And I step off the ledge right towards it.
The fall would have been a problem before. Now the vents on my back flare, arresting the drop in a rush of blue-white fire. I swing the greatsword two-handed as the beam cuts toward me.
Plasma meets plasma.
The edge of the blade drinks the line. It does not melt, it sings. The beam splits on the cut, shearing in two crooked curtains that carve the floor to either side of me instead of my body.
“Looks like this is round two,” I tell it quietly as I land, boots kissing stone with barely a jolt. “You picked the wrong King to piss off. Lets find out how long you can tank me.”
It snaps its jaws down at me, trying to bite me in half. I meet the teeth with a vertical guard, blade braced. The bite slams into the white steel. Sparks and blue flame crawl around us, but my arms hold as they scrape useless against the Chime.
I twist my wrists, roll the weight, and rake the edge along its jaw. Blue-white fire leaves a glowing trench in black scale. It howls, jerks back with a shower of sparks and steam, then whips its tail.
The tail hits my chest like a speeding train, full force. Before, that would have broken ribs. Now it is just momentum and I ride it like a wave.
The vents flare, turning the hit into an arcing slide instead of a launch. I skid across the glass on my boots in a spray of sparks, then kick off a cracked pillar of basalt and hurl myself back at its flank.
Its breath lights again, short, desperate. The beam glances off of my shoulder and refracts back at the male.
The Ashwing flinches from its own reflected heat, it is used to being the only thing in the room that can play with fire.
“Come on,” I tell it. “You wanted me.”
I backstep toward the tunnel leading down into the deeper chambers. Just half an hour ago I stood here for the first beam from the female. Now shield, sword held low, vents flaring just enough to keep my footing on the cooling glass floor, I taunt it to come after me.
It follows. Because of course it follows. I killed its mate and I wear her heart on my bones. I can feel the recognition in the way it moves, every breath a question it has to answer with violence.
We leave the nest behind, tumbling into the next chamber.
Good. The eggs and my people are not meant for this fight. .
The tunnel down to the slime arena is half-melted, walls gleaming with resin-like glass. The Ashwing has to fold its wings to get through; I stay just close enough that another beam would cook its own throat if it tried to fire. It settles for trying to crush me.
The foreclaw pounds down. I sidestep, vents popping in a short lateral dash. Its talons dent the stone where I stood and send a shockwave up the wall that rains pebbles.
We spill out into the old slime arena.
The bowl is a ruin of cracked plates and hardened rivulets where the amethyst colony once lived. Perfect footing for me. Terrible footing for a limping dragon with rage instead of strategy.
It tries anyway.
Wings open, breath charging, it draws in a long inhale. The air around its maw blurs with heat. This is the long beam. The one it used to carve trenches and trap me before in the desert.
I remember that night. The burns. The sound of my sablehound’s body hitting the sand.
I am not that man anymore.
When the beam fires, I do not block.
I charge.
The line rips across the ground, turning sand to liquid glass, racing to meet me. The vents roar and I jump, legs and fire both pushing me up. The beam lances under my boots, missing by inches, and in that hanging heartbeat I feel the old fear try to claw up my throat.
I shove it down and bring the greatsword down at the joint of its left wing.
The blade bites, heat and edge together, cutting not just flesh but the air around it. The limb lurches, half severed, and the Ashwing’s scream hits me in the chest like a physical blow. It snaps up at me mid-air. Before, I would have been helpless.
But now I can air dash.
Fire vents out and I kick sideways off my own heat, hanging in the air just long enough to twist above the jaws and skid down the ridge of its neck instead of into its teeth. I drag the sword along its scales as I go, carving a bright line along its spine.
It bucks and rolls, trying to dislodge me. I ride the motion, slam the blade into a vertebra as an anchor, then kick off and let my wing vents throw me clear before it can roll onto its back.
We trade like that for a while. It claws and snaps and spits short, ragged beams. I deflect beams. I duck bites. I meet tail swipes with steel and let armor and momentum take what they can. I can feel my internal temperature rising, sweat burning off as fast as it forms, vents screaming heat.
Careful, I tell myself when my vision starts to white at the edges, it looks like this power can burn me out too.
I ease off the wings for a few breaths, and fight on the ground. Let the armor shed some of the excess heat into the stone. The Ashwing staggers, leaking blue flame from half a dozen wounds, breath weapon fizzling whenever it tries to charge too long.
It looks at me then, really looks. Not the way a beast looks at prey, but the way a soldier looks at the siege engine that just rolled up to the front gate.
Something in its primal, hate filled brain clicks, and Ashwing turns and runs.
Away from me. Away from the room. Leaving out towards the exit of the lair.
It barrels through the far tunnel, shoulder-checking stone, half-stumbling. I chase, boots striking sparks, vents flaring only enough to keep me in sight. It carves a short beam behind it in a reflexive swipe. I jump it, sword held close, feeling the heat kiss my greaves.
Bone smell hits my nose before the cavern opens. We are in the ossuary now, the bone cage where we first walked under ancient ribs.
I can tell that the Ashwing hates this place.
I can feel it in the way its wings twitch, claws skidding on old skulls as it tries to find space for flight. The ceiling is too low for a clean takeoff, too cluttered for big sweeps. Skeletons rattle and snap under its weight.The Ashwing spins on me, with the larger room giving it a bit of its confidence back, it lunges for me with renewed vigor.
Trying to pin me against a wall with its body, full-body slam. I meet it with the flat of the blade and planted boots, wing jets kicking out plasma to brace. We grind across bone, sparks and fragments flying. Spines crack. Old rib cages collapse in clouds of dust.
“Not this time,” I grunt, shoving. The armor takes the heat, but the force still rattles my teeth.
It rears for a cone breath, desperate, point-blank down into my face. The blue-white building in its chest sputters halfway up its throat, choking on earlier damage and its own exhaustion. Only a ragged curtain of fire spills out. It washes over me like a hot shower. My armor drinks it. My skin tingles but does not cook.
Being this close to it, I see directly into its eyes. The fear that replaces its hate is new.
“You feel that?” I say, stepping forward through the heat. “That’s what it’s like when your one trick stops working.” Now is the time to press that fear and ruin it.
The greatsword hacks into the good wing’s base, not a clean sever, but enough to lame its flight. I drag the blade out sideways, leave the cut glowing. The Ashwing howls and crashes to three points, weight uneven. It has one more option.
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Up.
It bucks, rams its horns into the roof of the cave, and carves a beam straight up. Stone melts and falls. The ceiling gives way into a vertical shaft, the same one it used to enter the dungeon the first time, circumventing the jumping puzzle from the start. Daylight spills down, a pale ribbon.
It flees.
Everything in me wants to finish it here, in the dark among the bones, but that shaft leads straight out. And up there, on the caldera rim…
On the rim we prepared something.
I let it go. Just far enough ahead to think it is escaping. Then I launch after, vents roaring, hands burning on the greatsword’s grip.
“Cast,” I send through the resonance, the hum rushing back into my bones now that the ceiling is open. “Net status.”
Her reply hits like a struck chord, sharp and ready. “Anchors set. Crystals primed. We await your mark, my king.”
“Get every Hekari and Sunforged clear of the mouth,” I answer, lungs burning with heat, more from my own power than the climb. The shaft becomes a blur of glass and rock around me. “When the dragon breaks daylight, activate the net.”
“Understood.”
The Ashwing erupts out of the mountain in a fountain of glass and fury, wings shredded but still flying. It screams at the sky, the sound a raw wound. The caldera is full of soldiers. Hekari lines. Sunforged knights. Crystal obelisks like gleaming purple telephone poles ring the rim, humming faintly.
For a second, time stops.
The Ashwing sees the army. It sees the Singing Citadel's banners, dark against the glare. It sees me burst out of the shaft behind it in a flare of blue-white fire, greatsword in both hands, armor black and gold and gleaming under the desert sun.
It gambles on fear.
It dives for the nearest line of drones, breath weapon building in its chest.
“Now,” I say.
The crystals sing.
The sound is not something ears were made to hear. It is a lattice of resonance, a net of pure note. The Ashwing’s own aura, the thing it used to break echoes and eat our hum, catches on the harmonics like a fly in a web.
It hits an invisible wall mid-dive.
Wings snap open, forced. Muscles seize. The beam in its throat fizzles as the pressure of sound suffocates it. It hangs there in the air, struggling, pinned at the center of a silent storm. Every time it tries to move, the net pushes back out of phase with itself, locking joints.
The army holds their ground.
No one cheers. Not yet.
I land on the cooling glass at the edge of the lai, the greatsword hums in my hands, blue-white fire licking along the edge like it has been waiting for this exact moment.
The Ashwing thrashes, helpless in the net. Its eyes find me.
There is pure animal hate there. And something else. A flicker of understanding. Of recognition.
It knows I ate her.
I walk forward until I am directly beneath it, framed by crystal towers, the whole of two armies watching.
Chat scrolls somewhere at the edge of my awareness.
[carapace_kid]: NET STRAT WORKED LET’S GOOOO
[LifelineV]: don’t toy with it, just end it
[VioletVex]: For the Castle, my King. Make it count.
I lift the sword.
All the noise of the world squeezes down to one thin line. My armor creaks as I draw in a breath. I can feel the hum of the Dominion behind me, thousands of voices and hearts and tiny terrified songs waiting to see what I do next.
“For the Dominon,” I say.
Not a shout. Not a roar. Just a verdict of execution.
I kick the vents once, a short upward blast that lifts me in a clean arc. For a heartbeat I am level with its eyes again, close enough to see my reflection in the blue-white glow.
One clean vertical cut. No flourish. No wasted motion.
The greatsword passes through neck and scale and spine like it offers no resistance at all. The fire on the edge barely flares.
I hit the ground on my feet.
The head hits the stone before the body can understands it is dead.
It bounces slightly, rolls, and comes to rest staring at the sky with empty eyes. The body hangs there for a strange, suspended moment in the net, nerves still firing, wings twitching without purpose. Then the resonance shifts down octaves, the crystals dim, and the carcass drops.
The impact shakes the caldera. A wave of dust and heat washes over the lines of soldiers. Glass cracks. Little pebbles of obsidian hop and settle.
No one moves.
For three heartbeats there is only the sound of cooling stone and my own breath in the helmet, loud and small.
Then the mountain explodes in noise.
The Dominion roars.
Hekari pound spear butts into packed earth. Sunforged lift their weapons and let out battlecries. The chat floods my thoughts in a storm of emotes and capital letters and broken sentences that all round out to mean the same thing.
We did it.
I stand there in my new armor, sword tip planted in the glass, vents steaming, heart still blazing with that stolen fire.
The roar of the Dominion fades by degrees, until it becomes the steady hum of resonance again, the sound of my people alive, moving, rebuilding themselves after hell.
I exhale once and lower the greatsword. The blue-white flame along its edge gutters down to a soft simmer. The jets on my back hiss in the colder air, cooling from overuse.
No time to rest just yet, there’s still work to do.
“Form work groups,” I send through the resonance, the command carrying clean and sharp. “We’ve less than an hour left before I leave Nod. Prioritize the wounded, then the loot.”
The forces respond in waves of acknowledgement.
Drones gather the injured below, experts in moving earth, obsidian, and rock.
Sunforged stabilize the slope. Hekari scouts fan out into the tunnels to verify structural stability.
I step toward the caldera rim, looking north toward the unfinished roadworks that thread down toward Scott’s territory. Broken stone. Melted glass. Half-formed fortifications. This was supposed to be a quiet week of expansion, I had no intention of pissing off my territory worldboss.
So much for quiet.
“Resume construction on the northern road,” I order. “Double crews to get us back on schedule. Nothing leaving this mountain will trouble us again.”
Another ripple of resonance answers.
I glance back toward the smoking hole the Ashwing burst from. The lair is a ruin of glass and stone, but the eggs remain. Two glowing shapes were in the nest, untouched despite the violence that tore the mountain open.
I reach for Cast.
Her voice answers immediately, firm even through the distortion. “My King.”
“We have trophies,” I say. “Far more than expected. A mountain of scale and bone. And two eggs.”
There is a long pause. Not so much hesitation, but calculation.
“Two new kin for the Dominion… or two new weapons,” she says. “Either way, they’re yours to claim.”
“What do you advise?”
“If they hatch, imprint them early. If you delay, they imprint on hunger. Decide their purpose before they decide it for you.”
My gaze drifts to the nest, heat still rising in shimmering lines.
“Understood,” I tell her. “Prepare the vaults. We’re bringing everything home.”
I feel her bow even across the resonance. “As you command.”
The Dominion continues its controlled frenzy around me. Soldiers coordinating, teams forming, the logistics of triumph unfolding like muscle memory. For a moment, I simply stand in the center of it all, the vents cooling at my back, the greatsword humming down to silence. It feels like watching an ant farm. Every drone with a task, every soldier performing its duty. Not a single idle hand. I reflect on the fight, with the moment of peace finally here.
The fire in my blood hasn’t faded. I dont think it can.
I sheathe the Chime across my back. The armor plates shift to accommodate it, clicking into place holding the chime like it was made to do so.
“Ten minutes,” I call. “Then waking will take me. You all have my orders.”
I don’t bother returning to the Citadel.
There isn’t time, Nod will keep moving the moment I close my eyes to wake. So instead, I head toward the forward command encampment built along the upper plateau. Canvas walls reinforced with obsidian struts, Dominion banners fluttering in the hot wind, the scent of molten glass still drifting from the caldera below.
The guards part as I approach, heads bowed, though I can feel their eyes tracking the new armor, the vented wings, the faint glow still bleeding through the seams. They know I am changed, but that doesn't change who I am. My song stays the same, indicating I am King.
The command tent is quiet when I step inside. Maps, reports, tablets etched with orders — all exactly where my commanders and the others left them. A comfortable cot sits waiting in the corner, thick blankets, cold water beside it. A soldier’s rest. Efficient. Necessary.
The silence presses in, not with dread this time but with weight.
I sit at the edge of the cot, gauntlets still steaming faintly, heat curling off my armor like steaming breath on a cold day. The whole day flickers through my head ten hours that felt like a month, ten hours of blood and fire and choices I can’t take back.
There’s more coming.
A lot more.
I exhale and let the change go.
The armor dissolves first, gold threads unspooling from the plates and fading into my standard chitin armor. The vents dim, flickering down to embers. The greatsword peels a single clear tone before it shifts to the standard tetsubo form.
Outside the tent, I hear movement, soldiers repositioning, Hekari scouts reporting, Sunforged setting their next objectives. Nod continues. Always.
It won’t stop just because I leave.
I lie back on the cot.
The canvas ceiling ripples faintly with the heat of the lava fields below.
My heartbeat slows.
The Dominion’s pulse matches it.
Working.
Building.
Breathing without me.
My vision blurs, the edges of the tent dissolving into gold haze.
Then the world folds —
and I return to the waking one.