Description

The skies above Lazarus burned the day the last of the Firstborn fell. Smoke and cinders clawed at the heavens as the great wyrm Vaeronth the Boundless plummeted to the blood-soaked valley below. His wings, once wide enough to darken a city, now shredded by spear and sorcery. All around him, men screamed, not in triumph, but in fear—for none had expected the ancient dragon to fall. And fewer still understood the cost.

King Alaric the Redeemer stood amid the ruin, his blade cracked, his golden armor stained with flame. He was the first man in a thousand years to face a Firstborn and survive. He had not sought its death, only its silence. But in killing Vaeronth, he had torn open a wound in the old world—and the winds of prophecy stirred once more.

"You are not the victor," the dragon had whispered with its dying breath, its voice like molten stone. "You are the inheritor. And the debt shall come due." Then it had died, not with rage, but with sorrow, as though the world it guarded no longer deserved its breath.