Maggie's sleep was a total absence, a leaden void that lasted until a dull, tenacious pain pulled her to the surface. She opened her eyes to a low sky, the grey of ashes. The smell of damp earth, dried blood, and burnt sap filled the air, a scent of end and beginning mingled.

Her hand was still clenched around Elisa's. The young woman was asleep, but her breathing was regular, deep. The runes on her arms had lost their turquoise glow, but they hadn't disappeared. They seemed to have become embedded in her skin, like ancestral tattoos of a deep black that contrasted with her pallor. Looking closer, Maggie now saw a dizzying complexity in them, patterns that evoked both constellations and root systems.

Tonar kept watch, leaning against a dead tree, his reddened eyes constantly scanning the edge of the clearing. Around them, the survivors moved with the mechanical slowness of exhaustion. They were burying the dead. Gathering the little equipment that had survived.

"Has she moved?" Maggie asked, her voice ravaged.

Tonar shook his head. "No. But she's breathing well. Better than us."

Maggie nodded and tried to stand. Her body protested with a violence that drew a groan from her. She leaned on her halberd, planted in the loose soil. They had won. But this clearing was a tomb. Every hour spent here gnawed at their morale and drained their residual energy.

"We're leaving," she announced, and her voice regained a fragment of its authority. "Here, we are just targets. Our mission was to penetrate this territory. We've only just passed through the gate."

No one contested. The order was a lifeline.

The rest of the day was spent on preparations. They were only about twenty now, haggard, bandaged, but hardened by the hell they had just endured. Elisa woke up as someone was giving her a little water. Her eyes were Elisa's eyes, but the depth within them had changed. It was like looking through calm water and seeing, far below, unexplored abysses. She said nothing of what had happened. She accepted Tonar's help to stand, and her very silence was an affirmation: what was inside her was now part of their gear.

They left the clearing at dusk, leaving behind the freshly turned mounds and the memory of the wooden god. The forest, once hostile and vibrant with menacing life, seemed… pacified. Or at least, neutralized. The trees no longer twisted to block their path. The lianas no longer coiled around their ankles. It was a victory, but the resulting tranquility was disturbing.

The days that followed were a slow progression towards the heart of the unknown lands. It was Zirel, that squad leader with a falcon's gaze, who was the first to put the strangeness into words.

"It's too quiet," he murmured one morning as they crossed a valley bathed in a milky light. "Where have the beasts gone? The birds? Even the insects are scarce."

He was right. the forest's background noise, that permanent cacophony of cries, songs, and buzzes, had ceased. Only the wind in the high foliage and the sound of their footsteps broke the silence. An absence of life that weighed heavier than a menacing presence.

Then came the structures.

They first came across a mound of stones that, upon approach, revealed itself to be a wall. A wall made of colossal blocks, perfectly fitted without mortar, but now fractured by time and the patient work of roots. Moss covered it in a green, damp shroud. Ferns grew in its crevices.

Tonar stopped, placing a broad hand on the eroded stone. A glimmer of recognition lit his somber gaze.

"Doesn't look like the work of the Wooden Mask," he grumbled. "His work was of flesh and living sap. This… this is much older. Stone that has forgotten the sound of the masons."

Zirel, scraping the moss with the tip of his knife, revealed a carving: a complex spiral, almost erased, that strangely echoed the geometry of the runes on Elisa's arms.

"A civilization," Zirel breathed. "They were here millennia ago. Long before our own history began."

Maggie looked at Elisa. The young woman was observing the spiral, her face an impenetrable mask. Her fingers unconsciously brushed the patterns on her forearm.

"They built to last," Maggie commented, feeling a new chill run down her spine. "And yet, they disappeared. What could possibly make a people who raised such stones vanish?"

No answer came. Only the silence of the forest answered them, a silence that grew heavier with meaning the deeper they advanced, more deeply, towards the epicenter of this forgotten territory, where the ruins became more frequent, and the questions, more pressing than ever.

Tonar turned his gaze to Maggie, his usually cold eyes suddenly filled with a mix of emotions that Maggie couldn't decipher in that instant. It was a cocktail of ancestral respect, tenacious hatred, and a fear she had never known in him.

"Perhaps the dragons," he grumbled, his voice deeper than ever. "They are known to have made so many races disappear since the dawn of the world. They are the ones responsible for the disappearance of the Dwarves of the Iron Mountains, two centuries ago. Nothing remains of them but empty cities and extinguished forges."

Stupefaction chilled Maggie. She suddenly felt overwhelmed, tiny. In her old world, men had come close to destroying themselves many times, but they had always pulled back from the brink, or else the fall had been slow, complex, the fruit of innumerable causes. But here? A single race, deliberately, annihilated others by mere whim or will to domination?

"You mean these… creatures… live here, in this world, and have the power to do such cruel things, without anyone being able to do anything about it?" she asked, unable to mask her horrified disbelief.

A short, humorless laugh escaped Zirel, a dry sound like the crack of a dead branch. "Unable? It's worse than that. Most of the great mercenary guilds and tribal clans obey them. They pay them tribute in exchange for their survival. Dragons embody forces of nature, Maggie. They are the earthquake that levels a city, the fire that calcines a forest. And they are so ancient, so imbued with their own power, that they consider themselves gods." He cast a look around him, at the silent ruins. "They stand at the top of a food chain where we are, at best, rodents at their feet."

The silence that followed was different from before. It was no longer a simple void, but a crushing presence. Every mossy stone, every absence of birdsong now took on a terrifying significance. They were no longer searching for traces of a vanished civilization, but for proof of the predator that had devoured it.

"Enough talk of dragons," Tonar cut in abruptly, as if he feared that merely speaking their name might attract their attention. He raised his eyes to the horizon, where the grey sky was silhouetted against the black reliefs of the ruins. "Only the sub-species live on this continent. The true ones are on the Great Continent, ruling as masters. Here, we find only their bastards or their shadows—dangerous enough, but not enough to unleash the end of the world."

Zirel snickered softly, but his laugh held no amusement. "If only these 'sub-species' would remember they are not gods."

Maggie felt her stomach knot. Everything in the ruins around them seemed to breathe a silent threat. Even the stones seemed to be watching, heavy with memories she had no words to understand. The wind slipped through the collapsed arches, whistling like a breath—long, slow, almost conscious.

"And what difference does it make, if it's not a true dragon?" she asked finally, her voice harder than she intended. "If even their offspring are capable of erasing entire cities, the nuance seems rather pointless to me."

Zirel turned a strange look towards her, a mixture of pity and respect. "The nuance, Maggie, is all that separates us from extinction. True dragons are concepts. Laws. You don't fight gravity or death, you adapt to them. But their descendants… them, you can kill. Sometimes. If you're desperate enough."

Tonar nodded slowly, then signaled to resume the march. The ground crunched under their boots, kicking up the white dust of bones and ancient ash. The midday light barely filtered through the haze, giving the world the tint of tarnished steel.

They progressed like this for an hour, perhaps two, the landscape of dead stone and silence repeating infinitely. It was then that Elisa, who had been walking with increasingly hesitant steps, stopped dead. She brought a hand to her forehead, as if struck by dizziness.

"Wait," she murmured.

The group froze instantly. All hands went to their weapons.

"What is it?" asked Maggie, moving closer to her.

Elisa didn't answer right away. Her eyes were closed, her fingers pressing her temples. The runes on her arms weren't emitting light, but they seemed to… vibrate. One could almost hear a faint buzzing, at the limit of audibility.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.