The mountain did not sleep.
It breathed.
With every pulse of light beneath its stone skin, the world trembled.
Deep within its heart, Talen stood before the throne of forgotten gods, his body no longer bound by the limits of man. His eyes gleamed like molten stars, his breath carried the scent of ash and rebirth.
He was no longer just a hero.
No longer merely a prince lost to time.
He was something older.
Something remembered.
Vorathax watched him with quiet approval.
"You have awakened," the dragon said.
Talen looked down at his hands—fingers tipped with claws, veins pulsing with firelight.
"I am becoming what I was," he murmured.
Vorathax nodded.
"And soon, the world will remember you."
Outside, far from the sanctum of gods, the world was already changing.
And Vintrinx was watching.
---
Vintrinx had once been called many things.
Warrior. Scholar. Survivor.
Now, they were something else.
Standing atop the ruins of Eldenhold, they stared toward the distant mountain peak where firelight flickered through the clouds like a heartbeat. The people around them whispered prayers to names they barely understood.
But Vintrinx didn't pray.
They didn't kneel.
Not yet.
They had seen Talen return—not as a man, not even as a hero—but as something beyond comprehension. And they had felt it too.
The pull of old blood.
The whisper of forgotten names.
At night, dreams came unbidden—visions of wings wrapped in shadow, of voices calling from the deep, of a time when dragons walked not as monsters, but as rulers.
They touched their chest.
Their heart beat differently now.
Too fast.
Too slow.
Too much.
---
When Talen descended from the mountain, it was not alone.
Dragons walked beside him—figures cloaked in flame and mist, their forms shifting between man and beast, between memory and myth. They moved with purpose, their presence bending the air itself.
The world bent with them.
But not everyone followed.
Vintrinx met Talen at the edge of the ruined city, where the last remnants of the kingdom still clung to order.
"You're not coming back," Vintrinx said, voice steady.
Talen regarded them for a long moment.
"I never left."
Vintrinx stepped forward.
"What are you now?"
Talen smiled faintly.
"Something ancient. Something remembered."
Vintrinx's jaw tightened.
"And what about us? About the people?"
Talen turned his gaze to the sky, where constellations shifted into unfamiliar patterns.
"The gods have returned," he said. "Mankind must decide if it will kneel… or rise."
Vintrinx exhaled sharply.
"And if we do neither?"
Talen finally looked at them—really looked.
"You'll be the first to try."
---
That night, Vintrinx walked alone.
They passed through the streets of the broken city, hearing whispers of worship and fear. Some hailed Talen as a savior. Others feared what he had become.
But Vintrinx saw something different.
A choice.
Not just for themselves.
For all of humanity.
They stopped before the shattered remains of an old temple, one that had once honored gods long buried.
And there, waiting in the shadows, was someone unexpected.
A woman with silver eyes and wings of smoke.
"You feel it, don't you?" she asked.
Vintrinx nodded.
"The world is changing."
She smiled.
"Then let's make sure it doesn't burn."
And high above the ruins, Talen watched the horizon, whispering to the wind: "Forgive me, Vintrinx. But this is how the world begins again."