Chapter 147: 147. True Destruction

They tore through the other end of the rift together.

The void swallowed them whole. No up. No down. Just an endless expanse of swirling rainbow light and stardust that drifted like sediment in water. This was not space—they could feel that immediately. There were no stars, no solar systems, no distant galaxies. Just an infinite emptiness that pressed against their scales like thick fluid, blurring movement, blurring thought, blurring time itself.

Behind them, the rift sealed with a sound that wasn’t a comfortable to hear, cutting them off from everything. From the battle. From their world.

Vorthraxx drifted ten meters away, his massive adult form silhouetted against the unnatural light. His wounds from the fight had already closed, his regeneration working even here, in this place that had no time, no air, no anything.

He laughed. The sound didn’t travel normally but it vibrated through the fluid, through Owen’s scales, through his bones.

“You think this will hold me?” Vorthraxx’s voice was a low rumble, distorted by the void’s strange physics. “A makeshift prison, torn from a dying dimension? I spent a thousand years in a cage built by our father. Do you think your desperate imitation can do better?”

Owen didn’t answer.

“I will find my way out,” Vorthraxx continued. “And when I do, I will find her. I will find everyone you tried to protect. I will make sure you watch them die before I end you.”

Owen sighed. The sound came out as bubbles of light, dissolving into the void.

“You know…” he said finally, “I understand. Your anger. Your choices. Everything that has come to make you who you are now… this angry shell of a dragon.” He gestured vaguely at Vorthraxx’s corrupted form. “I don’t fault you for any of it.”

Vorthraxx’s laughter died. “You don’t fault me?”

“I’ve walked through your memories. I’ve felt your grief. I’ve watched you lose everything, and I’ve watched the world do nothing to help you.” Owen’s voice was calm. Empty. “I understand why you became the Desecrator. I understand why you want to burn everything down.”

“Then why are you still fighting me?”

“Because, my understanding isn’t the same as my agreement.” Owen met his brother’s golden eyes. “I can’t let you win, Brother.”

Vorthraxx’s expression flickered. Something old and wounded passed behind his eyes. “You can’t understand. You haven’t lost what I lost. You haven’t had a thousand years to watch your love turn to ash in your mouth.”

“You’re right. I haven’t.”

“So don’t stand there and pretend—”

Owen closed his eyes.

He inhaled. The void filled his lungs, cold and thick and endless. He exhaled, and with that breath, he let go.

[Sovereignty of Destruction]

The power surged through him, familiar now, but different. He had always fought it before. Always held back. Always kept a thread of consciousness anchored to reality, afraid of what he would become if he let go completely.

But his time, he didn’t resist.

His consciousness dissolved like ink in water. The part of him that was Owen—that remembered Yuki’s laugh, Uru’s small hand in his, the eggs forming in the Hatchery—faded into the background. What rose to replace it was older. More primal. The thing that lived at the core of every dragon, the thing that had been sleeping since the first scales grew.

Destruction. Pure, unthinking, absolute. A Beast of burden.

His body began to change. Scales darkened to the color of a void between stars. Golden accents bled to red,. His eyes, once the color of the Hatchery’s golden light, became pits of darkness and red that swallowed everything they touched.

Vorthraxx’s eyes widened. “Wa—wait!”

Owen attacked.

—

The void became a battlefield.

Vorthraxx’s Sovereignty of Replication filled the emptiness with copies, dozens of them, each one moving in perfect coordination, each one striking from a different angle. They came at Owen like a storm of claws and teeth and fire.

But owen moved through them like a blade.

He didn’t think. Didn’t plan. Didn’t calculate. His body was no longer a body—it was an extension of an unstoppable force that had been building in him since the moment he first touched the Sovereignty. Every movement was instinct. Every strike was death.

A replication lunged from the left. Owen’s claw met its throat before it finished its motion. It dissolved into mist. Another came from above, its fire already building. Owen’s tail caught it mid-dive, crushed its spine, sent it spinning into two more copies.

They surrounded him. A dozen claws, a dozen jaws, a dozen streams of purple fire converging on a single point.

But Owen didn’t dodge, he just intensified the dragonic pressure he was already emitting into something more tangible.

The space around him folded, cracked, then shattered. The replications caught in the blast radius dissolved instantly. The fire vanished before it could touch his scales. When the light cleared, he was still there, untouched, and Vorthraxx was retreating.

For the first time in a thousand years, the Desecrator fell back.

Owen’s power kept climbing as his life force kept depleting to sustain the form. The void itself seemed to warp around him, bending away from his presence. His scales grew darker, his eyes redder. his form less dragon and more something else.

Vorthraxx summoned more replications. They lasted seconds. He summoned more. They lasted less. He summoned everything he had left, and Owen tore through them like a scythe through wheat.

The demonic dragon was bleeding now. Not from wounds, but from effort. His mana was draining, his regeneration failing, his body screaming at him to stop, to flee, to survive.

He could escape. The void was not a perfect prison—it was a wound in reality, and wounds could be healed, could be closed, could be escaped. He had the power to tear another rift, to return to the mortal realm, to finish what he started.

He looked at Owen.

The juvenile dragon was no longer recognizable. His form had doubled, tripled, grown beyond anything that should be possible. His scales were black as the space between stars. His eyes were pits of red, like an active volcano. His power was still climbing, still building, still reaching toward something that had no ceiling.

He was going to burn himself out. Vorthraxx could see it. The Sovereignty of Destruction was consuming him, and when it finished, there would be nothing left. No dragon. No king. No brother.

Vorthraxx could leave. He should leave. Let Owen destroy himself. Let the last heir of Dominus’s bloodline die in the void, and claim victory by default.

But he thought of Celeste.

The image came unbidden, sharp and clear after a thousand years of fog. Her smile. Her laugh. The way she had looked at him when he was just a juvenile dragon who loved a woman, before the world taught him that his love a weakness.

What would she think of what he had become?

He didn’t know. He had stopped asking that question a long time ago.

He looked at Owen, still fighting, still killing, still destroying every Replication in his path. He looked at the last dragon who could carry their father’s legacy. He looked at the brother who had understood him, who had walked through his memories, who had tried to save him even when there was nothing left to save.

Then he made a decision.

His Sovereignty of Replication deactivated. The copies that had been swarming Owen dissolved into nothing.

Then Owen turned toward him with his empty eyes fixed on the only target left.

Vorthraxx spread his wings. He didn’t raise his claws. Didn’t summon fire. Didn’t move to defend himself.

“Brother…” he said quietly. “…I’m sorry.”

And owen dove straight at him.

The impact drove through Vorthraxx’s chest. Scales shattered. Flesh tore. Bone splintered. Owen’s claws found his heart and clenched.

Purple blood sprayed across the void. Light bled from the wound, leaking into the emptiness, spreading like a nebula being born.

Vorthraxx looked down at the claws in his chest. At the light pouring out of him. At the brother who had become a monster to stop him.

“Thank you…brother….” he whispered.”Make …Drak’thar …Great again.”

His golden eyes found Owen’s reddened one as Something passed between them: not words, not thoughts, but sheer understanding. A thousand years of grief, of rage, of love, all distilled into a single moment.

“Have a …better fate…” Vorthraxx said. “Than …I did.”

Then the light of life left his eyes.

The light that had been bleeding from his wound flared one last time, and then stopped. His body drifted and faded into the void, blurring into the distance.

Owen floated in the emptiness, his claws still extended, his power still climbing, his consciousness still gone.

Then his system chimed.

[Level cap reached. 50/50]

[Evolution conditions met]

[Evolution in progress]

Light erupted from his chest, not the red of destruction, but gold. Dragon king gold. The gold of Dominus’s scales, of the Hatchery’s eggs, of the sun rising over a world that was still worth saving.

His form began to shift. Grow. Change.

And within the light that had enveloped him like a coccon, something stirred.

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