The roar didn’t co from the Kraken.
The sound pierced the air like a cosmic blade, splitting the sky in two. The clouds swirled in black convulsions, as if a vortex had been opened, and from the celestial rift fell lightning bolts that had no natural color: black bolts, glowing with an antediluvian glow, like scars from creation itself. Each bolt touched the sea and cracked it into incandescent lines, destroying the surface as if it were glass.
Cassandra and Monica shivered. Their dragon bodies, built for war, reacted with the most primal instinct—fear. Their hearts beat wildly, like prey before an absolute predator.
And the Kraken... stopped.
All its tentacles, once lashing like living walls, froze in midair. The titan of the ocean, the unbreakable guardian, suddenly beca small. As if he had recognized a presence far greater than himself.
From high above the clouds, the colossal shadow moved.
The wingbeats reverberated like an army of thunder. Each impact displaced the air, raising waves that crashed against each other in walls of water, leaving the entire sea collapsing.
Cassandra’s eyes widened, her voice catching in her throat. "I... I know that aura..."
Monica gritted her teeth, electricity exploding through her body like uncontrolled nerve impulses. "This... it can’t be. It’s her husband, he’s here!"
Then the sky dissolved into light and shadow.
And he appeared.
Strax.
Not in his human skin, nor in the hybrid Cassandra had seen before. Now he was in his full form—a dragon so massive that the horizon seed too small to contain him. Its scales were black as abysses, but they reflected the storm in spectral glows, as if made from shattered fragnts of night. Its eyes were fiery slits, burning with the intensity of dead stars, vast and indifferent. The air around it crumbled, cracking into distortions, as if reality itself buckled to support its weight.
Its roar exploded again. It wasn’t sound. It was cataclysm.
It tore through air, sea, and flesh, shaking the very core of Cassandra and Monica’s bones. Colossal waves rose from the vibration alone. The clouds tore apart.
The Kraken trembled.
And, for the first ti, it recoiled.
Monica blinked in disbelief, her throat dry as stone. "This... this monster... this guardian... he... he’s afraid?!"
Cassandra stared at Strax, her heart racing so fast it felt like it wanted to shatter her ribs.
"It’s not just fear..." she whispered in a whisper. "It’s complete terror."
Another black bolt of lightning descended, and where it struck, a crater opened in the ocean. The waters, panicked, receded from the impact, forming montary valleys that revealed the bottom for brief seconds.
Strax hovered above it all, a deity of chaos. And then he spoke.
His voice, distorted and deep, resonated like an earthquake that echoed in all directions, impossible to ignore:
"Stay away. These waters are no longer yours."
The runes on the Kraken’s body burned in frenzy. The monster roared, not in fury, but in despair. Tentacles rose in unison, a wall of flesh and power, attacking with everything.
Strax simply spread his wings.
And the night lit up.
A black flash swept across the sky, so intense it seed to erase all other colors in the world. Where the tentacles had advanced... nothing remained. There was no cut, no explosion. Only absence. They disintegrated silently, reduced to ethereal dust, as if they had never existed.
The entire sea convulsed. The Kraken scread in agony, its runes dying one by one, until it sank into the depths like a mutilated beast. Darkness swallowed it, and the ocean, for a mont, fell silent.
Monica could barely breathe, her eyes wide with shock. "He... got stronger? He just... erased everything..."
Cassandra gasped, her eyes fixed on the colossal form. "This... this isn’t the Strax we know..." her voice trembled. "But it’s still him." A shiver ran across her scales. "Sothing happened to him. Sothing... I can’t understand."
The Kraken’s final roar echoed from the depths, then faded completely. The sea grew still. Silent. Dead.
Then, slowly, Strax turned his head.
And his flaming eyes t theirs.
The pressure was imdiate. The air crushed their bodies, their wings trembled, their hearts pounded with pain. It wasn’t just fear—it was as if his very existence negated theirs.
Monica gritted her teeth, fighting the instinct to bow. Cassandra, for her part, felt her own power dwindle to nothing.
And then his voice, distorted by the weight of his form, fell upon them like a sentence: "Get out of here. Now. Fly north. Samira and the others wait. I will destroy this man."
The sky tore into black lightning, the sea rose in distorted columns. Reality trembled. Strax had not defeated the Kraken. He had beco sothing the entire sea feared.
The sky tore open in fury, and black lightning exploded in all directions, like divine spears falling to shatter the world. Each flash carried an energy that was not rely destructive—it was absolute, as if seeking to erase the very essence of what it touched. Strax’s aura grew, expanding in waves that made the air tremble, the sea part, and the clouds flee before him.
It wasn’t just against the Kraken.
He intended to annihilate the entire region.
Monica took a deep breath, her entire body shuddering, the electricity around her withering before the magnitude of that energy.
"Cassandra..." her voice trailed off, almost a whisper. "If we stay... we’ll die."
Cassandra remained trapped under the weight of Strax’s gaze. Her muscles locked, her heart pounding like a war drum. But the truth was etched in her bones: here, they weren’t warriors. They were just survivors.
She closed her eyes, swallowing the tallic taste of fear, and nodded firmly.
"He doesn’t need us in this fight."
The two of them beat their wings with all their remaining strength, smashing against the storm’s wall of winds. The air cut through their scales like blades, each black bolt exploding just ters away, and still they soared, retreating, away from that epicenter of destruction.
Behind them, Strax’s roar echoed one last ti.
It wasn’t a roar of victory.
It wasn’t a roar of fury.
It was the sound of a world being remade by their existence.
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