I wish I knew how to explain what I did in the moment I did it. Maybe there were shouts behind me—could've been screams, warnings, gods-forsaken karaoke for all I know—but the blood was drumming too loud in my ears, each beat a war drum of adrenaline. Or maybe my brain hit mute on the chaos, shoving it into the mental junk drawer labeled irrelevant.

As for why I did it... oh, there could be a whole damn garden of reasons, pick your poison. But Air Sense was still passively pinging in my head, counting breaths like a grim accountant. So many lives. So many warm, pulsing lives around me. And just as clearly, it told me how many of those would vanish in the next blink if I didn't act.

And then there was the barrier—Alchemy Tower's lovely little magical bubble. Pretty, but not sturdy enough. No way it'd survive what was coming. It's wild, really—how fast life gets snuffed out when fate decides it's your turn to get royally screwed. And yet, there I was, wings primed and legs built for breakneck escape. I could have been halfway to the next mountain range before the boom ever caught up. It might've singed my tail at worst.

But for once, my instincts didn't scream. They just… quieted. Or maybe they didn't quiet—I just finally aligned with them. The dragon in me stirred, not with fear, but indignation.

RAAAH!

A fresh wound carved straight through my pride!

But also—yeah—safety's a thing. Pride and survival butting heads inside me like angry goats.

Maybe it was that clash—the contradiction—that froze me numb. Let me move with glacier-poise.

Also… I made a new friend. I think. And further in, Vasilisa and Miss Petrov were still inside that tower. I couldn't just let them die. Couldn't let this... thing stomp all over the place I've only just begun to think of as home. Couldn't watch it butcher every innocent soul who never even signed up for this war.

So, despite the shouts—real or imagined—rattling behind me, I dashed forward. The force of it carved a crater in the ground. I seized the spectral eel, still snarling and writhing in its golden shackles, and braced.

Legs coiled. Wings spread.

And up I went.

My claws bit into its not-quite-flesh as my wings heaved us skyward, each flap like thunder against the air.

The solution wasn't elegant. Hell, it was practically stupid-simple. I just needed distance. A lot of it. Enough to turn a looming explosion into a distant firework.

Ah, but my safety? Right. Adorable you'd ask.

The very thought might've made lesser wings falter. Mine just beat harder. I became a scaled missile, slicing through the clouds, wind screaming past as the world shrank beneath me. The freedom of flight surged again, reckless and wild—first time I've flown this freely since… ever. If only it were just a joyride and not, y'know, me lugging a magical nuke with personality issues.

Speaking of said nuke—it had gone eerily still. That smug grin? Still plastered across its face. Until finally, it twitched.

"Another mongrel mutt playing martyr for its flea-bitten herd. How… pedestrian."

The voice didn't ride the wind. It just was—a mental gouge, like claws scraping down the inside of my skull. The eel didn't really speak so much as act like a haunted loudspeaker, piping his master's bile straight into my brain.

Which, fine. At this altitude, we were breaking the sound barrier just by existing—no way regular speech would survive the ride. But still. That knife-eared bastard wasn't just watching through this undead flesh sock. He could talk through it.

Necromancy: the gift that keeps on creeping.

"Oh! You can talk?!" I brightened with the kind of cheer one reserves for unexpected explosions and discount explosives. "Also—pedestrian?!"

I glanced at the bound eel, claws still dug deep into its cold hide.

"Buddy, you're hijacking a slimy eel as a glorified walkie-talkie. You sure you wanna throw shade about being basic? What's next—scrying through a rat's colon? Necromancer budget cuts hitting different this year?"

"Filthy whor—"

"Yeah, yeah, broken record with spit for lyrics. Keep yapping, you rot-gut lickspittle. You were literally about to blow up your own side. No wonder you don't recognize this thing I'm doing—what's the word? Oh right, courage. Ever try it?"

"You reek of so, so much desperation, beast. All that power, and still you'll die a filthy bitch's death—"

"Eeey! Drakkari heritage, thank you very much! Show some cultural awareness before you insult someone's bloodline. And wow—who hurt you? Every sentence outta you sounds like a sewage pipe trying slam poetry."

Honestly? It was kind of fun having someone to banter with, even if it was a genocidal elf terrorist controlling a sentient mana bomb. Maybe it helped take my mind off the gnawing pit of anxiety I was very not successfully ignoring.

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A few more flaps carried me higher. The wind mana was thinning out, air sharp like broken glass in the lungs. The clouds had long since fallen away beneath us, a gauzy silver quilt with nothing but piercing blue and raw sun above. The pressure bit, but the view? Almost majestic.

"What bile are you spewing now, you mewling harpy?! You dare lecture me on civility?!"

"Eeey! Ever heard of please?" I replied sweetly—right as one of my tentacles snapped forward and smacked the eel upside the skull. Hard. Bone crunched. The head caved like a rotted melon.

A scream tore through my head. Oh? That connection went both ways, huh?

Well then.

My tentacle slithered down again, more purposeful this time. I reached into its snarling mouth and ripped out a chunk of its jaw—teeth and all. The mana density in the air spiked hard. A trail of greasy black was leaking off its body like a bad omen as we climbed.

"WHAT SICKNESS DRIVES YOU?!"

"Oh, y'know, improvising!" I chirped. "This thing's gonna blow anyway—might as well make it interesting."

I dangled the teeth in front of its face, waggling them. "LOOK! PEARLS! A gift for your backside! Once I get out of this mess, I'm gonna shove these so far up your ass you'll need a scrying spell just to find your dignity."

"You're deranged. But don't flatter yourself, I've contingencies. These shackles fade. I can still salvage this."

I looked down.

He was right. The golden chains binding him were fraying, breaking apart strand by strand—like burnt rope unraveling in slow motion. Probably the distance from the mages who summoned them. I'd half-expected them to shatter the moment we took off. The fact they'd lasted this long? Honestly, kind of a bonus.

Still, the timer was ticking.

I turned my gaze downward again. We were high—above the clouds now, with the wind mana turning thin and sharp, oxygen nearly choking in its scarcity. The cold bit at my wings and crept into my bones. Even mana wasn't flowing right up here—jagged and jittery, like trying to breathe through gravel.

But me?

I was ready.

"Salvage, huh?" I smirked, voice low now as I locked eyes with the eel's still-twitching head. "Even if I do... this?"

"Wha—"

The word barely left its rotting mouth before I struck.

Crunch.

I grabbed the eel, claws sinking deep into its split jaw, and flung it skyward with enough force to rattle the clouds. The air trembled. The elf's scream pierced through the connection, echoing in my skull like nails across nerves.

My throat burned as mana surged to my fire gland.

I fed it nearly half of everything I had left. My chest throbbed with pressure. My core screamed. But my eyes never left the flailing eel above.

My flamethrower was already the most destructive attack I had.

But this time? I overcharged it.

Focused it. Pushed it.

The fire built until my throat went molten, my breath searing, heat haze curling around me like a solar flare. Even with fire resistance, I felt it—truly felt it—like I was going to melt from the inside out.

And then—

I unleashed it.

A beam of flame, tight as a needle, roared from my maw. The force knocked me back midair, my wings straining to keep me stable as the blast drilled through the eel's skull. The shriek in my mind shattered into a thousand splinters.

I jerked my head sideways, carving the flame-blade down its spine. Flesh vaporized. Ribs became abstract art. Two halves of undead sushi bobbed in the thin air, edges glowing reactor-core red.

Silence.

The torn halves of its corpse glowed ominously, mana density spiking like the world was holding its breath. That was it. Detonation was inevitable.

But I'd already made my choice.

It was a gamble.

A desperate, burning hope.

I'd seen it before—when monsters evolved, no matter how close they were to death, they recovered. Always. Even on the edge of nothingness, evolution pulled them back.

So if I triggered it now… if I embraced that leap…

No matter how bad the explosion hit me—I'd live.

Even if I hadn't used my morphogens, even if I hadn't planned the exact changes, even if fate kept yanking the ground out from under me—

I still had this.

Maybe I'd pull a phoenix.

Or maybe I'd be a very pretty charcoal sketch.

I beat my wings, tried to flee the epicenter, gain just a few more seconds of air.

But I knew I wouldn't outrun it.

The first shockwave hit—soundless, voiceless, a pressure felt more than heard. I didn't look back.

My stat screen was already open.

My claw hovered over the (+) beside my species name.

[Maximum Level Achieved for Current Evolution Stage. Evolution will result in form alteration and stat enhancement as a monster.]

[Caution: Evolution will reduce Experience Points and Morphogen acquisition from lesser-evolved entities.]

[Would you like to utilize the Evolution Space?]

The second wave hit harder—a burning blast this time. It didn't just slap me out of the air—it broke me. Bones cracked. Wings screamed. My insides twisted.

Not dead.

But the door was open.

I slammed the thought forward.

[Yes.]

The moment the word solidified in my mind, everything stopped.

The pain, the pressure, the fall—gone. Time unraveled. The world turned liquid. Wind roared around me, converging, wrapping my body in a cocoon of rushing air and raw mana.

My vision swam.

Then, clarity.

A final message appeared, voice like a lullaby:

Fear not, oh child of Gaia. Let your soul find peace, and take all the time you need to choose your path.

In Her gentle embrace, you are held and protected.

And with that—

Everything faded to black.

***

Zharitsa watched the sky burn.

Streaks of black and red painted the clouds in molten hues, the air thick with the phantom heat of something far too distant to touch—and yet too vast to ignore. Even from this far away, the warmth prickled her skin like it shouldn't.

That silver-scaled Drakkari…

She'd had her doubts. Kept her walls high, her instincts sharper. In her old line of work, suspicion wasn't a vice—it was survival. You didn't trust people. Not fully. Not allies. Not even your employers.

Yet in those final seconds—

Her cynicism cratered.

"You think she survived?" Vorak asked, his voice hushed—reverent, even.

He wasn't the only one looking up. Everyone was. Civilians, Iron Pact Warriors, Tower Guards—they all stood frozen, bathed in that distant light, watching the aftermath of something none of them could explain.

She herself had never seen a red core like that before. That beast form—silver scales and fury incarnate—was otherworldly.

She didn't even know her name. Just one battle, a brief alignment of circumstance.

And yet, the way she moved—how she threw herself into that fight without hesitation, without calculation—it told Zharitsa everything she needed to know.

Not about strength. Not just that.

About who she was.

A hot itch crawled down Zharitsa's cheek. She swiped at it—

Her finger came away glistening.

Oh for fuck's sake.

A tear. Single. Traitorous tear.

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