The northern borders of the continent had always been a silent land.
Not because no living beings existed there, but because even nature did not dare to breathe too much in that region.
Massive black mountains, like broken pillars of a forgotten world, stretched to the heart of the clouds. Snow fell quietly and silently on the frozen ground, and icy lakes under the gray sky looked like dead mirrors.
Mana flowed in this region... but quieter than anywhere else on the continent, as if the world itself had chosen to forget this place.
And in the midst of that endless silence, the sound of tal striking echoed.
Not an ordinary sound, but a sound that, with each repetition, cracked distant mountains.
A lone man stood in the frozen plain. His long gray hair moved with the wind, and his dark cloak dragged on the snow behind him.
He held a massive sword.
A sword that looked more like a piece of compressed darkness than a weapon.
And each ti he moved it, space split. Not taphorically, not an exaggeration, but truly split.
Thin black lines opened in the air for a mont and then quietly healed, as if the world was barely saving itself from his strikes.
Ragnar.
The first Eternal Warrior.
A being who had been gone for centuries, yet his na remained legendary. A na that alone could awaken fear in millions and hope in millions of others.
He breathed quietly and struck again.
The pressure of that attack split a distant mountain in half without any explosion. A few seconds later, the sound of that mountain’s collapse finally reached this place.
But Ragnar didn’t even look at it. For him, splitting mountains was nothing more than warming up his body.
The nature around him behaved strangely. No bird flew near him. No living creature entered his vicinity.
Even the wind changed its path before reaching him.
As if the world instinctively understood: this being... is not a natural part of it.
And at that very mont, the space behind him rippled quietly. No massive explosion occurred, no trendous mana was released, only thousands of small silver runes appeared in the air.
The runes spun quietly, layered on top of each other, and then split a narrow space.
A woman erged from that rift. Long silver hair. Calm but tired eyes. A white robe with thousands of faint runes floating on it.
Seraphina, the Lady of a Thousand Laws.
The mont she stepped onto the snow, the runes around her quietly faded, and the split space closed without the slightest instability.
Absolute control.
Even her entrance scread the difference between her and Ragnar.
Ragnar was like a sword made only for cutting.
But Seraphina was like a mind silently controlling thousands of the world’s laws.
Ragnar didn’t even turn around.
He just moved his sword once more, and this ti, the pressure wave split a distant icy lake in half.
"You usually don’t waste ti coming to see ." Then he said quietly.
His voice was indifferent. No hostility, no welco, just a cold truth. He truly preferred to stay away from all living beings.
But unfortunately, no matter how hard he tried, he could never hide from two won.
"The Holy Council has been convened." Seraphina stated the reason for her arrival directly.
No reaction was seen. Ragnar quietly lowered his sword.
"And?"
A few seconds of silence stretched between the snow and the wind.
"The Divine Prophet has summoned you as well." Seraphina added.
For the first ti, Ragnar’s movent stopped. Not shocked, not even truly curious, just... a brief pause.
But for a being like him, even that pause held great aning, because the Divine Prophet almost never intervened directly.
And more importantly, he thought, and was almost certain, that the Divine Prophet did not like to see him at all. Not after that incident.
So why had she changed her mind now?
Ragnar finally turned half his face toward Seraphina. His gray eyes were strange, not like a human’s eyes, but like cold, bottomless pits.
"What happened?"
Seraphina stepped forward a few steps. The snow beneath her feet lted silently.
"The continent’s united army has been destroyed."
"Valdrak is dead."
Still, Ragnar’s reaction was less than expected. He seed not to care, and coldness rippled in his eyes.
He was aware of the concept of the continent’s united army. An army planned and founded to protect the continent in case of an attack by the beasts of corruption.
But destroyed...?
Seraphina continued:
"The commander of the Sky Knights Guard, the Three-Hearted Dragon, the servant of the World Tree, and the greatest rune master in the world have been killed and transford into strange monsters."
This ti, Ragnar’s gaze changed slightly, showing a bit of attention. It was clear the situation was truly not interesting.
Seraphina quietly raised her hand. Silver runes ford before her, and images of the battle appeared in the air.
Valdrak. Daniel. The split sky. The clash that cracked the world and had the power to destroy the continent.
Seraphina’s quiet voice echoed among the images.
"Valdrak released his final strike by sacrificing the heart of the ancient dragon..."
The image of the final clash appeared.
"...and that being only got wounded."
The next image showed the death of the ancient dragon shadows.
"He applied death to sothing that was already dead."
For the first ti, Ragnar’s eyebrow rose very slightly.
A brief silence followed.
"Is the world going to be destroyed?" Then he asked very simply.
Seraphina looked directly at him, but Ragnar just shrugged.
"Well... what does that have to do with ?"
The wind suddenly grew colder. This ti, Seraphina’s calm face cracked for the first ti.
Not with anger, but with exhaustion. The exhaustion of soone who had been carrying the weight of a collapsing world for a long ti.
She knew convincing this stubborn bastard would not be easy, but she hadn’t thought it would be this hard.
But she still had one trump card.
"Do you want all the remaining mories of that woman to be destroyed as well?" And then she said.
Ragnar did not move again. His sword lowered quietly beside his body. And for the first ti, sothing behind that indifferent gaze could be seen: pain, sorrow, grief, as if revealing an old wound.
"If she were still alive... what do you think she would want right now?" Seraphina then continued.
Ragnar didn’t answer. He just stared at his sword for a few seconds, as if seeing a mory he had buried for centuries.
"Where did this monster co from?" Then he finally asked quietly.
"We don’t know." Seraphina shook her head slightly.
"No record of him exists. It’s as if he doesn’t belong to this world at all." And then she continued quietly.
Ragnar remained silent. Seraphina looked at the floating images.
"He killed Valdrak."
"After the battle, he devoured the dragons."
"He turned the elves into monsters and transford the four commanders into slave monsters. We don’t even know how he has such power, or the depth of his power, or how far it can go..."
Ragnar sneered briefly.
"So the most powerful army that was supposed to slaughter him... has now beco his own army?"
"Well, almost." Seraphina sighed.
"And apparently, so dragons... have started calling him the Dragon God."
Ragnar’s sneer faded. He fell silent, because he knew better than anyone what that sentence ant.
Centuries ago, he too had fought ancient dragons and was more or less aware of that race’s power. If the dragons call such a being god, the situation would not be good.
He knew how unbreakable that race’s pride was. Dragons would not kneel even in death.
If a being had managed to force them to obey, then the issue was not just raw power, but sothing deeper at play.
"The most terrifying part is not his power." Seraphina continued quietly.
Ragnar looked at her.
"He is still growing." And the Lady of a Thousand Laws added.
The images changed again. Daniel’s sword, the evolution of his sword aura, the white-gold fruit, the cracked shell.
This ti, Ragnar’s silence lasted longer, because now the issue was not just a powerful enemy, but a being who had not yet reached his peak.
Ragnar quietly placed his massive sword on his shoulder. The snow beneath him cracked. He stared at the gray sky for a few seconds.
"...I will attend the Holy Council."
Seraphina said nothing, but for the first ti, the pressure in her gaze lessened slightly.
And just before the silver runes around her reappeared, Ragnar added quietly.
"I just hope that monster... is as strong as you say."
This was the quiet enthusiasm of a being who had perhaps finally found an opponent worth drawing his sword for.
Thousands of silver runes spun in the air. Space split quietly, and the two monsters that the world had feared for centuries disappeared into the snow and silence.
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