Elara didn't flinch. She drove the Shard into the stone at her feet, triggering a wave of absolute cold. For a heartbeat, the dragon’s fire sputtered. In that moment of frozen silence, man and beast locked eyes. Elara saw not just a monster, but a grieving king of a dead era, looking at the thieves who had desecrated his rest.
The "Rage of the Dragon" was not a singular event, but a week of relentless scouring. Ignis-Kahl didn't eat the livestock; he incinerated the very soil so nothing would ever grow again. He dismantled the Great Bridge of Valerius not with tooth or claw, but by hovering above it until the iron expanded and the masonry cracked under its own weight.
The first sign was the heat. A dry, suffocating wind swept down from the Iron Peaks, wilting crops in seconds. Then came the shadow. Ignis-Kahl was not merely a beast; he was an avalanche with wings. When he descended upon Oakhaven, he didn’t just breathe fire—he unleashed a rhythmic, molten pulse that turned stone to glass.
As the Wyrm landed, the impact shattered every window in the city. His eyes were like twin furnaces, glowing with a sentient, ancient hatred. He opened his maw, the air around his teeth beginning to ripple with white-hot intensity.
Captain Elara of the High Guard led the final, desperate stand at the gates of Aethelgard. She didn't use a sword—she knew steel would melt before it touched him. Instead, she stood atop the battlements with the "Silence Shard," the last remaining relic of the Dragon-Binders.
In the capital, King Alaric watched the horizon glow a sickly, permanent orange. "It isn't hunger," the court mage whispered, hands trembling over a scrying orb. "It is retribution. We have stolen his marrow, and now he comes to reclaim the debt in ash."
Ignis-Kahl let out a roar that shook the foundations of the world, but he did not strike. Perhaps it was the Shard’s magic, or perhaps he realized that leaving the people to starve in the wasteland he’d created was a far more poetic vengeance than a quick death by fire.
For three centuries, the Great Wyrm, Ignis-Kahl, had been a myth etched into crumbling mountain shrines. But when the Deep-Mining Guild of Oakhaven struck a vein of "Heart-Fire" ore—shimmering crystals formed from ancient draconic blood—they didn't just find wealth. They woke a god.
