The sky above Warm Oasis shimmered with waves of heat, but deep within the Crucible of Aeons… the air was still. Breathless. Sylwen and Sylrin, the Twin Elves of the Forge, stood before the assembled survivors, their skin gleaming with soot and sweat, their faces solemn. Behind them, upon the obsidian altar, lay three bolts.
Each one the size of a man's spear, forged from Mithron's purest veins, tipped with Azerite—the core of starfire. Etchings of flame and wind and ash ran along the shaft in Elvish script that burned faintly in the dark. Only three.
No more could be made. The Mithron was gone. What little remained was used to bind the shafts in holy runes and balance the weight. The rest had been melted in fire beyond fire, sung into shape by hammers that hadn't struck in an age.
Sylwen's voice echoed. "Three arrows for one beast. Three hearts of death for a flame beyond death. If they fly true, they may end him. If they miss…"
Varnic and Gorim said nothing. Dwarves do not speak easily of fate. Not when it rides on the edge of a single breath.
But Jhon did. "We'll make them count."
He turned to the others, his eyes passing over Arianne, Nadra, Rahotep, Sayf, Khaltar. Warriors, survivors, rebels to the end. "We need to draw him out. Lure him from the Grey Mountains—away from stone, into sky. Into open ground where he can't vanish, can't burrow, can't burn the tunnels beneath us."
"Bait," muttered Rahotep, cracking his knuckles. "He'll come for what he thinks is easy prey."
Sayf leaned on his blade. "A ruined town? A burning beacon? Something to offend his pride?"
Arianne's eyes narrowed. "No… something to tempt his hunger. His greed. He sleeps on treasure for a reason. Let him think someone dares to steal it."
Jhon nodded slowly. "A decoy raid on his hoard…"
"And when he comes," Khaltar added, "we set the trap. With the ballistae mounted and ready. Three bolts. Three chances."
"If we miss?" Nadra asked quietly.
Jhon's jaw clenched. "Then we die."
Gorim placed his hand on one of the bolts, feeling its impossible weight. "Let's hope dwarven ghosts guided your forge well, Sylwen."
Sylrin only smiled faintly. "They did more than guide. They watched."
The sands of Warm Oasis were burned underfoot as the final preparations were made. A trail of bootprints, wheel ruts, and grunts of effort marked the loading of history's heaviest burden.
Jhon stood on the docks of the port, staring at the towering silhouette of his ship—as his crew hauled the enormous ballista aboard. It creaked with every push and pull, its reinforced base groaning under the weight of destiny.
Behind them, three bolts wrapped in silk and chain, glowing faintly under the tarp, waited like silent gods. Jhon wiped the sweat from his brow. Then turned. There stood Zafir and Safiya, robed in desert cloth, eyes worn by years, yet warm. Always warm.
Without a word, he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around them both. The kind of hug a son gives to the only family he's ever known. "You pulled me from the sand when I was just a shadow," Jhon whispered, voice hoarse. "Left alone by monsters, buried by heat, bled dry by grief."
He looked up at Zafir, whose scarred face cracked into a knowing smile. "I remember," Jhon continued. "Iron Foot Clan slaughtered the others. You didn't even ask who I was. You just helped me."
Safiya brushed a hand across his hair, like a mother smoothing a boy's curls before sleep. "You were no one," she said gently. "And yet, you were everything."
Jhon stepped back, eyes misting. "I've never had a father, or a mother. But I had you."
He turned to the ship again, pointing toward the massive shape now fixed to the center deck—its arms braced, gears locked, one bolt already loaded, gleaming under the sun like a shard of dawn. "I've named it," he said quietly.
Zafir raised an eyebrow.
Jhon smiled bitterly. "Fatepiercer."
He inhaled deeply, then looked back. "That bolt will set the course of my life."
As the ship cast off into the open sea, bound northward toward the Grey Mountains, the sky burned orange with the fire of dusk.
Below deck, Nadra whispered to Arianne. "He doesn't just want to kill the dragon. He wants to become something by doing it."
Arianne watched Jhon at the helm, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the worn leather of a sketch—plans of the trap they'd soon set. "No," she said. "He wants to become someone. The kind of man worth saving back then."
The night was gentle upon the ship. Waves whispered against her hull. The sails caught the wind in sighs. Above, the moon hung in silver grace, draping the ship in its quiet, sacred light.
Rahotep stood at the helm, one hand resting on the wheel, the other tucked behind his back. The moonlight turned his bronze skin pale, made his scars seem softer, older.
He looked not at the stars, but at the horizon. Calm. Blue-silver. Endless. There, somewhere beyond, were the Grey Mountains. And death. But in that moment, he wasn't a captain. He wasn't a warrior. He wasn't a strategist. He was just a boy again.
A boy on the shore of Duskstrand, watching ships with eyes too big for his face. A boy who stowed away on a sloop just to see the horizon. A boy who nearly drowned trying to prove he belonged at sea. He chuckled, low in his chest.
"What's so funny, Captain?" The voice broke his trance. It was Caldrin, one of Jhon's younger men. Barely past his second voyage.
Rahotep glanced at him sidelong, still smiling. "You wouldn't understand. Not yet."
Caldrin stepped closer, curious. "Were you always this calm before a battle?"
Rahotep snorted softly. "Gods, no. The first time I faced a Leviathan, I puked so hard I knocked myself out on the rail."
Caldrin laughed. Rahotep returned his gaze to the moon. "But I learned. You hold the line. You steer the course. You don't flinch, or no one else will hold."
Caldrin followed his gaze, then asked, "So what are you thinking about now?"
Rahotep didn't answer at first. Just watched the horizon like it might answer for him. Then he said, softly, "I'm thinking… you might be holding this wheel sooner than you think."
Caldrin blinked. "Me?"
Rahotep nodded once. "If fire takes me. If the bolts miss. You hold the line. You steer the course."
He turned, full seriousness in his eyes now. "And you make damn sure Fatepiercer finds its mark."
Caldrin stood stiff, eyes still locked on the moonlight shimmering across the waves, but his thoughts were far from peace. "You might be holding this wheel sooner than you think."
The words curled in his gut like a rope knotting itself tighter. Beside him, Rahotep said nothing more—just watched the heavens, his gaze distant and still. Then… something stirred. The moon's reflection on the water rippled. No—blocked.
A shape moved across the stars. At first too far, too silent to understand. But as it came closer, its enormity defied the rules of distance. The stars seemed to bend around it. The moonlight fractured. Then the wind changed. And Rahotep's eyes snapped to the horizon. "By the Ancients…" he breathed.
The shape dropped—a wingbeat so vast it displaced the clouds. A shadow of nightmares, scales as dark as obsidian drenched in dried blood, horns curling like spears of bone. Wings outstretched across the sky like a god descending. Varkhaz'gor. The Elder Dragon had found them.
"CALDRIN—THE BOLT!" Rahotep bellowed.
Caldrin staggered back, eyes wide in disbelief. "What—NOW?!"
"NOW!"
Rahotep bolted from the wheel, legs hammering against wood. He ran down the deck, snatching the hammer from the wall and slammed it into the bell—CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The bell screamed. Too late. Above them, the heavens cracked with a sound like worlds dying. Varkhaz'gor's chest swelled. A heartbeat later—"KRAAAAAAARHHHHHHHH!"
Flames, thick and molten as the heart of a volcano, tore through the sky. They didn't just burn—they consumed, igniting the very air around them. The ship was engulfed.
Timbers exploded. Sails turned to ash mid-flutter. Screams were drowned by a tidal wave of fire. The deck split open as Rahotep was flung into the railing, his bell still echoing one last clang as he crashed.
Caldrin had pulled the trigger—too late. The bolt launched, but the dragon twisted mid-air, flames roaring downward like divine wrath. The Fatepiercer missed, streaking into the clouds. Rahotep looked back, through one good eye—half his face already blistered.
He saw crewmates aflame. Saw the ballista crumbling. Saw Jhon sprinting barefoot from belowdeck, eyes wide in horror. But none of it could stop the inevitable. The ship—once a blade to fate—was now a pyre.
The ship burned like a funeral lantern in the dark sea. Its sails, once proud banners of purpose, now hung as shreds of flame. Its timbers screamed, split open by heat and ruin. The ocean beneath hissed and boiled, unable to quench the wrath above. And above, circling like a vulture basking in its victory, was Varkhaz'gor.
His wings thundered with each beat, stirring storms. His blackened form blotted out the moon, casting the ship in an even deeper shadow. He did not attack again—not yet. Instead, he spoke.
His voice wasn't a roar—it was language, ancient and unnatural, echoing inside their skulls like a second heartbeat. "Did you truly believe you could deceive an Elder Dragon?"
"That I would not feel you—lurking in my mountains, touching my hoard, desecrating my dead?" The voice felt like molten iron poured straight into the soul. Crewmates clutched their ears though no sound met them. Others choked on smoke and ash, only to hear his words within the folds of death. "I let you live. I let you dig. I let you forge your toys and whisper your plans in the dark. Not because I was blind—but because I wanted you to hope."
Sayf knelt beside the broken mast, his body charred, breath shallow. His mind reeled, remembering the old texts, the forbidden scripts he once read during a tomb raid in Ilhazor.
Elder Dragons were not only beings of flame and scale. They were psions—masters of ancient cognition, minds like shattered mirrors reflecting truths no man could bear.
"We were never hidden," Sayf whispered, as blood slid down his jaw. "He saw everything."
Varkhaz'gor hovered once more, wings stretched wide as a stormfront. Then he ignited. Flames burst along his body—not red, but white-hot, like the core of the sun. His scales burned like star-metal, his eyes twin furnaces of the world's ending. "Now," he declared into their dying minds, "Hope ends."
He folded his wings. And fell. Like a fallen star, like divine wrath unshackled from heaven—Varkhaz'gor plummeted. The impact shattered the world.
The ship erupted in an instant—not in flames, but in light. A blinding explosion of fire, molten wood, and screaming souls. The ocean itself recoiled, waves rising high as towers as the ship was erased from the map of the world.
A shockwave rippled outward, visible from miles away. Fish surfaced dead. Clouds parted. Even the moon itself looked afraid. Where once a ship sailed… now there was only a churning, smoldering crater of steam.
And silence. Varkhaz'gor rose from the water's surface, not flying—but hovering, wings of fire stretched wide. He did not roar. He did not gloat. He simply vanished—ascending into the black skies above like death itself returning to slumber.