Chapter 155: Vision of an Endless Night
The night had shrouded the Palace of Blazing Fangs in a thick veil, imbued with an almost mystical silence. Sleep, usually peaceful and dreamless, seemed to stubbornly refuse to welcome Elystria into its comforting embrace. Lying on an immense bed, surrounded by black velvet curtains and silver embroidered pillows, the dragon princess tossed and turned slowly, caught in a strange state between wakefulness and sleep.
A cold sweat slowly beaded on her scaly skin, mingling with the stifling heat that permeated her chamber, fed by the magical braziers that burned perpetually. Her eyelids finally grew heavy, and Elystria finally sank into a restless sleep.
Almost immediately, she plunged into a vision, a reality so sharp, so precise, that it seemed more real than the real world itself.
She suddenly found herself standing, barefoot, in the middle of an apocalyptic landscape. Around her, immense flames rose toward a black sky, without stars or moon, illuminated only by the reddish glow of gigantic fires that blazed everything as far as the eye could see. Gusts of burning wind carried gray and black ashes, making them swirl around her like dancing ghosts.
The air reeked of death and rusted metal, an unbearable smell of burned flesh, of coagulated blood, mixed with the thick vapors of acrid smoke. Under her feet, the ground was strewn with bodies tangled in grotesque positions, their limbs deformed by the extreme violence that had been inflicted upon them. Humans, elves, orcs, trolls, creatures of multiple and varied species, all frozen in grimaces of atrocious pain, of absolute terror.
Elystria tried to move forward, her breathing accelerating, her heart beating so hard in her chest that she feared it might explode at any moment. Around her stretched immense mountains of corpses, entire piles of victims, stacked without any apparent logic, like sacrifices offered to some obscure and cruel god.
That’s when she saw him.
At the summit of this mountain of horror, standing against the flames of the ruined world, stood a solitary silhouette. It was a man, tall and strong, his muscular body marked by scars visible despite the darkness and distance. His long black hair, lifted by the gusts of burning wind, floated slowly around him like living tentacles. In his right hand, he firmly held a katana of abyssal blackness, whose blade barely reflected the glow of the surrounding flames, as if it devoured light itself.
Elystria moved forward slowly, hypnotized by this terrifying vision, unable to look away from this menacing silhouette. As she approached, she could clearly distinguish the hand that held the weapon: covered in dark scales, clawed and powerful, similar to that of a dragon, but yet... human.