What Remains...

[Zeik]

The road through Jukainah cut across black volcanic gravel and dying grass, empty except for the man convulsing in its center. Zeik Hellgate hit the ground hard enough to crack stone, rolled twice, and came up on one knee before collapsing again. Dust clung to the sweat on his skin. His breathing came in ragged pulls that sounded more like growls than lungs. Each inhale scorched. Each exhale trembled with restrained violence.

His right hand clenched against his chest, fingers twitching as Naten condensed around them without permission. The crimson glow spilled through the gaps between his knuckles. Zeik forced his arm upward and released it into the sky before it could turn toward the island. A beam erupted through the clouds with a deafening crack. Far above Vescrutia, a drifting mass of asteroid debris burst apart into incandescent fragments.

The recoil drove him backward into the gravel. He screamed then—not the cry of a warrior charging battle, but the raw sound of a body trying to tear itself open and escape what was inside it. His shoulders spasmed. His spine arched. The muscles in his jaw stood out so sharply they looked carved from stone. Smoke leaked from the corners of his eyes with every shuddering breath.

Jukainah answered with silence. The island did not pity him. Wind moved through the cliffs and jungle like something old and disinterested. Somewhere beyond the mountains, dragons watched with the patience of creatures who measured civilizations the way humans measured seasons. To the Sulari Concord, men were temporary things. Zeik had chosen this place because no one here would rush to save him.

Another surge struck. Heat flooded his veins, followed by a sickening certainty that he could end the pain if he simply stopped resisting. The thought did not arrive like a voice. It arrived like instinct. Natural. Obvious. His hand tightened again, and another sphere of Naten formed before he even realized it had begun. Rage rose with it—rage at the curse, at himself, at six thousand years of pretending control was the same thing as safety.

He had hidden it from everyone. From his mother, who once called him gifted. From his wife, whose hands had steadied him through wars she never fully understood. From comrades who trusted the Peerless Sage to solve the impossible. Zeik had built layer after layer of discipline, ritual, and intellect around the thing inside him, treating it like a problem that could be contained through mastery alone. The irony clawed at him now: the greatest spellcraft mind of his age could map celestial currents, unravel forbidden equations, and dismantle a Herald’s deception—yet he could not cure himself.

The smoke thickened. Black fumes poured from his left eye until the sclera disappeared beneath writhing darkness. His right eye remained visible, bloodshot and desperate, fighting to stay clear. He pressed both hands to his face as another uncontrolled blast tore upward into the heavens, punching a crimson wound through the clouds. The sky flashed. Gravel lifted from the road around him. And for the first time in centuries, Zeik became certain of something he could not outthink, outspell, or outlast: he was slipping.

One by one, they arrived. First came a shadow crossing the clouds. Then another. Then the distant silhouette of wings gliding between mountain peaks. Sulari descended from cliffside aeries and ancient caverns, their scales reflecting the fading light in hues of gold, obsidian, jade, and silver. Some were scarcely larger than horses. Others dwarfed fortresses, their bodies so immense that entire sections of the landscape vanished behind them when they landed. Yet none spoke. None roared. None offered challenge or aid. They simply gathered in silence, forming a distant ring around the broken Hellgate. The Sulari Concord possessed little affection for humanity and even less for the countless younger races that followed in its wake. To dragons, mortal lives burned too briefly to warrant attachment, and suffering was rarely reason enough for intervention. Zeik understood this. That was why he had come here. No dragon would rush to save him from himself. No ancient sage would offer comfort. They watched only because they recognized significance when they saw it. Before them stood a man wrestling something older than reason, and like scholars observing an experiment or vultures circling a dying beast, they had come to see what remained when the struggle finally ended.