Ersia: Raven Dawn

[Sabada, 20th of Red Noon, 11th Year of the Fourth Age]

Rosmayne had fallen into panic. Those within it—people from thirteen nations across Ersia who moments before had only been immersed in the festivities of the Ludus Magnorum—now surged toward the capital’s gates in a desperate attempt to escape. Disorder spread without restraint. Bodies pressed against one another, voices rose and broke into indistinguishable noise, and the knights stationed at the gates, though disciplined, were steadily losing their grip on the situation.

Yet the realm was not entirely without fortune. Several duchies moved with remarkable speed, mobilizing relief with a precision that spoke of long preparation and anticipation rather than improvisation. Personnel were deployed, rations and emergency supplies distributed, and temporary shelters erected across key districts. Order, where it could still be enforced, held firm under practiced hands, and through this swift response the damage, though severe, did not spiral beyond control. On this day, the so-called nation of flowers found its salvation not in strength, but in structure.

Still, no one could claim relief. The situation itself had not changed.

Mistus—now in the form of a colossal dragon—remained suspended in the sky. It circled above the capital of Fleurein at an unhurried pace, as though intent on ensuring that its presence was not merely witnessed, but also understood.

The Cloud Riders, Rosmayne’s foremost aerial force, found themselves rendered powerless. Their mounts, the bluespike basrats, had lost all composure. Not one among them failed to shriek in terror. They lowered their bodies, retreating instinctively, crawling into buildings or burrowing into the cavernous military outposts carved on the cliffs around to the city. No command could reach them. No discipline could hold.

From the attico of the Great Gardenia, the bodyguard of Maxence Dujardin observed his superior with quiet curiosity. In spite of chaotic circumstances, the Colonel de la Couronne showed no trace of unease, not even the faintest shadow of hesitation.

“You seem remarkably calm, Colonel,” Maxence said, tilting his head slightly. “Have you already found the answer to this predicament, as you always do?”

Maxence did not answer immediately. He reached into his coat, withdrew a hip flask, and drank deeply, finishing half its contents in a single motion. When he lowered it, he extended it toward his bodyguard, who accepted without hesitation, taking a measured drink before returning it.

“You know,” Maxence began, easing himself down to sit against the stone floor, “every mission I’ve ever been assigned turns into a spectacular nuisance. That’s why I make it a point to always pray for something simple.”

A faint exhale escaped him, somewhere between amusement and resignation.

“I just didn’t expect the simplest one to come in this fashion.”

The guard let out a short laugh, unable to fully contain it, though the sound carried more disbelief than mirth. He remained standing, watching as his superior continued to defy the weight of the moment with unsettling composure.

Maxence extended a hand without looking. “Lend me your gloves.”

The guard hesitated only briefly before removing it and placing it in his hand. Maxence folded it with casual care and set it beneath his head, stretching out along the floor as though settling in for an ordinary rest.

“How could you call this the simplest task,” the guard asked, unable to suppress the question any longer, “when such a calamity hangs over us?”

Maxence adjusted the makeshift pillow slightly, eyes already beginning to close.

“Because there’s nothing we can do but pray.”

The answer came without emphasis, as though it required none.

Silence followed, not abrupt, but natural—something that arrived once words had lost their purpose. After a moment, Maxence drew in a long breath.

“Your duty now,” he added, voice already drifting, “is to pray on my behalf while I sleep. I don’t care what you believe in—just make it a good one. And keep it quiet, if you can. I haven’t slept all night. My in-laws have been relentless. Apparently, they won’t leave me alone until they get themselves a granddaughter to dote on.”

It was not long before his breathing settled into a steady rhythm, the faint rise and fall of someone entirely at rest. There was no pretense in it. His bodyguard knew better than to question it.

Left standing in the stillness, the guard hesitated before slowly lowering himself to his knees. From his pocket, he drew a small pouch—his purse, containing a modest weight of gold and silver. He turned it once in his hand, as though measuring its worth, then set it carefully before him.

Pressing his palms together, he bowed his head.

His prayer was neither refined nor devout. It carried no elegance, only quiet negotiation.

"If you can do something about this, and I get to live after today,” he murmured, voice low enough to vanish into the wind, "I'll make a good donation out of you ... Also, no drinks and no cards for 5 years on top of that."

He paused, the promise settling into something heavier than he had intended, before adding more softly,

“I mean it.”

The vast, winged body angled upward and began to climb. For a creature of such impossible scale, the ascent was unsettlingly swift. It rose without strain, cutting through the churning layers of black cloud until its form was swallowed whole, leaving only a vacancy in the sky where its presence had pressed upon the world.

Those who watched could only follow it with their eyes until there was nothing left to see. No one understood what it intended. Speculation flickered and died just as quickly, for there was nothing to anchor it to. Hope, thin and unsteady, lingered in its place.

Then the ground answered before the sky did.

A deep tremor rolled outward, not sharp but immense, as though something had struck the bones of the earth rather than its surface. It came a heartbeat before the impact itself—a descending weight that resolved into Mistus as it broke through the cloud layer and fell, not with haste, but with finality.

It landed upon the high plateau east of the city, where the land rose between Lake Sérénité and the lower reaches of the Althéne mountains. The collision did not sound like a crash so much as a compression—a vast, contained force driven downward into stone.

The plateau took it, and for a moment, everything else followed.

Shock traveled through the ground in widening circles, a low, sustained motion that reached the city with enough strength to disturb even its most stable structures. Walls trembled, beams strained, and in older quarters, buildings that had endured decades of quiet weather finally gave way, their collapse less an explosion than a surrender. Dust lifted into the air in muted plumes as the tremor passed through.

The lake responded not with noise, but with displacement. Its surface drew inward along the side nearest the plateau, as if pulled away by an unseen hand, exposing a brief stretch of darkened shoreline and the slick, uneven bed beneath. What had been still moments before revealed itself in fragments—stones, roots, and the buried edges of things long settled—before the motion turned and began to return.

It did not come back as a single wave, but as a broad, gathering surge that pressed outward from the point of impact. The water moved heavily, thickened by silt and torn reeds drawn up from below, its front uneven as it met the banks. Moorings strained and snapped, smaller vessels wrenched free and carried in short, uncertain arcs, while the shoreline received the swell in increments—water climbing past its usual bounds before slipping back without conviction.

For a time, the lake resisted stillness. Waves crossed and folded into one another, their rhythm unsettled, as though the force of the landing had reached beneath the surface and disturbed something deeper than motion alone. When it finally began to ease, the retreat did not restore what had been; in certain stretches, the water lingered lower than before, leaving behind damp, newly bared ground that held the mark of its passing, quiet and unresolved.

Then, Mistus lets out a roar so malevolent that even the bravest soul trembles despite the faraway distance—a deep, suffocating growl that swells with crushing pressure before tearing loose into a violent, jagged bellow that seems to rip through the air itself. It lingers in a low, grinding rumble that does not truly fade, but settles heavily into the bones, like a grave warning that refuses to leave.

After that, it grew still.

Mistus remained where it stood upon the plateau, its vast form unmoving as it gazed into the distance. It did nothing, made no further display of force, and for a long while it seemed almost indifferent to the theatric it had caused. Yet the stillness did not ease those who watched. It felt deliberate, as though it were waiting.

Three hours passed, and still it stood, with attention fixed upon the distant outline of Fleurein. One can only guess.

One ... can only guess.