The fragile silence that bound Mordred and Elystria was brutally torn apart by a magical shockwave of supernatural intensity. This wave of pure power spread through the millennial walls of the palace like an invisible blade, infiltrating every carved stone, every forgotten recess, every particle of stagnant air. The aura that accompanied it was of primordial darkness glacial, crushing, charged with a millennial authority that made reality itself tremble.

Elystria was the first to suffer this presence. A violent shiver ran down her spine, her silver pupils dilating under the effect of ancestral terror, as if her dragon blood instinctively recognized a power superior to her own. Her hands began to tremble imperceptibly, and she unconsciously brought a hand to her throat, feeling her breathing accelerate.

Mordred, meanwhile, remained motionless for a few seconds longer, analyzing this magical signature with the precision of an experienced predator. Then his head slowly pivoted toward the door, his orange pupils narrowing until they became thin slits of fire, while a cold and implacable determination hardened his features. He instantly recognized this aura – this crushing presence, this natural authority that commanded respect and submission. Maélor. The dragon king. The very incarnation of everything he had learned to hate.

A grim smile briefly stretched his lips. Thus, the moment had finally come.

Elystria, her breathing increasingly short, rushed toward him and desperately gripped his arm, her nails digging slightly into the fabric of his tunic. Her voice was nothing more than a strangled whisper, pierced with pure panic:

- "Mordred! It's him... it's my brother! He's coming! You don't understand – you must leave, now, immediately! If he finds you here, he won't ask any questions, he won't seek any explanation. He'll kill you on the spot, without the slightest hesitation!"

But Mordred didn't flinch. On the contrary, he seemed to anchor himself more deeply in the ground, like a rock facing the storm. Slowly, very slowly, he turned to face the princess, and the gaze he fixed on her was of mineral hardness, devoid of any trace of the intimacy they had shared a few moments earlier.

- "Flee?" he repeated, and his voice was so calm it became terrifying. The word resonated in the air like a false note in a perfect melody. "Elystria... after all this time, you still don't understand what I've become, do you?"

He paused, his eyes never leaving those of the princess, and she read something in them that chilled her to the soul – an absolute, unshakeable resolution that admitted no compromise.

- "I haven't survived all these trials, I haven't endured all these sufferings, I haven't forged my hatred in the brazier of your cruelties to flee now, a few steps from the denouement. No, Elystria. Flight is over for me. It's been over for a long time."

She shook her head vehemently, her silver hair whipping the air around her. A dull terror rose within her, not so much for Mordred as for what she perceived through their bond – this suicidal determination, this iron resolution that knew neither fear nor doubt.

- "Mordred, you don't understand! My brother isn't like the other dragons, he isn't like those you've fought until now. He is... he is different. His power exceeds anything you can imagine. Even you, even with all you've accomplished, even with this strength you've developed... He'll crush you like an insect!"

- "Precisely," Mordred interrupted with a voice sharp as a blade, but strangely devoid of anger. There was silence, then he continued, articulating each word with surgical precision: "Today, everything finally simplifies. Either your brother dies, or I do. No other outcome exists anymore, no other possibility, no other path. Destiny has decided for us."

He took a step toward her, and suddenly his expression hardened even further, taking on an intensity that made the princess instinctively retreat.

- "And you, Elystria, this is when you're going to have to make your choice. The real choice. The one that will determine who you really are, beyond words, beyond intentions. Your side. Your loyalty. Your soul."

Elystria opened her mouth, but no sound emerged. The words remained blocked in her throat, suffocated by the magnitude of what he had just imposed on her. She didn't understand – how had they arrived here so quickly? How had this moment of shared intimacy tilted so brutally toward this glacial ultimatum? Mordred's orange gaze, so physically close and yet now separated from her by an unbridgeable abyss, pierced her like a sword.

In that gaze, she no longer recognized the man with whom she had shared her fears and hopes. In his place stood something darker, more absolute – a being who had transcended simple humanity to become the pure incarnation of an indomitable will.

Slowly, with an almost cruel delicacy, Mordred loosened the princess's fingers from his arm. This contact the last they might ever share – was like a definitive rupture. He stepped back toward the door, his movements fluid and measured, his eyes never leaving Elystria's, as if he were engraving in his memory every detail of this face he had learned to... no. He could no longer allow himself such thoughts.

- "I'll wait for you outside, Elystria," he said, and his voice carried through the air like a death sentence. "But decide quickly. The time for hesitations, compromises, half-measures is definitively over."

He paused one last time on the threshold, turning once more toward her.

- "And remember: whatever your choice, it will be irreversible. Just like mine."

With these words of glacial coldness, he crossed the threshold and disappeared into the darkness of the corridor, his footsteps echoing for a few more seconds before being lost in the oppressive silence of the palace.

Elystria remained alone, standing in the center of the room that had suddenly become immense and hostile. Her legs trembled so violently that she had to lean against the wall to avoid collapsing. Her heart beat at a disordered, chaotic rhythm, as if seeking to flee her chest. She slowly brought a hand to her forehead, trying to calm the whirlwind of contradictory emotions that threatened to overwhelm her.

Love and duty. Family loyalty and attraction to the one who embodied the destruction of her entire world. Fear for her brother and terror of losing Mordred. How could she choose between two parts of her soul?

- "Wh... what just happened?" she murmured in a broken breath, the words barely audible in the crushing silence.

But no one answered her. Only the shadows danced around her, cast by the flickering light of the torches, like mute witnesses to her torment.

Outside, Mordred headed toward the great courtyard of the palace with the gait of a man walking toward his destiny. With each of his steps, he left behind the last vestiges of doubt, the last particles of humanity that might have made him hesitate. When he reached the center of the esplanade, surrounded by the mutilated bodies of the dragons he had vanquished earlier, he had already become something else – a force of nature, an instrument of pure destruction.

The sky above him began to transform, reacting to the growing magical tension. Ink-black clouds condensed at supernatural speed, accumulating in threatening formations that progressively obscured the last glimmers of day. The air itself seemed to charge with electricity, vibrating with an unsettling energy that made hair stand on end.

Then, at the end of the devastated corridor leading to the courtyard, a silhouette emerged from the darkness.

Maélor advanced with the majestic and implacable gait of a millennial sovereign. Each of his steps seemed to make the foundations of the palace tremble, not through brute force, but through the natural authority that emanated from him. His aura – this crushing presence that had alerted Mordred – intensified as he approached, creating around him a zone of distortion where the air itself seemed denser, heavier, charged with black mana that absorbed light like a gaping hole.

The dragon king stopped at the entrance to the courtyard and let his gaze slowly sweep the horrible spectacle before him. His icy pupils, of a blue so deep it became almost white, lingered on each body, on each pool of blood, on each trace of the violence that had swept through these places. His subjects. His children, in a way. Reduced to carcasses by the fury of a single man.

When he finally raised his eyes to Mordred, it was with an expression of striking complexity cold anger, yes, but also a sort of grim respect for the power that could accomplish such carnage.

- "Mordred," he said, and his deep voice carried through the air like the distant rumble of a storm. Each syllable seemed charged with the weight of centuries, with the authority of a race that had dominated the world when humanity still crawled in the mud. "I see you have finally decided to fully assume your true nature. That of a monster who delights in destruction."

Mordred didn't flinch. He simply stared at the dragon king, his orange eyes blazing with a determination that knew neither doubt nor weakness. In that gaze, Maélor could read years of suffering transformed into pure hatred, a will forged in the braziers of adversity.

- "I am exactly what you made me," Mordred replied without detour, his voice carrying a millennial accusation. "Your race shaped me in suffering, in blood, in the blackest hatred. You took a man and made him your nemesis. If you're looking for someone to blame for this carnage, Maélor, start by contemplating your own reflection."

The dragon king smiled – a terrifying expression on his features sculpted in the marble of eternity. This smile was devoid of any joy, charged with cynicism that had had millennia to ripen.

- "Still this old refrain..." he sighed with a weariness that betrayed his true age. "The eternal cycle of vengeance, is that your only answer? Violence responding to violence, hatred breeding hatred, in an endless spiral that leads only to the destruction of everything that exists? Don't you see the fundamental absurdity of this logic, Mordred?"

Mordred advanced a few steps, his fluid movements betraying perfect mastery of his body and his power.

- "I am not the instigator of this cycle, Maélor. I am only its involuntary heir. Your species sowed the seeds of this hatred by bringing pain, submission, humiliation to mine. You crushed our freedom, broke our pride, reduced our race to the state of domestic animals. Did you really think we could simply accept this? That we would content ourselves with bowing our heads for eternity?"

He paused, letting his words resonate in the tension-charged air.

- "The price of blood must be paid, Maélor. Your people understood this perfectly when they enslaved us. Now, it's your turn to settle the bill."

Maélor slowly straightened, gradually deploying his immense wings. Unlike those of other dragons, his seemed made of solidified shadow, of a darkness so profound it appeared to absorb not only light, but reality itself. The ground beneath his feet began to tremble, not under the effect of physical force, but under the pure intensity of his mana that distorted space around him.

- "So you think you're different from us?" he replied with glacial irony. "You think your vengeance will purify you, that it will free you from your chains? That your soul will finally find peace once you've destroyed everything that made you suffer? Poor fool... You don't even realize you've already become exactly what you claim to fight."

Mordred took another step, and his own power exploded around him in a whirlwind of golden mana that defied the surrounding darkness. His spiritual wings materialized behind him, scintillating with light that seemed to draw its source from the stars themselves.

- "I never claimed to want peace, Maélor," he replied with brutal sincerity. "I never sought purification or redemption. I simply want justice. Pure, absolute justice, without compromise. And this justice has a price you already know."

He raised a hand, and the air around them charged even more with magical electricity.

- "Today, this price is your life. And with it, the definitive collapse of your millennial hegemony."

Maélor slowly nodded, and in this simple gesture, there was something that almost resembled approval – the recognition of a worthy adversary, an enemy equal to his own power.

- "So be it," he murmured. "We finally agree on one thing, you and I: the price of blood must indeed be paid. The only question that remains is knowing which of us two will settle it."

He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he reopened them, his aura literally exploded around him. This deflagration of pure power instantly made the elements react: the sky completely clouded in a few seconds, storm clouds of ink-black accumulating in apocalyptic formations. A glacial wind rose, charged with the metallic odor of raw magic, and a beating rain began to fall on the devastated city, each drop seeming to carry within it a fragment of the tension reigning between the two combatants.

Mordred responded to this challenge by deploying his own mana wings, their golden radiance defying the growing darkness. His power crackled around him with an intensity he had never yet attained, as if the proximity of his sworn enemy liberated in him reserves of strength he didn't know he possessed.

Their gazes met one last time across the esplanade strewn with corpses. In these few seconds of eternity, each recognized in the other a perfect adversary – an enemy their equal, a challenge worthy of their power, an adversary whose death alone could bring a form of completeness.

Then, without another word, without other warning than the dull rumble of their auras already clashing, they launched themselves simultaneously.

Their encounter was not a simple physical shock – it was a collision between two fundamental forces of the universe, two absolute wills that refused all coexistence. The shockwave that resulted exceeded everything the world had known: a thunderclap so powerful it instantly shattered all windows within a radius of several kilometers, cracked the ground to depths of hundreds of meters, and deformed the air itself by creating distortions visible to the naked eye.

The palace walls, reinforced by millennia of draconic magic, cracked under the violence of the impact. In the distance, entire towers swayed dangerously, and even the mountains framing the valley seemed to tremble on their foundations.

The battle had just begun, and already, it promised to be of a violence and intensity that would forever mark the history of the world. Under the sky turned black as the soul of vengeance, Mordred and Maélor began their deadly dance, each ready to pay – or make pay – the ultimate price of blood.

In her chamber, Elystria felt the palace tremble beneath her feet and understood that the moment of choice had finally arrived.