us forward.” Her grip tightened one last time. “Remember. Remember all of us. Remember what we fought for. And when you rebuild—”

She was gone.

Owen sat alone among fading afterimages, surrounded by empty space where hundreds of dragons had been moments before.

Then movement.

A figure stirred in the shadows…not fading, not flickering. Just Rising.

Dominus.

The Dragon King pushed himself upright, his scales dull, his eyes hollow. He’d been unconscious since the sealing, his life force drained to almost nothing. But something—desperation, duty, love—had pulled him back.

He looked at the empty spaces around him. At the absence where Chronara had been. At the silence where dragons should have been.

“No…” he breathed. “No!”

“Dominus.” Owen moved to his side. “The Will…it’s erasing us. Celestials first. Demons sealed. Now dragons. You need to…”

Dominus’s eyes met his. And in that moment, understanding passed between them. The Dragon King saw Owen, really saw him. Saw the witness from another time. Saw the future standing before him in the present.

“You…” Dominus’s phantom whispered.

“Yes.”

“The fragments. The power I scattered. You’ve found them.”

“Two of them. The third is here, in this dungeon.”

Dominus nodded slowly. “Then there’s no time.”

He closed his eyes. Power gathered around him…not much, he had so little left, but enough. Sovereign authority. Dragon King’s essence. Everything he was, everything he’d been, everything he’d hoped to become.

His form began to glow, as if resuming the story.

“I’ll scatter what’s left of me,” he said, voice straining. “Three fragments. Three pieces of my power, sent forward through time. You’ve found two. The third waits here.”

Light erupted from him, not the consuming light of the celestials, but something warmer. Golden. Ancient.

“These fragments, they’ll become phantoms of this past. Places where the past can speak to the future.” He looked at Owen. “You’ve walked through them. You know what they hold.”

Owen nodded. The Shadowgrave. Vorthraxx’s past. This final memory of war and loss.

Dominus raised his hands. Three streams of light shot from his chest, arcing upward, tearing through the shelter’s ceiling, through reality itself, vanishing into the timestream.

The fragments were away.

Dominus swayed. His form flickered—not fading like the others, but weakening. Dying.

But he wasn’t done.

He turned and walked—stumbled—toward the Hatchery chamber. Owen followed.

The Hatchery was mostly empty now. Most of the eggs had been lost in the battle, had been erased by the Will. But one remained.

The egg that would become Owen.

It pulsed with a soft light, untouched by the destruction around it. The shelters had protected it. Chronara’s foresight had placed it here. Destiny, or something like it—had kept it safe.

Dominus gathered the egg in his arms. Held it close. Looked at it with eyes full of grief and hope.

“My last child…” he whispered. “…Our last chance.”

He looked at Owen.

Those golden eyes—so like the ones Owen saw in mirrors every day—held everything. Centuries of life. Decades of war. The weight of a species ending.

Dominus smiled. Just a little. Just enough.

Then he encompassed the egg with his being, his remaining power, his consciousness, his very existence, and flung it into the timestream torn through space.

The egg vanished.

Dominus’s form began to fade.

He looked at Owen one last time. Nodded once.

Then he was gone.

Owen stood alone in the empty Hatchery, in the empty shelter, in the empty Drak’thar.

Around him, silence.

Above him, the Will’s work continued—but down here, in the depths, there was nothing left to erase.

The egg was away. The fragments were scattered. The future was waiting.

And Owen—witness, carrier of memories, last dragon before the last dragon—understood.

The three story dungeons he’d walked through. The Shadowgrave. Vorthraxx’s past. This final war.

They were Dominus’s legacy. Scattered through time, waiting for someone to find them. Waiting for him.

The dungeon began to dissolve around him.

His time in the past was over now.

The future of awaited its Dragon King.

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