They stood facing one another in the ruined crater.
The Dragon King's golden eyes were cold in a way that went beyond anger — settled, absolute, as if he had already finished measuring the man before him and found the result inevitable. Dust still drifted around his feet. Drake rested quietly on his shoulder.
The Light of Dawn's silver eyes held no radiance of hope left. What remained was strain, fury, and a deep, personal wound that had not closed. His breathing was still uneven. The Dominion continued its slow work upon him.
For a time, neither spoke.
Then the Dragon King broke the silence.
"I have seen my fate," he said. "And the fate of this world."
The Light of Dawn's voice came low and controlled.
"Standing with knowledge of one's fate often leads only to a worse ending."
A thin smile touched the Dragon King's mouth.
"That is true."
He turned his head slightly, gesturing with his eyes toward the sealed red sky, the scattered corpses of dragons and Sky Warriors, the broken land.
"You wanted this."
The Light of Dawn straightened.
"If it were not for your actions across the realms, there would be no war. No one would be paying the price for what you chose to take."
The Dragon King gave a small, disappointed nod.
"You still do not understand."
The last trace of amusement left his face. When he spoke again, his voice was colder.
"The darkness beyond does not care how many are sacrificed. It does not care about the good intentions the beings of the Middle Realm hold. Whether they submit, whether they offer alliance, whether they bring tribute — none of it matters. I have seen what they are. They care for nothing except their own purpose."
The Light of Dawn's jaw tightened.
"And your actions are any different? Do you truly believe you can stand against them?"
The Dragon King was silent for a moment. His gaze dropped to the cracked ground between them. When he lifted his eyes again, his voice had grown quieter, almost reflective.
"Long before any of this destruction began, I gave a warning. I saw what was coming. I went to the leaders of this world at the time… and they refused to listen."
"I listened," the Light of Dawn said at once. "I knew what you saw. I understood it."
"And you delayed."
The Light of Dawn's fist clenched at his side.
The Dragon King continued, each word measured.
"When you left to report to your High Fathers, to carry that warning upward… I waited. I remained still. For the first time, I allowed myself to believe there might be hope. Fifty years passed. Then two hundred. Nothing came."
His golden eyes hardened.
"I became convinced that even you had abandoned this world. So I stepped forward myself."
Something complicated moved across the Light of Dawn's face — guilt, anger, and recognition tangled together.
"I went to the leaders once more," the Dragon King said. "I went to my own father. Once again they laughed. They looked down on me." A faint, sharp smile returned. "They never saw the light of day again after that."
The Light of Dawn's voice was tight.
"So you stole the Dragon King's Authority."
The grin widened.
"I did. And I found it… amusing."
The Light of Dawn's expression twisted with open disgust and something deeper — a private betrayal that had never been spoken aloud until now.
The Dragon King exhaled slowly.
"Years after that, Chaos itself turned against me. The kingdoms could not bear to serve under someone like me. They challenged my rule… and I answered them. They called me cruel. The bringer of death. The Red Sky Tyrant." He gave a short, humorless chuckle. "I did not care what they named me."
His tone dropped further.
"I went to the Sovereigns next. They held Authorities of their own. If we had stood together, there might have been a real chance to defend these realms. Instead, they laughed. Not at the idea of defending the world — but at the idea that a dragon would dare make such a request."
"So you murdered them," the Light of Dawn said.
"That was my mercy."
The Light of Dawn's voice rose, cracking with rage.
"You killed them all! Many of them were innocent. They had no place in your conflict!"
The Dragon King's smile returned, cold and certain.
"My mercy," he said, "was still far kinder than anything Dark Haven would have offered them."
The Light of Dawn's voice rose, raw with accumulated fury.
"You disrupted the natural order of the realms! You killed Sovereigns and took their Authorities by force. For years you did nothing but destroy — and you call it defense?"
He took a step forward across the cracked stone.
"With my help, we could have done this differently. With my help, many would not have needed to suffer. With my help—"
"I never needed your help."
The words cut through the air cleanly, final and without heat.
Tears spilled from the Light of Dawn's silver eyes. His voice cracked when he spoke again.
"You were never like this. What happened to you?"
The Dragon King regarded him with an expression of pure, unbroken cold. Then the grin returned — sharp, almost curious.
"How foolish," he said, "to shed tears in front of me. Do you expect me to feel something for them?" He gave a short, low chuckle. "I am still the same. Only better. Your tears mean nothing in the grand shape of things. I feel no sympathy. No remorse."
His head tilted slightly.
"In truth… I feel sorry for you."
The Light of Dawn stared at him. Grief, horror, and a deep, personal mourning moved openly across his face — the look of someone watching a friend disappear while the body remained standing.
For a moment only the distant sounds of the ongoing war reached them.
The Dragon King's smile faded.
"During my journey I traveled to the Upper Realm."
The Light of Dawn's eyes widened a fraction.
"I went searching for you," the Dragon King continued. "Instead I found the true state of the divine realm. I had expected purity. Order. Beings who still carried the weight of their own light. What I found was none of those things." His grip tightened around the hilt of Drake until the leather creaked. "Even with Dark Haven already moving across the lower skies, the divine kingdoms showed no urgency. They did not act. They did not care."
His golden eyes sharpened.
"That revelation alone was almost enough to make me erase them where they stood. I lacked the power then… so I waited."
"When?" the Light of Dawn asked, voice tight.
The Dragon King smiled again, small and dismissive.
"When does not matter. I already know why you delayed. I understood your reasons. But understanding changed nothing. It was already too late."
He took a slow step closer.
"The Upper Realm abandoned everything beneath it long ago. They look down upon the lower realms as little more than ants — useful only when convenient, disposable when not. They sit in their richness and their light and call it righteousness."
"That is not true," the Light of Dawn said.
"It is entirely true." The Dragon King's voice remained steady. "And because it is true, someone had to step forward. Someone had to rise and defend the things the darkness seeks to claim. Someone willing to do what the divine would not."
He spread his hands outward, as if presenting the ruined battlefield itself as proof.
"I am that someone. Whether the lives beneath the Upper Realm bathe in my flames or stand beside me, I am the only one capable of defending them."
"You have no right to judge the lives of those below you," the Light of Dawn said.
The Dragon King shook his head once, the gesture heavy with disappointment.
"You still do not understand. But it no longer matters."
He raised drake, and leveled the great sword at the Light of Dawn's chest. Red aura stirred along the blade.
"When this battle ends — when the Sky Palace falls today — the rules of these realms will change. I alone will deal with Dark Haven. And after that…"
His golden eyes began to glow with a deeper, hungrier light. The grin that followed was wide and unrestrained.
"…I will ascend to the Upper Realm. And I will make certain its kingdoms never see the end of my flames."
The Light of Dawn's face went rigid with shock. The silver light in his eyes flared, then trembled. For the first time since the battle began, pure horror broke through the anger and the grief — the horror of a man hearing his own home, his own people, and everything he had sworn to protect casually marked for erasure by the one he had once called brother.
The sealed red sky hung above them like a closed door.
---------------
Rhelga's voice returned, quieter than before.
"Those words struck the Light of Dawn harder than any blade that day."
Indura lifted a hand and touched his chin, golden eyes lowered to the soft ground of the chamber. For a moment he said nothing. Then a long breath left him.
"I did not expect my old self would actually challenge the Upper Realm."
Rhelga gave a short, rough chuckle.
"The Dragon King was a figure of his word. Once he decided something was possible, he moved toward it without hesitation. In his eyes, even divine beings could fall. The only question was when."
Shadow stood unmoving near one of the glowing veins. The weight of what had been revealed passed behind his silver eyes in silence — the scale of the old ambition, the open declaration against the Upper Realm, the ease with which the Dragon King had spoken of burning it.
Indura drew another slow breath and looked up.
"What happened after that?"
Rhelga pulled absently at his beard, gaze drifting toward the drifting fireflies for a moment.
"What happened after… well."
He paused, as if choosing the shape of the memory carefully.
"The Light of Dawn was enraged. Not the controlled fury of a commander — something deeper. Everyone on that battlefield felt it. The air itself seemed to tighten under the force of it."
A thin, knowing smile touched the old elf's mouth.
"But that rage… was exactly what the Dragon King wanted."
---------------
The Light of Dawn closed his eyes. The last of his tears slipped free and fell into the dust.
The Dragon King watched him in silence, then took a single step back. In the quiet of his own mind, he reached outward.
Rhelga. Get ready.
The elf's answer came at once, tight with strain.
I am ready… but this is too dangerous.
A faint smile touched the Dragon King's mouth. He whispered, almost to himself,
"I can take it. All of this work means nothing if I die here."
The Light of Dawn opened his eyes.
What looked out from them now was no longer grief or fury alone. The silver light had gone cold and final, stripped of every remaining hesitation. When he spoke, his voice carried across the entire sealed battlefield, clear and absolute.
"King of Chaos. You dare to challenge Divinity."
The Dragon King's fingers tightened around Drake.
"For the destruction you have wrought across the realms," the Light of Dawn continued, "I will hereby rid this existence of you and your kind. You are a threat to the heavens."
The Dragon King swallowed once. Then he threw his head back and roared the name like a command that could not be refused.
"RHELGA… NOW!"
Spatial gates ripped open across the battlefield in every direction.
Great wounds in space pulled at the legion. Dragons — massive and small — were dragged into the swirling voids. The four generals broke from their clashes with the Asuras and retreated through the nearest gates. Not all of them made it. Some were still mid-charge when the next words fell.
The Light of Dawn raised one hand.
"From the beginning there was darkness… and from the darkness, there was light."
The judgment settled over the land like a law being written into reality. The Dragon King's eyes widened as an immense pressure crashed down upon him, forcing him onto one knee. Even then, through the crushing weight, he grinned.
The Light of Dawn's voice continued, serene and merciless.
"And from light came purpose. And from purpose came life."
A ring of pure radiance exploded outward from his position. It raced across the battlefield, over mountains and valleys, across deserts and rivers, drawing a vast luminous boundary that stopped only at the edges of distant civilization — as if carefully marking the exact portion of the world that would be allowed to remain untouched. Everything inside that circle had been claimed for erasure.
The Dragon King gritted his teeth. The pressure pinned him in place. Layer after layer of barriers erupted around his body, coating him in desperate defense.
High above, the Light of Dawn rose higher still. Light gathered into his raised finger — not the soft radiance of before, but something denser, older, and unbearably pure. The air itself seemed to kneel toward it.
He spoke the final words.
"Authority of Light: Light of Dawn."
The world shifted.
The sealed red sky tore open into blinding blue. Sound vanished. Even the concept of air seemed to disappear. For one suspended heartbeat, there was only silence and white.
Then the star fell.
A column of pure white divinity descended from the heavens and struck the planet with the force of a god's judgment. The blast did not simply explode — it consumed. Everything inside the marked territory was swallowed by absolute light and heat. From the outer reaches of the world, the oceans began to boil; entire populations of sea life died in the sudden, impossible temperature. Distant civilizations felt the heat press against their walls and skies like the breath of something vast, only to be shielded at the last moment by Sky Warriors who still carried their great barriers.
The land itself screamed without sound.
At the heart of the cataclysm, the Dragon King endured.
His barriers lasted less than a heartbeat before they were erased. Flesh followed. In the first instant of contact, his body was scoured to the bone by pure heat and light. Regeneration answered at once — and was destroyed again. The cycle repeated without pause. Skin, muscle, and scale formed and were vaporized in the same breath. His crimson hair was gone almost immediately. The scale armor lasted scarcely longer. What remained was a figure locked in continuous annihilation and rebirth, forced to rebuild himself through agony that never fully ceased. No sound left his mouth; the Authority had taken even that. Only the raw, silent fact of his refusal to disappear remained.
Time lost meaning inside the light.
When the Authority finally withdrew, the brilliance collapsed inward and vanished.
From the void of space, the planet now carried a vast black wound — a scar of absolute desolation burned into its surface.
Where the battlefield had been, almost nothing recognizable remained. The ground was glass and molten stone. Rivers of lava crawled through newly carved trenches. The air shimmered with residual heat so intense it distorted the horizon. Ash and blackened dust hung in heavy, unmoving clouds.
High above the ruin, the Light of Dawn hovered in silence. His silver eyes were cold and remote as they fixed on the single darkened shape still present far below.
At the center of the blackened crater, the Dragon King remained on his knees.
What was left of him was barely identifiable as a body. Charred, ruined, and unmoving, he looked more like a corpse that had not yet understood it was allowed to fall.
---------------
Rhelga's voice had grown quieter, almost reflective.
"In that moment, I truly believed I was about to die. The heat was unlike anything I had ever felt. I forced myself deeper into the planet — as deep as I could reach — to survive. Even that was nearly not enough. The heat had already become one with the world itself."
Indura exhaled slowly, studying the old elf with open awe.
"How are you even sitting here talking about it?"
Rhelga smiled faintly.
"I survived. Somehow. The attack felt longer than I thought. My skin had already begun to melt. But I had prepared for the possibility… and that preparation was the only reason I remained."
Shadow spoke for the first time in a while.
"You are incredible."
Both Indura and Rhelga turned toward him. Shadow lifted one hand in a small, almost awkward gesture.
"I mean it. Surviving an Authority of that scale is worthy of praise."
Rhelga chuckled and tugged lightly at his beard.
Indura let out a short laugh of his own.
"I am becoming curious about this Light of Dawn."
Rhelga sighed.
"You would not stand a chance against him. Not as you are now."
Indura only chuckled again.
"What happened after?"
Rhelga drew a slow breath.
"It took me some time to climb back to the surface. When I finally emerged, my domain was gone — scorched to nothing. The air outside was so hot it felt as if the sun itself had been dragged close to the planet. I looked across the ruin, and found only silence at first. Then the Sky Warriors began to celebrate. Their voices carried across the blackened land in open joy."
His mismatched eyes lowered slightly.
"I searched for the Dragon King. I could not see him. Even with mana coating my body, the heat still sank into my blood. That was when I truly understood why they call the Light of Dawn a fragment of the Sun. If he had wished it, he could have erased this entire world. He chose not to."
Rhelga's voice dropped further.
"While I was still searching, I accidentally met his gaze. I could not see him clearly through the haze, but I felt the weight of a true divine being settle on me. One more step would have been dangerous. So I stopped."
A thin, tired smile crossed his face.
"Eventually I saw the Dragon King. He looked nothing like the one I knew. He was on his knees, clearly unconscious; what remained of his skin was darkened and ruined. In that moment I could not feel his presence at all. Even when he slept, I had always been able to sense him. That day… there was nothing."
Indura's voice was quiet.
"So what did you do?"
Rhelga looked at the floor.
"Nothing. I could do nothing. I believed he was truly dead. All hope left me at once. I thought the Dragon King had finally lost."
He lifted his eyes to Indura again.
"Looking at you here now… it truly is a miracle."
Indura laughed, low and unbothered.
"Of course. It is difficult to erase perfection."
Rhelga burst into a short, rough laugh.
"Is that right?"
Indura only rolled one shoulder in answer, the gesture casual and completely unrepentant.
Rhelga's expression settled into something more serious.
"He should not have survived that Authority. Yet everything he had prepared still managed to reward him."
"How so?" Indura asked.
Rhelga leaned forward slightly.
"Do you remember when I told you the Dominion had already taken effect?"
Indura nodded.
"The Dominion was tuned specifically against the Authority of Light. Its purpose was to reduce the output — even by a fraction. Because the Dominion had already drained the Light of Dawn for hours, the Authority he finally released was no longer at its full strength."
Indura snapped his fingers softly.
"So when the Light of Dawn was weakened…"
"His Authority was weakened as well," Rhelga finished.
Indura's eyes narrowed with interest.
"That is… interesting."
"It is," Rhelga agreed. "The Dragon King's greatest weakness has always been pure divinity. Taking that blast still nearly unmade him, even in its reduced state. But it was enough. Barely."
Indura exhaled.
"So the entire time, he knew the Light of Dawn would eventually be forced to use the Authority."
Rhelga leaned back in his chair.
"Everything unfolded according to the shape he had set. Even the Light of Dawn himself could not understand how any part of the Dragon King's body remained visible afterward. By the time he realized the truth…"
A dry chuckle left the old elf.
"…it was already far too late. That is the nature of Authorities. Once invoked, they cannot be called upon again so soon. That is also why the Dragon King refused to use his other Authorities. Had he done so, the entire battle would have taken a very different path."