Chapter 538: True Demonic Dragon
The ground shook even before the roar.
Ancient runes lit up instinctively along the columns of the hall, trying to contain what they should never have had to contain. But it was useless. Nothing there had been forged to resist a being like Strax.
His body writhed and expanded. Bones cracked and grew like erupting columns. His shoulder blades tore outward, making room for immense wings that exploded in a storm of black flames. His flesh molded itself, scales emerged like plates of living obsidian, and a crest of draconic horns formed as his tail tore through the marble floor.
A single flap of his wings caused the ceiling to crack.
The hall became small. Ridiculously small.
And then came the roar.
The roar of a truly ancient dragon, but with the rage of a wounded god.
Mountains shook. Rocks split. The magical energy in the ley lines around the castle trembled in despair, as if the earth itself were warning the world: something out of balance was loose.
Strax had assumed his dragon form.
But not just any form.
The elders—those who were still alive—could not react. They were petrified.
The figure that occupied almost the entire hall was colossal. Its scales were black as the abyss, but pulsed with incandescent veins of red and crimson, as if lava flowed inside. Each tooth in its mouth looked like a curved sword. Each claw was a tower. And its eyes…
…were two furious red suns that saw neither kings nor sages there. Only worms.
“F-for Pyraeth…” whispered one of the elders, falling to his knees. “This… this is not possible.”
“This is not a Dragon… this is a cataclysm!” shouted another, trying in vain to crawl out of the arcane circle.
“It’s him… a Demon Dragon…” muttered the third, completely pale.
The hall’s wall, enchanted for centuries with containment spells, shattered like glass under the pressure of Strax’s form. A movement of his tail opened a huge breach in the side of the structure, and the surrounding mountain rocks began to slide.
Pieces of the building fell down the slope like destroyed relics, disappearing amid a cloud of magical dust and stone fragments.
The mountain roared with him.
Or perhaps… it roared in fear of him.
Outside, on a stable stone plateau, Scarlet watched with her arms crossed, her expression grave. At her side, Ouroboros watched silently, golden eyes half-closed. Tiamat was quiet—for her, that said a lot.
Elyssar stood with her hands on her head, eyes wide with horror. “He’s losing control! Aren’t you going to do anything?!”
Scarlet did not respond immediately. The hot wind from Strax’s aura made her hair float, while red energy particles danced around her like sparks from a celestial fire.
“He’s still in control,” she replied at last. “I’ll intervene when I feel his rationality has completely gone.”
Elyssar turned away, indignant. “What do you mean?! He’s destroying his own mother’s ancestral hall! He just killed two members of the high council and threatened to exterminate the rest! What kind of sanity is that?!”
Scarlet didn’t blink. Her eyes were fixed on Strax’s colossal form, watching his every move.
“What would you do,” she asked, “if enemies invaded your kingdom without warning? If they killed your people without mercy? Destroyed your homes? Trampled your history?”
Elyssar hesitated.
But the answer came automatically. Instinctively.
“I would wipe them all out.”
The silence between them lasted only a second.
Scarlet turned to her slowly, her hair rippling like snakes around her shoulders. And then she replied, with a smile as small as it was lethal:
“Exactly.”
Up above, Strax let out another roar. The ground shook with greater intensity, causing part of the mountain peak to collapse onto the surrounding valleys. The remaining magical defenses tried to activate, but were pulverized in the next instant by his mere presence.
He looked at the remaining elders—only five were still alive. They did not move. They could not. Fear was like an arcane prison, stronger than any spell.
“Do you think you are eternal because you sit on these thrones? By wearing robes and crowns, you pretend to be above life and death. But I am here to remind you… that even the sky can be torn apart.”
His voice, even in that monstrous form, was clear. It resounded like thunder inside their minds, vibrating through their bones, burning their eardrums.
“You ignored my mother’s blood. You ignored the blood of my people. You ignored my plea for justice.”
The stones around them rose, levitated by the raw power that flowed from him like a magical hemorrhage.
“So now you will bleed.”
The oldest man tried to say something. A gesture. A plea. A prayer. Anything. But it was too late.
Strax flapped one of his wings. The gust of wind generated was so violent that it tore off part of the remaining roof and threw the old man out of the structure. The body disappeared into the clouds below. Nothing remained of him but the muffled sound of flesh being crushed on rocks hundreds of meters below.
Another tried to escape through the side runes. Strax caught him with the tip of his tail and pinned him against the wall as if crushing an insect. The wall split in half along with the body.
“It’s not blind fury,” Scarlet murmured from outside. “Not yet.”
Tiamat agreed. “Every move has a purpose. Every death has a target.”
Ouroboros tilted his head thoughtfully. “He’s judging. Not punishing. There’s still logic… twisted, but logic.”
Scarlet clenched her fist. “But if that logic breaks, if the next blow is on someone outside the dome… then it’ll be my turn.”
Elyssar looked at her, swallowing hard. “And can you… stop him?”
Scarlet smiled slightly, almost sadly.
“Yes, I can. But not without hurting myself. And he’ll hate himself for it later.”
Inside the hall, now almost unrecognizable, the fire still burned.
Strax stood on the remains of a throne, his immense body making the stone groan. His eyes, incandescent, scanned the field of destruction.
Of the ancient elders, only three remained.
Of the ancient world they represented… even fewer.
He took a deep breath, making the air vibrate.
“I am not a monster,” he said. “I am the answer. The return.”
And then, for the first time, he fell silent.
He sat down, his eyes slowly closing.
The mountain still trembled. But the core of the fury had quieted for a moment.
Outside, Scarlet lifted her chin. “It’s still him.”
Tiamat nodded. “For now.”
And everyone knew what would come next.
Because the fury had been unleashed…
…but the hunt had only just begun.
[Inside the Molten Chamber – Core of the Pyraeth Volcano]
The heat was unbearable. The air was so thick with sulfur, magma, and magic that even time seemed to drag inside. The chamber walls pulsed with raw energy—scarlet runes danced like flaming serpents across the living rock, and the heart of the volcano beat like a distant drum.
Ignisar knelt before the altar. Sweat dripped from his forehead as if he himself were melting, but it wasn’t the heat that made him tremble. Not this time.
It was the aura.
That aura.
Demonic, ancient, cruel. More than just a presence—it was a reminder. An echo from the depths of chaos, war, the abyss. A force that did not belong to the plane of the living… and yet it invaded the world with complete naturalness, as if it had never left.
Ignisar’s orange eyes widened. He turned slowly, staring at the body lying on the darkened stone altar. Shrouded in ritualistic veils, sealed by arcane chains of pure enchanted magma, the body had lain motionless for days.
Until now.
The woman’s skin, once cold as ashes, began to emit a faint crimson glow, as if the fire of the core itself were reacting to her.
And then… she trembled.
Her body contracted involuntarily, her veins glowing with corrupt, living, unstable energy. Her breathing returned. Her fingers flexed. Her eyelids moved slowly, revealing eyes—still opaque—that began to open with supernatural slowness.
“No…”
Ignisar took a step back. He stretched out his arms violently and activated the main containment circle. The runes exploded into flames around the altar, forming containment barriers made from the very souls of sacrificed dragons. Ancient symbols of imprisonment, engraved with blood and lava, reignited in unison.
“You will not wake up. Not yet. Not yet.”
His voice was choked, trembling, desperate. He conjured more layers. Layers upon layers. Chains of living obsidian, state-of-the-art arcane locks, forgotten prayers of the black priestesses of Nergann.
The body continued to move.
Until…
…everything stopped.
A second of absolute silence.
The fire, the runes, the echoes… everything ceased.
Ignisar sighed with relief, though still nervous, thinking that perhaps her soul was in internal struggle. That the possession was not yet complete. That his control—however fragile—would last a few more hours.
But then…
“I am grateful…”
The voice came not from the air, but from within the chamber, as if it had always been there. It echoed off the walls of the volcano like a blasphemous whisper coming from beneath the earth itself.
It was a woman’s voice—deep, grave, elegant… and laden with scorn.
“…for reviving me with this filthy magic.”
Ignisar froze.
He knew that voice. He knew it better than any other in this world.
“But prepare for the worst.”
An invisible force coursed through the veins of the volcano. The rocks vibrated. The flames in the arcane cauldrons went out for a second—a real second, an eternal second.
“No one controls a dragon.”
The altar began to shake, as if the structure itself rejected what it housed. The chains hissed, as if burning from within.
“Much less me.”
The woman’s eyes, now fully open, were black. No pupils. No life. But intense. Like holes in reality.
Ignisar fell to his knees.
The aura disappeared.
The body stopped moving.
Silence returned to the chamber. The lava bubbled gently. The runes remained active. Everything was as before—except for Ignisar, who trembled like a leaf in the midst of a storm.
He said nothing.