The city never truly calmed down.
Even after the giant eye vanished, the sky still felt wrong like reality had been stretched and stitched back together in a hurry.
Lin Z and Scrappy left before the officials arrived.
Mostly because no one knew whether they were going to arrest him… or worship him.
Scrappy rode on his shoulder again, back to his small, sneezing-dragon form, as if nothing had happened.
"Sneee"
A tiny flame popped out.
Lin Z sighed. "Yeah. We're definitely not normal anymore."
SYSTEM NOTICE:
Quest Updated: Journey to the Forgotten Dragon Ruins
Location: Unmapped Sector beyond Eastern Wildlands
Warning: Reality Instability increases with proximity
Lin Z stopped walking. "Unmapped?"
The System didn't respond.
That alone felt like an answer.1 Day Later
The landscape changed fast.
Forests turned into blackened stone plains.
Rivers flowed upward in slow motion.
And the sky… occasionally flickered like a broken screen.
Scrappy grew quieter the further they traveled.
Not weaker just… aware.
Like something in him recognized the path.
Lin Z noticed it.
"You've been here before, haven't you?"
Scrappy didn't answer.
But his golden eyes flickered once.They found it at sunset.
A massive structure buried inside a crater.
Not built.
Not carved.
But imprinted into reality itself.
A dragon skull the size of a mountain lay half-submerged in glowing sand.
And inside its open jaws
A staircase leading downward.
SYSTEM NOTICE:
Location Confirmed: Forgotten Dragon Ruins
WARNING: Council Seal Residue Detected
Lin Z swallowed. "This place is alive…"
Scrappy stepped forward.
The moment his paw touched the sand
The entire ruin reacted.
The skull's eye sockets lit up.
And a voice echoed from everywhere at once.
"Fragment resonance detected…"
Scrappy froze.
Lin Z immediately pulled him back. "Hey!"
But it was too late.
The ground beneath them collapsed inward.They didn't fall.
They were pulled.
Reality inverted.
Sky became ground.
Ground became memory.
Lin Z landed in a vast white expanse filled with floating fragments of broken worlds.
And Scrappy
Was no longer small.
For a moment, he stood as something else.
A shadow of a colossal dragon.
Chains of black stars wrapped around him.
His voice echoed again inside Lin Z's mind.
"I remember…"
Lin Z stepped back. "Scrappy?"
The dragon trembled.
"I was… sealed."A vision unfolded.
Dragons filled the sky thousands of them.
But not wild beasts.
They were guardians.
And above them floated the Dragon Council in its ancient form benevolent, radiant.
Then something appeared between the stars.
A crack.
A flaw in reality itself.
And from it
A "Fragment Being" like Scrappy emerged.
But it wasn't a child.
It was a collapse of a dragon god's existence.A voice from the Council echoed:
"Lost Sovereign cannot exist."
Chains formed.
Stars broke.
And Scrappy no, the being he once was was torn apart into fragments and scattered across worlds.
But one fragment escaped.
The weakest.
The smallest.
The one that became Scrappy.
The vision shattered.
Lin Z dropped to his knees.
"You… were a dragon god?"
Scrappy's tiny form flickered again.
"…I don't remember everything."
"But they do."
A distant sound echoed above the ruins.
The same mechanical eye from before
Was opening again.Reality cracked overhead.
A new figure descended.
Not Veyl Kharon.
Something worse.
A silver-armored being with wings made of folded space.
SYSTEM ALERT:
Threat Class: Council Execution Unit
Designation: "Asterion, the Purge Wing"
It looked at Scrappy.
Not with curiosity.
With finality.
"Fragment confirmed," it said.
"Deletion authorized."
Lin Z stepped forward instantly. "You're not touching him."
Asterion tilted its head.
"You are irrelevant."
Then it moved.
Not fast.
Not slow.
Just inevitable.For the first time
Scrappy didn't sneeze.
He roared.
The sound shattered the white space around them.
His small body expanded slightly
Not into full form.
But into something unstable.
A half-memory of what he used to be.
Golden chains erupted from his body.
Asterion stopped mid-motion.
"…Impossible."
Lin Z felt the connection snap open.
SYSTEM EMERGENCY:
Shared Evolution Protocol Forced Activation
Lin Z's vision turned gold.
He saw everything Scrappy saw.
Every sealed memory.
Every broken era.
Every war against the Council.
And one truth:
Scrappy wasn't a beast.
He was a key.Asterion raised its hand.
"Fragment will be erased."
Scrappy stepped forward.
Small.
Trembling.
But no longer alone.
Lin Z stood beside him.
"Try it."
The ruins shook.
The eye above them fully opened.
And somewhere beyond reality
Something ancient began to wake again.