Starting out as a Dragon Slave

She choked violently, her entire body convulsing under the torture. Her bloodshot eyes began to roll slightly in their sockets, consciousness slowly slipping from her asphyxiated mind. Her hands, once combative, now clung desperately to Belgaroth’s arm in a final attempt to alleviate the pressure on her trachea, her nails leaving bloody trails on the scaly skin that closed up almost immediately.

It was at that precise moment that Naesha, like a specter of vengeance, emerged from the shadows that seemed to have birthed her. Her movement was so fluid, so perfect, it seemed choreographed by Death itself. Her twin daggers, imbued with a toxic essence glimmering with violet hues, shimmered with a deadly light, tracing phosphorescent arcs through the tainted air. She descended upon the dragon with the precision of a peregrine falcon, her blades aimed at the junction between the skull and the spinal column that vulnerable spot even in the oldest of creatures.

Belgaroth didn’t even dignify the attack with a glance. With an indifference bordering on insult, he tilted his chin slightly, as if to better expose his powerful throat. A low growl rose from the depths of his being, vibrating at a frequency that made the very stone tremble. Then, without warning, a flame of dark violet erupted from his parted lips, like the muffled roar of a millennial volcano awakening from its slumber.

The infernal breath ignited the air in its path, transforming oxygen into incandescent poison. The flame, like a voracious hand, seized Naesha mid-flight, enveloping her in a burning embrace that denied any chance of escape. Her screams horrifying in their brevity were smothered by the wave of fire that consumed her with obscene voracity. Her body, once agile and lethal, turned black as obsidian in an instant, frozen in a contorted posture that testified to the agony of her final moments.

When she crashed to the ground, the sound was that of a charred branch snapping, dry and final, while acrid smoke wafted from her twisted limbs, carrying the unbearable stench of charred flesh to the nostrils of the survivors.

Isaac, prostrate on the ground in a pool of his own blood, watched the scene through the red haze that clouded his vision. Every breath was torture, a white-hot knife stabbing between his fractured ribs. The constant ringing that filled his ears made him feel submerged, drowning in an ocean of pain. His eyes, burning with a sickly fever, stung from the trauma he had endured, involuntary tears tracing clear paths through the dust and blood smeared across his face. His natural regeneration the grace that had saved him so many times fought desperately to knit his broken bones, to mend the torn tissues of his battered organs, but the process was agonizingly slow against the scale of the damage.

He blinked several times, trying in vain to dispel the fog that clouded his perception, but Belgaroth’s silhouette remained towering, unyielding, like a mountain of darkness that blocked out all light, all hope.

Through that miasma of suffering, he could make out the slender form of Akane, suspended like a macabre trophy by Belgaroth’s relentless grip. Her feet, which had long since stopped touching the ground, had ceased their desperate dance and now only swayed faintly. Her face, turned toward the ceiling, had taken on a cadaverous pallor that violently contrasted with her bloodshot eyes, where capillaries burst under the pressure. And yet, even in that agony, even on the threshold of unconsciousness, her gaze—that same gaze that had defied a dragon for decades sought out Isaac’s through the distance that separated them. A flicker still shone there, a blend of ultimate defiance and indomitable pride that refused to be extinguished.

- "You know..." began Belgaroth in a sickly sweet voice that obscenely contrasted with the violence of his actions, his fingers tightening until the delicate bones of Akane’s throat groaned under the pressure. "I could kill you right here and now, rip your head from your shoulders like one plucks a ripe fruit. But that would be so... unsatisfying."

He paused theatrically, savoring the captive attention of his powerless audience.

- "No, I think you deserve a few more years... perhaps a few more decades. An infinite time to beg me, every day, every hour, to finally grant you the release of death. Isn’t that what you’d prefer, my precious Akane? An eternity of... penance?"

A subtle change occurred in Akane then, perceptible even through the haze of pain that enveloped Isaac. Her body, which had been shaking with the spasms of agony, suddenly relaxed, her legs stopping their desperate struggle to hang limp and inert. A strange calm, almost supernatural, overtook her gaze, replacing animal panic with an icy, implacable resolve.

She stopped fighting the inevitable, her arms slowly falling to her sides like broken wings. In that moment of absolute clarity that precedes great decisions, her eyes suddenly sharp and terribly lucid turned one last time to Isaac, establishing a bridge between their souls.

Isaac, even in his state of semi-consciousness, was struck by the revelation of what he saw there. A horrified understanding seized him, the absolute certainty of what she was about to do. His heart, already battered by the blows he had taken, seemed to freeze in his chest.

- "I knew... this day would come," murmured Akane with an eerily serene voice despite the vice crushing her throat, a voice that seemed to come from another world. "I saw it in my nightmares, in my dreams, in every stolen moment of mental freedom. Isaac... witness this last day. Be a witness and remember."

A flicker of confusion passed over Belgaroth’s face, an ephemeral crack in his mask of assured cruelty. His ember-like eyes narrowed, his smile freezing like lava cooling too rapidly.

- "What...?" he began, a note of uncertainty coloring his voice for the first time.

His question hung suspended, unfinished, for at that very instant, a transformation occurred in Akane. A blinding light, so pure it was almost blue, erupted from the very center of her chest as if her soul were tearing apart. This celestial glow, this essence that seemed to belong neither to the physical world nor to the magical realm, spread in luminous veins beneath her skin, tracing a complex network that stretched up to her now-incandescent eyes. The air around her began to vibrate, to distort as if under the influence of immeasurable heat, particles of pure mana materializing in a frenetic dance around her body.

Isaac, despite the veil of pain obscuring his vision, perceived the terrifying intensity of that light that should not have existed, that power which transcended the natural laws he knew. His heart raced at a maddening pace, hammering against his ribcage as if trying to break free, a horrified premonition seizing every cell of his battered body.

Akane’s bloodstained lips stretched into an unexpectedly gentle smile, almost tender, contrasting violently with the situation. Her eyes, now miniature suns, sought out Isaac’s one last time across the distance that separated them.

- "Forgive me... Mordred," she whispered, her voice carried by the magical wind swirling around her, evoking not the desperate present but distant memories, moments stolen from a time when they were just two free souls beneath a starlit sky.

A terrifying understanding struck Isaac like a hammer, the absolute certainty of the irreparable that was about to unfold. A primal terror seized him, sweeping away physical pain, electrifying every fiber of his being.

- "NO!" he screamed, his voice shattering into shards like fractured crystal, the echo of his despair reverberating against the ancient walls.

Without even a conscious thought, driven by pure survival instinct, he drew on his last reserves of mana, activating [Intangibility] in a desperate surge. His body dissolved into a spectral mist, losing its physical consistency at the precise moment when the universe seemed to hold its breath.

The light emanating from Akane reached its zenith, a miniature sun suspended in the darkness. For a fraction of a second a moment of frozen eternity everything seemed to stop: Belgaroth, his hand still clenched around a neck that was now pure incandescence; the particles of dust suspended in the air; even time itself seemed to hesitate in the face of the impending inevitability.

Then the wave of the explosion surged forth, concentric circles of absolute destruction that devoured everything in their path.The ancient stone, the age-old columns, even the very air itself all of it was reduced to its most elemental components, transformed into incandescent ashes by that blast of pure energy. The light, almost solid in its intensity, swept through Isaac’s spectral body like an unstoppable tide, leaving behind nothing but a white, absolute void.

Reality itself seemed to distort under the impact of that unleashed power, space and time bending, twisting like a parchment curling in flames.A howl of pure, primordial rage erupted from the now indistinct form of Belgaroth a scream that carried with it surprise, disbelief, and the fury of a being who, for the first time in millennia, knew true fear. That draconic lament was quickly engulfed by the devastating brilliance, drowned within the miniature apocalypse that unfolded.

The entire world seemed to collapse around Isaac, reality itself unraveling like a sandcastle before the rising tide.

The walls, the ceiling, the floor all those physical certainties lost their substance, replaced by a blinding void that consumed everything. His battered mind, suspended in that abyss of light, could cling to only one anchor in the storm of nothingness:

Akane...

Her name resonated within Isaac’s floating consciousness like a mantra, like a prayer, like the last note of a melody cut short too soon.The echo of that name of that person, of that sacrifice was all that remained as the universe dissolved into immaculate whiteness.