Strax braced his hand on the glassy crater floor and tried to stand, feeling the weight of his own body as if the world had increased gravity just for him. His muscles responded, slowly but obediently.
Air entered his burned lungs with difficulty, and for a brief second he believed he had survived only with severe physical damage, sothing his body had faced before.
However, when he forced his right foot against the ground to stand up completely, sothing strange happened: there was no pain, no crack, no tearing of flesh—there was lightness.
A wrong lightness.
He lowered his eyes and saw that the surface of his own foot was disintegrating into gray particles, like ash blown by an invisible breeze. There was no blood, no exposed tissue, only fragntation. The edge of the boot simply dissolved along with what should have been inside it. The sensation was not of loss, but of progressive absence, as if parts of him were ceasing to belong to matter.
"Hm?" He frowned, genuinely confused. He tried to move his toes, but they were no longer there. Decomposition advanced through his legs with terrifying calm, climbing up his ankles, consuming his calves and knees in absolute silence.
There was no pain whatsoever—and that made it all the worse. If it hurt, there would be sothing to fight against.
But there was no sign of injury, no burning, no bleeding. It was as if Edrik’s final explosion had implanted an invisible sentence, a delay in execution.
Strax closed his eyes for a mont and drew energy into himself, activating the regeneration process that had always responded to his command. The flesh began to recompose where the dust had risen, muscle fibers reappearing, bones rebuilding in seconds.
For a mont, his leg returned to its original form, firm, whole. He exhaled slowly. Then, before their very eyes, the newly ford structure crumbled again, turning into even finer dust, as if the attempt at healing only accelerated the inevitable.
In the distance, three silhouettes erged running towards the crater, stumbling among debris and shards of black glass.
Rogue was in the lead, her face already marked by tears she hadn’t even realized she was shedding; Daniela ran close behind, her breath uneven, her heart pounding against her chest with the instinctive feeling that sothing was profoundly wrong; Cassandra ca a few steps behind, her eyes wide, trying to maintain lucidity while the surrounding scenery confird the opposite.
When they finally reached the edge of the crater and looked down, what they saw was not an exhausted warrior recovering, but Strax kneeling in the center of the void, his legs almost nonexistent, his body beginning to disintegrate like an ancient statue exposed to centuries of erosion in seconds.
"No..." Daniela’s voice faltered before it could even beco a complete word.
Rogue was the first to run down, sliding down the sloping surface, ignoring the residual heat of the ground.
Cassandra followed, calling his na repeatedly, as if re insistence could stop what was happening.
When they approached, the decay had already reached Strax’s hip, slowly climbing up his torso.
He raised his face to them, his gaze still lucid, still firm, though there was a silent understanding of what it ant.
"Hey..." he said, forcing a half-smile. "Calm down. It’s okay." It was a lie, and everyone knew it.
Rogue fell to her knees before him, her hands trembling as she tried to hold what remained of her legs, but her fingers pierced the unstable structure and touched only hot dust.
"No, no, no, no... you can’t be saying this, look at yourself!" her voice rose in pure despair, tearing through the already devastated air.
Daniela brought her hands to her mouth, her wide eyes fixed on the line of dissolution that climbed up Strax’s abdon, unable to accept that there was no blood, no visible wound, only inevitable disintegration.
Cassandra, always the most reserved, approached with hesitant steps, but when she saw his torso begin to fragnt like burnt paper, her composure crumbled.
"Do sothing!" she yelled, as if he were choosing it.
Strax tried to heal again. Energy coursed through his body, and for an instant the dust rising from his chest rebuilt itself into intact skin, muscle, and tissue. Rogue felt the solidity return beneath her fingers, and her eyes filled with desperate hope.
"Yes! Keep going! Keep going!" she pleaded, cupping his face in both hands. But the hope lasted only seconds. The reconstruction began to fail, the regeneration lines shattering like glass under invisible pressure, and the newly ford flesh turned to fine ash that slipped through her fingers.
Daniela let out a loud, almost childlike sob, unable to contain the terror of seeing soone so unwavering crumble without even reacting with pain.
"I’m here," Strax said, though his voice was already echoing strangely, as if from a distant place. "You need to stay calm."
"Shut up!" Rogue scread, tears now falling freely. "Stop talking like you’re leaving of your own accord!"
Decomposition reached his shoulders, rising up his neck in delicate fragnts that detached like soot blown by an invisible wind. Cassandra clutched her chest, feeling her heart clench with a pain she would have preferred a thousand tis to be physical.
"You can’t... you can’t leave us like this..." she murmured, her voice breaking. Daniela moved closer, touching his remaining arm, but the touch only resulted in more particles breaking away.
Strax tried one last ti to concentrate his energy. The glow coursed across what remained of his torso, forming a luminous outline that seed to resist dissolution.
For a mont, his form stabilized, and his eyes t hers intensely. There was sothing he didn’t say... regret? frustration?... but what ca out was different. "I’ve survived worse."
He lied again.
The glow failed.
His right arm completely disintegrated, scattering like low-lying smoke across the black ground. Rogue let out a scream that echoed off the distant walls, clutching the empty air where he had been seconds before. Daniela began to repeat his na aloud, as if the repetition could anchor him to reality. Cassandra shook her head, refusing to accept what she saw, her eyes fixed on his face as the edges began to crumble.
"Stop playing around, okay?" Daniela said through tears, her voice trembling so much it barely ca out as a sound. "That’s enough, Strax... stop it..."
His face began to dissolve from the jawline, slowly rising. He still kept his eyes open, still conscious, still present as he turned to dust.
"It’s not a joke," he murmured, but his voice was already almost a whisper, almost wind.
Rogue held what remained of his face, but his fingers pierced through hot smoke. "No! You promised!" She was screaming now, not to him, but to the world, to anything that could hear. "You promised you’d stay!"
Strax’s eyes were the last thing to disappear. They lingered there for a second longer than the rest, steady, watching them with sothing that seed like forced calm. Then they too dissolved, turning into fine dust that fell slowly onto the dark glass of the crater.
Silence.
In the center of the abyss, only an irregular mound of gray soot remained.
Daniela fell to her knees, repeating in denial: "Stop playing around... get up... please, get up..."
Cassandra put her hands to her mouth, unable to make a sound now, while Rogue remained motionless, staring at the dust on the ground as if he were about to breathe at any second.
But he didn’t.
The wind slowly swept through the crater.
And scattered so of the soot.
The silence that followed the dispersion of the soot was so heavy it seed to compress the air in their lungs. Rogue was still kneeling, her fingers stained with ash, staring at the exact spot where Strax’s eyes had disappeared. Daniela repeated "get up" in a low voice, like a broken prayer, while Cassandra tried to gather her thoughts, refusing to accept that this was final. Then the ground shook.
It wasn’t a sudden jolt. It was a deep, continuous tremor, as if sothing colossal were breathing beneath the earth’s crust. The crater’s vitrified cracks vibrated, producing a thin, almost tallic sound. The three looked up at the sa ti.
"What the hell is happening now?" Rogue murmured, her voice still hoarse from crying.
The tremor intensified. Small fragnts of black glass began to leap from the ground, dancing erratically in the air as if pulled by an invisible field. The soot in the crater’s center—what remained of Strax—began to move.
First it was subtle.
A discreet swirl.
Then stronger.
The gray particles weren’t being carried away by the wind. They were being gathered together. Compacted.
Daniela took an instinctive step back. "This... this isn’t normal."
The soot began to spin faster, forming an upward spiral. The air grew heavy again, but unlike the previous oppressive white flas of Edrik. This was more primal. More ancient. The tremor in the ground followed the spiral’s movent, synchronized, like the beating of a buried heart.
Then ca the sound.
A deep crack, like bones being assembled.
Rogue’s eyes widened.
At the center of the spiral, sothing began to take shape.
It wasn’t just dust accumulating.
It was structure.
The soot compacted into a dense mass, and within it, red lines erged, like incandescent veins being drawn in the void. An arch projected forward—elongated, curved.
Jaw.
The particles continued to condense, forming a skull, vertebrae, a spine that extended in perfectly aligned segnts. Each bone first erged as a solid shadow, then was covered by tissue that sprouted as if woven by invisible hands.
Flesh began to grow. Not grotesquely, but inevitably.
Muscle fibers intertwined around the newly ford bone structure, pulsing with white energy. The sound was now of matter being forcibly molded, a damp, tallic noise at the sa ti.
"This is impossible..." Cassandra whispered, unable to take her eyes off it.
The three began to slowly retreat as the form expanded. Enormous ribs erged, curving outward like the structure of a living cathedral. The spine lengthened more and more, each vertebra fitting together with brutal precision.
Then the scales appeared.
First as white patches on the still-red flesh.
Then hardening.
Spreading.
Large, overlapping scales, each with the texture of polished marble, but alive, pulsing beneath a layer of white fire that did not consu—only burned. The white fla snaked along the edges of the scales, drawing luminous contours. Wings began to form.
Two gigantic arches broke through the spiral of soot, tearing through the air with violent cracks. Translucent mbranes stretched between the elongated bones, and when completed, they were covered in luminous veins that shone like rivers of energy contained beneath skin.
The tremor reached its peak.
The creature raised its head.
Eyes opened.
They weren’t human.
They weren’t entirely bestial.
They were two incandescent white cores, too deep to reflect light—they emitted light.
Rogue felt her heart race in her chest, but not from pure fear. There was sothing there she recognized. Not as form. Not as logic.
But as presence.
The colossal jaw moved, opening slowly. Long, curved teeth reflected the white light that seeped between them like vapor.
Daniela gripped Cassandra’s arm tightly. "Is that... him?"
Cassandra didn’t answer.
The dragon—for there was no other word—finished rising completely. It was gigantic. Its body snaked through the crater like a living mountain. Its tail, still partially ford, whipped the air and opened a new fissure in the vitrified ground.
The white flas that coursed across its scales weren’t unstable like Edrik’s. They were constant. They breathed along with the creature.
The swirl of soot ceased.
Silence returned.
But now sothing occupied its center.
The creature slowly turned its head toward the three of them.
The weight of that gaze made the air seem denser.
Rogue felt her legs tremble, but she didn’t back down. She took a deep breath, staring into the incandescent eyes.
"Strax?" the word ca out as a fragile thread of hope and terror mixed together.
The dragon tilted its head slightly.
A small gesture.
Controlled.
The trembling ceased completely.
The wind died down.
The white fla around the scales shone more intensely for a second, illuminating the entire crater like a second dawn.
Daniela brought her hand to her mouth again, but this ti it wasn’t just despair. It was absolute shock at the impossible.
Cassandra finally found her voice, albeit trembling: — This... isn’t just regeneration.
The dragon breathed.
When the air left its nostrils, it wasn’t dark smoke.
It was dense, white vapor that burned the ground upon contact.
The wings slowly opened, revealing the creature’s true size. Each movent was heavy, yet perfectly coordinated, as if that form had always been natural.
Rogue felt a tear roll down his face, but not of grief.
It was sothing between fear and brutal relief.
"You lied to us," she murmured, almost laughing, almost crying at the sa ti.
The blue-eyed White Dragon looked at Daniela, Cassandra, and Rogue... "Sorry, I almost died this ti. Good thing I thought of sothing before disappearing."
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