I Guard The Book That Slays Gods

[ALERT]

The usual voice, cold but tender, echoed in his head, unmistakably inhuman.

[ROTATION]

[You've been fully awakened, Moon Dragon.]

Something awakened within Raiden, but he felt too distant from his own body to respond, trapped within an endless void. Through his mounting confusion, he released a startled cry and stared into the consuming darkness, trying to grasp what was unfolding.

The facts were stark: Ash was indeed dead, and he was the only remaining moon dragon. But his isolation only deepened the confusion rather than providing answers.

The feeling carried no pain but remained thoroughly unsettling. It was entirely foreign to him, as if his very soul was being dragged from slumber and flooded with bizarre energy.

Yet the energy wasn't flowing in from outside. Instead, it felt like something internal awakening, as if it had been slumbering within him all along.

Feeling the sensation pulse through his chest, he found himself reaching for it instinctively. The pressure intensified, but he carried the burden with unexpected lightness.

As awareness flooded through every fiber of his being, Raiden felt his emotions crystallize with newfound clarity. Then his body started to change too, a fire igniting in his chest and creeping outward through his entire form. Yet what truly captivated him was what was happening to his mind.

His fingers clawed at his temples while shattered memories, raw emotions, and crushing despair reassembled themselves in his mind with terrifying clarity. Anger, guilt, and pain mounted within him, coursing through his body as an overwhelming, weary dread.

Fear sent his heart hammering as he fought to focus a one clear thought amid the turmoil: Ash? Sullivan?

Through eyes not entirely his own, he witnessed claws slashing his flesh, his body responding with defensive movements he hadn't commanded.

Before him stood two colossal dragons, nearly eight feet in height—one cloaked in shadows so dense they seemed to steal the air from his lungs, the other blazing with red scales and radiating a pure dark malicious aura as cruel laughter echoed from its fanged maw. Both monsters displayed three menacing red horns.

Though the dragons towered over him, Raiden somehow matched their eye level as they struck from every angle. White claws flashed in defense while he cast desperate glances behind him, fury mounting in his core. At the cliff's edge he stood, with hundreds of infant dragons gazing upward from the depths below.

In an instant, something drove through his heart. Warm blood streamed across his pale scales as his eyes went wide with pain, rage, and bewilderment, despite knowing the body wasn't his.

His gaze found one dragon's face, and recognition struck immediately: Merewen, Dragon of Silence. A cruel smile stretched across his features as his hand remained plunged through Raiden's chest. Behind him, Deathsight, Dragon of Poison, approached with leisurely satisfaction.

"You brought this on yourself. You should've stepped down quietly."

Deathsight barely finished his words before his tail swept forward with devastating force, smashing into Raiden's ribs and catapulting him over the cliff's edge.

Though agony tore through his chest, Raiden witnessed himself pushing through the pain, gliding protectively over the infant dragons before slamming into a sheltered area. His instinct to guard them overrode everything else.

His breath rasped, fury still burning. Through the agony of a ruined heart, he tore into his own limb and flung it toward the hatchlings.

He struggled to his remaining three legs, strength ebbing and limbs moving with increasing sluggishness. When he lifted his gaze to the cliff above, the sight pierced his shattered heart with fresh agony.

The other two dragons stood with his attackers: Dunn, the red Dragon of Decay, and Tancred, the black Dragon of Lava, completing the deadly quartet alongside Deathsight and Merewen.

"I… I am Sullivan." The voice cracked and wavered, foreign to Raiden's ears, yet he felt every word tearing from his own throat.

"The Moon Dragon, Queen of Viscount."

Energy finally abandoned him, and he crumpled to the earth. "I won't be killed by the likes of you," he whispered, the words coming slowly and deliberately. Dark flames began erupting from his scales, consuming him in fire.

The silence that followed was heavier than the wound itself, pressing into Raiden's chest until he thought it might suffocate him.

Then came the light. He awakened in a tiny, helpless body; clumsy limbs, blurred vision surrounded by other dragon hatchlings.

His wings felt weak and unresponsive, lacking any real power. Around him, he sensed and saw flashes of other baby dragons being pulled from their group through shimmering portals.

The entire experience tormented Raiden, leaving him with only one consuming thought: becoming stronger. It felt like the sole memory carved into his consciousness.

Time dragged on, days turned into weeks into months, and his vision stayed fractured. Each day brought deeper waves of depression, yet somehow the desire to grow stronger burned brighter than ever.

Until a portal tore open before him, the first thread of hope he'd grasped in this endless torment. The moment he stepped through, though, it threw him back like a rejection, closing with finality.

This shattered what little hope remained. Caught between fragments of himself—who he was, where his parents had gone, even his whereabouts beyond these mountains and rivers—he understood nothing. His existence had shrunk to waking and sleeping in one solitary place.

The universe seemed bent on his destruction. Two more portals came and went, each spitting him back into his misery. When the fourth appeared, he froze, too shattered to hope.

He waited in terror until his original purpose clawed through the darkness: grow stronger. Fighting through weakness so complete he could barely orient himself, he stumbled forward.

As he stepped through, expecting the familiar sting of rejection, something different happened. It worked.

Overwhelming joy poured through every fiber of his being as he stepped through to the other side. What he saw made his breath catch; there, standing before him in perfect clarity, was himself. Raiden.

The memories came in torrents Raiden couldn't stem: fragments he had theorized about and truths he had somehow known were coming. But as the haze cleared and reality sharpened, so did his sense of self.

I understand everything now, Ash… I do.

Pity washed over him, for himself, for Ash and for everything the returning memories had revealed. Sunlight filtered through his eyelids as consciousness returned, but he remained adrift, trapped in the fog of his own thoughts.

[ALERT]

[TRANSITION COMPLETED MOON DRAGON]

[DRAGON MANA POOL: 2200/5000]

[MANA CONTROL: +200]

[DRAGON AURA: +200]

…

The numbers flickered before his eyes, precise and uncaring. Strength. Stamina. Mana. Cold measures of survival—but they could not weigh the grief still burning in his chest.

He gazed upward into the vast sky, his heart carrying the same familiar ache despite this strange sensation of being reborn with limbs that no longer felt his own.

He never knew that Ash, whose true name was Sullivan, had endured such horrors. Her own primordial dragons had killed her for her throne and their own twisted desires. And yet, her dying wish was for Raiden to avenge his brother.

Though she was dying to save him, and selfishness in her final moments would have been forgivable, she chose to care for him even at the cost of her own deepest wishes.

"I want to… I really do." Raiden's voice came out heavy as he muttered the words. "But until I avenge my brother, I don't think I'll be myself again."

The instant he spoke, his eyes narrowed to deadly points, rage bubbling up from his core. His blue aura pulsed, sending fractures rippling through the air.

"For now, I can promise only this… Deathsight will die by my hand." His tone shifted, growing colder and increasingly sinister. "Once my brother is avenged, your throne will be mine again, and I will protect all who live under it."

"Just as you always wanted." He added in a quieter tone.

Yet a sense of closure with Ash lingered, something that had pierced straight through to his core, though the emptiness inside him remained unfilled.