The king stepped closer, now just a few paces away from him. His presence alone was enough to make his guards step back.

- "Tell me, Ygdrasyle. How could Mordred have survived that? Did you, by any chance... omit a detail? Or lie to cover something up?"

Ygdrasyle met his gaze, calm. Too calm.

- "I deny any accusation, Your Majesty. I don't know what you saw, or thought you saw. But I maintain what I said: Mordred died that day. I swear it to you."

Ygdrasyle's words still hung in the air when Maélor made a simple hand gesture. Two guards from the black guard approached and flanked the agent.

- "Take him away. To an isolation cell. Not a word. No contact. And above all... keep him lucid," said the king, his voice icy.

Ygdrasyle lowered his eyes slightly, then calmly turned on his heels, escorted without violence toward the depths of the fortress. Soon, the heavy stone doors closed behind him, plunging him into absolute isolation.

In the throne room, Maélor sighed deeply, his gloved hand sliding over the blackened armrest of his seat. Then he leaned toward one of his advisors, an aged dragon with a sharp snout, accustomed to hearing the confidences of an angry king.

- "It is time."

- "Your Majesty?"

- "North America. It remains the last human enclave that resists. The United States has entrenched itself, arrogant. But their system is collapsing. Their borders barely hold. The people are starving, their cities overcrowded. They're packed together like caged beasts... and they still dream of freedom."

He paused, his eyes hard.

- "If Mordred is alive, if he passed through there, if he planted an idea or a presence there... we must strike now. Before he becomes a symbol."

The advisor nodded slowly.

- "The forces are ready, Your Majesty. You need only give the order."

- "Call the Borask family."

The advisor raised an eyebrow, slightly surprised.

- "The Borasks? It's been years since they were mobilized."

- "All the better. They're getting soft. Let them show us that the blood of the first dragons still flows in their veins. America is vast, full of basements, bunkers, natural fortresses. Their affinity with earth and brute force will be useful to us."

The king stood up, his cape sweeping the floor.

- "Tell them this: 'The foundations of the old world are crumbling. The earth will rise again. It will bear their name, or it will swallow them.'"

Miles away, in the depths of their underground refuge, Mordred had isolated himself, as he often did since their escape. He sat somewhat apart, in the shadow of an old stone bulge, legs drawn up, his gaze lost in the trembling shadows that the mana orbs cast on the cave walls.

Before him, the others moved gently. A few shy laughs, low voices that echoed against the damp rock. Some fell asleep on the ground itself, wrapped in worn blankets, others talked among themselves about simple things. Memories from before. What they would do "after."

- "After."

That word stung him every time he heard it. Like a thorn planted in his chest. Because for him, there probably wouldn't be an after. Not in the way they meant it, anyway.

He watched them with painful tenderness. These slaves he had freed, protected, guided here at the cost of so many sacrifices. He would have liked to believe they would become something more. A community capable of defending itself. The embryo of an army, perhaps. A nucleus of resistance that would grow, spread, restore hope to all those who still suffered.

But...

They were too damaged. Too broken. Too human, in what humanity had that was most fragile.

And he... he wasn't really that anymore.

He looked at his own hands. These hands that had killed. That had absorbed the life of his enemies to transform it into power. These hands that bore the weight of each extinguished existence, each impossible choice. They trembled sometimes, at night, when he thought no one was looking. They remembered each contact, each last second stolen from a living being.

- "I can't ask them to carry what I carry. Or to do what I'm going to have to do."

He clenched his jaw, his eyes vacant. Guilt, that faithful companion that never left him, awakened again. It whispered to him that it was wrong, that it was monstrous. But it was now drowned by a stronger, colder voice.

That of necessity.

For a long time, he had dreamed of something else. Of reconciliation. Of balance. Perhaps even of peace. He had imagined finding a way to coexist, to build something new on the ruins of the old world. He had believed in negotiations, compromises, the possibility of change without bloodshed.

But those thoughts had died long ago. They had been extinguished in Isaac's blood, drowned in the screams of all those he couldn't save. Each razed city, each torn family, each child reduced to slavery had buried his youthful illusions a little more.

And today, only one certainty remained, brilliant and sharp as a blade.

- "The dragons must disappear."

The problem was how.

There was the idea of gathering. Of building a network, forming a faction, a counterpower. Of rallying the oppressed, training them, giving them the weapons and determination necessary. But he knew it would be too slow. Too fragile. And above all, too dependent on others. He had already seen what hope became when it was placed in trembling hands. He had seen it break against the first trial, crack at the first loss.

These people he protected... they were brave, in their way. But they weren't warriors. They weren't killers. And that was precisely why he loved them. It was to preserve this humanity in them that he fought.

- "If I entrust this war to them... it will fail. They will die, and everything they represent will die with them. But me, I can absorb. Me, I can evolve. Become what they don't even suspect."

He breathed deeply, his throat tight with an emotion he struggled to name. Was it grief? Resignation? Or simply the recognition of a truth he had refused to accept for too long?

He didn't like this thought. He even hated it, with every fiber of his being. But it returned, obsessive, implacable. Again. Again. And again. Like a painful truth, stuck inside his skull, that refused to leave him in peace.

He was going to have to become the monster.

Not for pleasure. Not from thirst for power. But because it was the only way to win a war that no one else could wage. He was going to have to plunge into shadow, dirty his hands until they could never be clean again. Absorb, kill, devour the power of his enemies until he became strong enough to strike them all down.

- "I'm going to have to do it alone. I'm going to have to become a monster even worse than those I want to bring down. And so what if the earth burns. So what if I have nothing human left at the end. As long as it's their bodies that fuel the fire."

His fingers slowly closed on the cold rock, his nails scraping the stone with a dry sound that was lost in the murmur of surrounding conversations.

He turned his eyes toward the others, for a moment. Livia was discussing with two teenagers around a map roughly drawn in the dust, probably planning their next refuge. Marcus, the former engineer, was explaining to a group of children how to recognize edible mushrooms that grew in certain caves. Elena was gently rocking a crying child, humming him a pre-war lullaby.

He liked them. He loved them all. He wanted them to live. He wanted them to grow, to love, to build something beautiful on the ruins of the world. He wanted them to know something other than fear and suffering.

But he couldn't make them bear this burden. He couldn't transform them into what he was going to have to become.

- "So I'll carry this for them. I'll sink into shadow, and I'll become their nightmare so they can dream."

He stood up silently, his fluid movements not disturbing the fragile tranquility of the refuge. In his chest, something closed definitively. A door he knew he could never reopen.

Tomorrow, he would begin. He would hunt isolated dragons, the weakest first. He would absorb their essence, their power, their knowledge. He would become stronger, faster, more dangerous. And when he was strong enough, he would attack the most powerful.

It didn't matter if the earth burned. It didn't matter if his name became synonymous with terror. It didn't matter if, in the end, nothing remained of the man he had been.

As long as the dragons fell. As long as these people he loved could live free.

He cast one last look at Livia, who briefly raised her eyes toward him. She smiled at him, with that smile that still warmed his frozen heart. He returned her smile, engraving this image in his memory like a talisman against the darkness that awaited him.

The war he was about to wage would be different from all others. It wouldn't be won with armies or brilliant strategies.

It would be won in blood and shadow, one dragon at a time.

And he alone would pay the price.