The town of Braxis was burning.
A crimson-scaled dragon, older than the Empire's calendar and twice as vicious, tore through the clouds and descended like judgment. Its massive wings stirred storms. Its roar shattered glass. And its fire—unnatural, sustained, magical—licked through stone and iron like candle wax.
Children screamed. Women huddled over them. Guards died by the dozen.
The townspeople were not unarmed, nor untrained. Braxis was a border town, accustomed to the occasional monster raid, and fortified against rogue mages and wild beasts. But dragons were not monsters. Dragons were calamities. And this one had a name inscribed in ancient elvish across its breastplate: Vaelgaroth, the Last Flame.
He wasn't supposed to exist.
Lyra Veyne, watching from behind the last intact barrier, knew this fact all too well. Her magic was nearly depleted, and the group of children behind her—orphans she'd protected since the siege began—looked up at her with eyes that had already seen too much.
A loud crash rocked the town as another blast of fire demolished the southern watchtower. The sky rained stone and splinters. Then, a hush fell.
A new presence entered the square.
He was cloaked in black, trimmed in silver threads that shimmered like constellations. His boots crunched over smoldering ash. His gaze, serene and unreadable, scanned the devastation with a kind of idle curiosity—like a mechanic observing a broken machine.
The dragon noticed him.
Vaelgaroth turned midair, smoke curling from its nostrils. Its eyes narrowed. It reared its head back.
Flames surged in its throat.
And then, the cloaked figure raised his hand.
Time didn't stop—but something more subtle occurred. A flicker. A distortion. A layer of reality peeled back, just enough for lines of code to reveal themselves in midair.
Analyzing Target Spell…
Spell Identified: Flame Breath [Type: Continuous | Source: Cardiac Core | Modifier: Hellfire Tier II]
Vulnerability: Input Parameters Modifiable
He blinked once.
Rewrite Command Executed: Flame → Cryo
Mana Conversion Rate Stable
Compiling… Success.
The flame ignited.
Except it didn't.
From the dragon's throat burst not fire, but a violent storm of glacial wind and razors of ice. Its roar turned into a choking shriek as its own core betrayed it. Ice spilled across the plaza, turning burning wagons into frozen sculptures.
The dragon fell.
Not dead. But stunned. Disoriented. Incomprehensibly confused.
The cloaked man—Nyx—walked forward slowly, boots hissing against evaporating frost.
The people stared.
Lyra was too shocked to speak. The magic… she had seen spell inversion before, but never without glyphs, catalysts, or spoken incantations. Never with a wave of the hand.
Nyx halted before the dragon's enormous face. He crouched, scanning it as if reading a screen only he could see.
Core Temperature: Stabilizing
Combat Instinct: Suppressed
Threat Status: Neutralized
"Not a bad firewall," he murmured. "But outdated."
The dragon moaned—a deep, guttural, confused sound. A sound of failure.
Nyx turned toward the villagers.
"I'm not from here," he said. "But your world has bugs. Dangerous ones. I'm here to patch them."
No one spoke.
Then a child clapped.
And the crowd followed.
Behind them, Lyra narrowed her eyes. She didn't know who this man was—or what he had done—but she knew power when she saw it.
And this was the kind of power the world would kill to control.