Chapter 414: Dragon Pride
The flas consuming the sky finally receded, as if the universe itself had held its breath. A dense silence fell over the devastated field, more deafening than any explosion.
On the edges of the fragnted arena, the gods finally moved. Without haste. Without urgency. Like ancient pillars witnessing yet another bloody page of history being written before their eyes.
Morrigan crossed her arms with dangerous ease. Her eyes, black as bottomless pits, followed every movent on the battlefield with the attention of a silent predator. Her half-open lips let out an almost imperceptible sigh.
“That’s how she moves…” she murmured, more to herself than to anyone else. There was fascination in her voice. And perhaps… a shadow of regret.
Susano’o remained standing, firm, a living statue. His hand rested a few milliters from the hilt of the ancestral katana that hung on his back. Not out of fear. Never out of fear. It was reverence.
Respect for two forces that fought not only with power, but with the weight of centuries embedded in their fists.
“She doesn’t just dominate the battle,” he replied, his voice low as restrained thunder. “She shapes the entire field… even at a disadvantage.”
He observed Crimsarya’s subtle control over the space around her, the way each fla seed to respond not to her will, but to her state of mind.
“That’s more than strength. It’s martial elegance.”
Miles away, under the protection of a rock formation reinforced by pulsing runes, stood Vergil, Sapphire, and Sepphirothy. The three watched the battle from afar, but there was no true safety when gods dueled. Each wave of energy reverberated like bottled thunder—a constant warning that the crust of reality could give way at any mont.
Vergil stood with his arms crossed and his eyes fixed on the broken horizon. His countenance was that of a silent general. It was not just the fight that concerned him—but what it awakened.
“They’re not just fighting each other…” he said, almost without a voice.
Sapphire, kneeling between two rocks, was breathing heavily. The intensity of the forces on the field was such that the very elents around them were agitated — the rock creaked, the wind trembled. Still, she kept her eyes open, steady, as if refusing to miss a single second.
“They’re fighting out of pure ego…” she added, her voice trembling. A sentence that weighed more than it appeared.
Sepphirothy remained motionless. White hair fluttered around his serene face, and his sky-blue eyes seed to pierce through space and ti. He finally spoke, with the cruel calm of one who understands eternity:
“How useless pride.” No one answered. Because there was nothing more to say.
At that mont, as ice and fire intertwined in the sky, it was not just a battle being fought. It was a great war.
In the center of the destroyed field, Crimsarya floated, her body erect like a fallen goddess. Behind her, scarlet fire took shape, like flowing wings dancing to the rhythm of her calm heart.
Below, the ice spread.
Fast.
Insistent.
Uncontrollable.
Nivara stood on solid ground, her feet freezing the soil with each step. Crystals grew like white blades, breaking through the ground with dry cracks. Her face remained impassive—or at least, she tried.
But Crimsarya saw the tremor in her eyebrows, the slight grinding of teeth between attacks. She noticed.
“You’re nervous,” she said, breaking the sound of the air with her firm, gentle voice. “Why, Nivara?”
A jet of ice shot out in response, curving like a snake to hit her in the air. Crimsarya dodged with a slight twist of her body, as if dancing in the middle of the storm. The frozen spear passed straight through her and disappeared into the distance, exploding on a mountain.
“Don’t change the subject.”
Nivara did not answer. Instead, she leaped. A trail of crystals ford beneath her feet, like frozen steps, until she reached Crimsarya in the sky.
The air around them froze and burned at the sa ti. A living contradiction.
“You have no right to question ,” Nivara growled, and her hands rose, forming translucent daggers that swirled around her body like a deadly swarm. “You… are the cause of everything. The beginning of the fall.”
Crimsarya didn’t move. Not once. Her fiery eyes never left her rival’s face.
“And you’re still stuck in that mont.”
The daggers flew. Each one cutting through the air with the speed of thought. But none of them touched her.
Crimsarya dodged them with small, precise movents. It didn’t even look like she was fighting. It was as if she just knew where not to be. A silent dance against frozen fury.
Her calmness was unbearable for Nivara.
“You…!” Nivara shouted, her voice cracking. “How can you maintain that damn serenity?!”
“Because I’ve lost enough to understand that it’s no longer worth it,” Crimsarya replied, her tone as solid as the lava flowing beneath her invisible feet. “You still fight for pride. I… just exist beyond it.”
Nivara recoiled for a second. The words weighed heavier than a physical attack. Her countenance trembled—a tiny crack in the emotional armor she had built over eons.
But ice does not retreat easily.
Cold responds to heat with triple force.
She raised her arms, and the sky began to snow in fragnts of true ice—not re frozen water, but the essence of frozen eternity, capable of shattering even divine matter. The ground was covered with a crystalline layer. The arena beca a prison of white mirrors.
Crimsarya looked around. Her boots touched the ice, and she felt the pressure on her muscles, her form almost trying to yield to the oppressive presence of the Ice Empress.
“Enough,” she murmured, and rose into the air again. Her legs dissolved into flas, and now she floated completely above the layer of ice.
“If I’m going to fight you, it won’t be on your turf.”
She launched herself into a crimson whirlwind, spinning with the force of a dying star. Nivara tried to raise a wall of ice, but it was too late.
Crimsarya broke through the barrier and, with a sharp twist of her hip, landed a direct punch to her rival’s face.
CRACK!
The sound echoed like thunder.
Nivara was thrown from the sky like a shooting star. Her body crashed into the ground with absurd violence, opening a crater dozens of ters wide. Crystals shattered. Mountains trembled.
Dust, snow, and embers flew in all directions.
And then—silence.
Crimsarya descended slowly, her boots hovering a few inches above the frozen ground. She looked at the center of the crater, where Nivara lay gasping, too weak to get up imdiately.
She didn’t smile.
She didn’t celebrate.
She just spoke.
“Please… enough.”
The dust had not yet settled when Crimsarya took another step.
“Years have passed. We were sisters before that. Empresses of forgotten kingdoms… and now we are just shadows fighting over broken mories.”
Nivara tried to get up. Her body trembled. Her eyes still shone with the power of True Ice—but there was doubt there now. Fear? No. Sothing more… tired.
“If we continue like this,” said Crimsarya, her voice heavy with truth, “they will co.”
Nivara blinked.
“They…?”
“The ones above.” Crimsarya raised her eyes to the broken sky, where black cracks still pulsed, like scars that never closed. “If we continue, they will seal us again. As they did before. And this ti… it may be forever.”
Silence returned.
Nivara stared at Crimsarya for long seconds. Her muscles tense. Anger still bubbling, but… now mixed with a bitter taste of recognition.
“I…” But she didn’t finish.
The dust settled. The scorched and frozen field told its story — again… And for now, all that remained was to decide if it would be the end… or a new beginning.
…
[In another world…]
Reality there was not made of matter, nor of ordinary energy—it was made of forgotten ideas, echoes of ancient creations, dead dreams of gods who no longer exist.
The space around it rippled gently as if breathing, and in the distance, between the folds of infinity, stood Yggdrazil — the Tree that intertwined worlds, connecting existences, tilines, parallel realities, and worlds that should never have been.
It was gigantic, impossible to asure. Its branches stretched for billions of kiloters, intertwining with planets, moons, dead stars, and even abstract concepts. So leaves shone like living nebulae. Others slowly rotted, exuding a cosmic lancholy.
In the sky above this non-place, at the edge of Nothingness, a Red Dragon of absurd proportions glided effortlessly. It did not flap its wings—it simply was. Its eyes were closed. Its body slowly andered through constellations, as if it had been sleeping since the beginning of ti. Each beat of its heart resonated like the collapse of galaxies.
But there was no peace there.
On a small, lonely floating asteroid fragnt… was a little girl.
She was about 5 feet tall, barefoot, touching the cold, ancient rocks of that forgotten piece of the cosmos. Her black dress fluttered without wind, light as a shadow, studded with small bright dots that resembled dying stars.
Her straight black hair fell softly to her hips, and her purple eyes shone with a kind of sadness that even the gods would not be able to understand.
She watched.
Like soone who had seen everything before.
Like soone who had lived longer than they should have.
And then, with a sweet and lonely sigh, her voice broke the silence of the universe:
“Yggdrazil… is in trouble…” Her voice was low, but it pierced the vacuum like a divine whisper.
She looked up. There he was — the Dragon.
Imnse. Red as primordial blood. A god who refused to die.
“Why don’t you just die… and make happy… wandering in my infinity… stop making noise in my infinity…”
The dragon did not answer. He never answered.
But she knew he heard her.
He always did.
She slowly sat down on the edge of the asteroid. She let her feet dangle in the void, as if it were a playground and not the space between worlds. She closed her eyes for a mont, and her breathing seed to make the stars around her pulse in sync.
“Two baby dragons are fighting…” She laughed, a delicate, almost childlike sound. But in her eyes there was weariness. Weight. “Yggdrazil is in trouble…”
She opened her eyes again. And now they shone more intensely. Not just purple. There was a hidden fire there, a spark of sothing much bigger.
“If this continues… it will all start again, won’t it?” Pause. She looked up, now more serious.
“How many of them could still hear the battle and go to interfere?…”
The dragon remained silent. But sothing in him was changing. A subtle muscle moved. A vibration in the cosmos shifted. Perhaps… he was waking up. Or… rembering.
“You could talk, at least show your… stubbornness.” The girl’s voice grew quieter. “You don’t want to die and you don’t want to talk to . You’re annoying.”
Silence.
And then she smiled. A delicate and terrible smile. “When I kill you, it will be a great peace, Red Dragon.”
Her body glowed briefly with a purple light, and for a mont, the universe seed to hesitate. As if holding its breath.
“If the babies continue…” She stood up. The black dress billowed like living smoke. “…I’ll have to intervene.”
She looked one last ti at Yggdrazil. A golden leaf fell from one of its branches, disintegrating before it touched the ground.
The girl sighed.
And walked into the void.
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