(Theme: The Reaper's Gaze)
1,500kg hammered Kaito into volcanic dust. His femur SNAPPED like dry kindling, white-hot agony shooting up his leg. Sparks SCREAMED from his overloaded gravity suit as he choked on ash and blood. "I... had to try..." he rasped, spitting crimson foam onto obsidian shards. Akari's shadow swallowed the blood-red moon, her golden-slitted eyes burning like hellfire in the gloom. "Weakness disgusts me," she spat, grinding her boot into his shattered wrist until bone grated against rock.
Darkness swallowed him whole. Rough hands hauled his limp body onto a stretcher, straps biting into torn flesh. The auroras overhead dissolved into a low, persistent BUZZING that echoed in his skull even as consciousness faded.
Dawn's gray light seeped through the medical tent's stained canvas. Cold blue fire – glowing dragon-blood serum – snaked into Kaito's veins through an IV line. Every drop felt like liquid nitrogen. The medic leaning over him was no frail healer. Broad shoulders strained against his uniform, and a coiled black dragon tattoo climbed his neck like a living brand. His sharp jawline and battle-honed poise screamed elite soldier, not infirmary attendant. He tightened the IV valve with lethal precision, eyes flat and clinical.
"Three broken ribs. Tendons melted like candle wax." He tapped Kaito's gravity suit readout. "Your stupidity amazes me each time."
Kaito tasted copper. "Why save me?" he forced out, ribs grinding.
The soldier-medic's syringe flashed. "Code Brown. Termination order stamped on your file." He leaned closer, voice venomous. "Akari burned it to ash. I'm just delaying the rot – so she can break you properly."
Outside, the camp buzzed. Soldiers clustered around a flickering holographic map bleeding crimson sigils – Phoenix flames, Dark Hound daggers, Serpent scales.
"She grinds tools to dust," a grizzled soldier jabbed at Phoenix territories. "Never saves 'em."
His companion spat obsidian dust. "Dragons stir in the deep vents. She needs a throat-slitting blade – not a corpse."
The tent flap RIPPED open. Akari stood silhouetted against sulfurous dawn, volcanic winds whipping her hair. She hurled a suit of interlocking dragon cartilage at Kaito's feet. "Suit up," her voice colder than the void. "We move in twenty minutes. Or I drag you through the cinders."
Three miles down, in a throne room carved from the planet's heart, the Blood Emperor stirred. Molten light danced across his scrying pool – human outposts like glowing termite nests. "Burn the Phoenix Guild outposts to glass," his voice rumbled, shaking stalactites. A dragon lieutenant knelt, scales SCRAPING stone. "Let the Hounds choke on their emblems."
Behind the obsidian throne, a mural screamed truth:
Hatchlings tearing into sibling bellies, blood slick on ivory claws
Infernals melting cities to rivers of molten slag
Dragons reign through tooth and flame
Humans decorate graves
Full night swallowed the skeletal pines. Kaito sprinted between knife-edged trunks, ribs tearing with each breath. Akari moved like a ghost ahead.
SWISH!
Her kunai sliced air beside his ear –
THUNK!
– buried to the hilt in oak where his throat had been.
Silence.
A feather, blacker than the void, drifted down. A spectral crow with burning-coal eyes watched from a dead branch. The feather landed in Kaito's bleeding palm. It dissolved into cold, gritty ash. No flame. No heat. Just… nothingness. How?
The air RUMBLED – a bone-deep vibration. Reality fractured like glass. The shadowy figure peeled from darkness, coalescing from smoke and malice. "I'll meet you soon, Kaito," its voice slithered into his skull, icy and ancient. Then it dissolved, leaving ozone and dread.
False dawn painted the sky corpse-gray at the Ebon Citadel. A jagged wound of blackened steel and dragonbone spires clawed at thunderheads. Energy shields pulsed like living skin, throbbing to dragon-heart cores in the walls – lub-dub… lub-dub…
"HALT! AUTHORIZATION!"
Crow-and-dagger cloaked guards raised dragonfang rifles. A calcified dragon eye pulsed red above the gate.
Akari stepped forward, horns crackling crimson. "Black Market asset," her lie whip-sharp. "Scan thoroughly, worm. Waste my time – I'll mount your spine on my wall."
The eye's beam washed over Kaito. Green light flashed.
"Reeks of burnt scales," a guard sneered. "Lab rat. Move."
Inside, violence vibrated in the air:
Engineering Bay: Welding torches HISSED as engineers fused dragonhide plates. Sparks rained like hellfire. "Guild tech?" A soot-covered engineer slammed his hammer. "We forge gods into weapons!"
War Room: Holograms showed Phoenix towers collapsing in dragonfire. Strategists moved markers on a death-board.
Dragon-Tech Lab: Scientists drained luminescent sludge from a severed wing larger than a tank. "Tremor-grenades primed. Dragonbone shrapnel – Serpent-tested. Results: liquefaction."
Kaito's suit FLICKERED violently near twitching dragon muscle. Blood streamed from his nose. Focus. Cell engines overloading–
He collapsed onto his cot, muscles shrieking, lungs full of ozone and decay. The Citadel's pulse echoed in his bones. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.
In the volcanic abyss, the Emperor's shadow drowned the scrying pool. Molten eyes found Kaito across miles of rock.
"Run, little spark."
The words BURNED into his soul.
"Run… so I savor the moment your light gutters out."
ORION'S NOTE: "The wolf sharpens his fangs. The lamb? He runs. ~O"