Starting out as a Dragon Slave

The light finally faded, retracting upon itself in one last luminous breath, like a dying star. The cracked walls of the dungeon still trembled, emitting a requiem of stone and metal a low, continuous rumbling, as if the very foundations of this cursed place wept for the explosion that had just ravaged its essence. Ashes, remnants of a life now extinguished, swirled in the tainted air, dancing in tragically graceful spirals before slowly settling onto the blackened ground tiny ghosts of a past still warm.

Isaac reappeared, his translucent body regaining physical consistency in painful fragments. His feet touched the ground with sudden brutality, as if gravity itself was punishing him for his survival. His breath—the breath she no longer had was short, ragged, each inhalation a torment that burned his lungs.

His muscles shook with violent spasms, his nerves ablaze from the superhuman effort. The Intangibility had been pushed beyond the impossible twenty long seconds suspended between being and nothingness, clinging desperately to that spider’s thread separating reality from the ethereal.

He collapsed to one knee, his hands trembling uncontrollably, palms pressed against the still-burning ground. Pain radiated through his limbs like searing poison, his bones creaking under the immense strain he had just endured. His ragged breath escaped through cracked lips, leaving trails of mist in the ash-saturated air—perhaps her ashes.

Then he opened his eyes. What he saw paralyzed him.

Before him stretched nothingness. No walls, no ceiling. The room had been gutted, ripped from existence itself, as if reality had shattered under the weight of the sacrifice. A gaping chasm devoured the space where the floor once stood, a blackened crater, scorched down to the stone’s very marrow. The walls had collapsed like cards blown away by a divine storm.

The metal beams—twisted, contorted like tortured limbs stood as silent witnesses to the violence of the explosion. The pillars were nothing but dust dancing in the rays of dying light. Luminous particles, almost phantasmagoric, still floated in the tainted air the last witnesses of an explosion so pure, so absolute, that it had literally consumed the reality around it.

- "Akane..."

Her name escaped his lips like a broken prayer barely a whisper, barely a sound, but carrying the weight of a world that had just collapsed. The name floated for a moment, fragile and sacred, before being swallowed by the heavy silence of the ruins.

His eyes, wide with horror and disbelief, frantically scanned the ashes. They scoured the debris with the desperation of despair, but found only emptiness. No body. No remains. No trace. Simply... absence. An absence heavier, more tangible, more painful than any presence could have been.

His trembling fingers clutched at the scorched ground, scraping until they bled, as if he hoped to tear away the truth, a fragment, a relic of her. But there was nothing left to save. His knees struck the ground heavily, the sound echoing through the devastated chamber like the heartbeat of someone left utterly alone.

- "Akane... Akane..."

Her name, repeated like a mantra, each syllable shattering further with every utterance. He fell forward, his hands collapsing into the still-warm ashes, his fingers digging into them as if trying to reach for something someone beyond that gray layer. His forehead struck the stone, and then his shoulders began to shake at first imperceptibly, then with growing violence. A sob tore through the silence, a primal, visceral sound, wrenched from the depths of his being. It was not the cry of a man it was the wail of a shattered soul.

He hadn’t saved her.

She had evaporated, pulverized, sacrificed herself. She had vanished in a burst of pure light, taking with her all hope, all warmth.

- "No... no... no..."

The words barely escaped, stifled by a throat knotted with grief. His fists clenched so tightly that his nails pierced his skin, carving blood-red crescents into his palms. Blood beaded, mingling with the ashes the only offering he could still make to her.

- "This isn’t possible... it can’t end like this..."

But reality, merciless, imposed itself on him in all its cruelty. Not a fragment of cloth. Not a drop of blood. Not a shard of metal. Nothing but the gaping void of an absolute absence.

His breathing became a torment, each breath a razor blade in his chest. His heart beat painfully, each pulse hammering his guilt, his helplessness. Too slow. Too weak. She had been right there, within reach, and yet separated from him by an unbridgeable chasm. He had seen the light erupt from her body like a supernova, had heard her last words a farewell, perhaps a promise but all he could do... was survive. Survive while she disappeared in one final act of reckless bravery.

- "Why... why am I still here..."

His voice completely broke on those last words, like glass shattering against stone. Tears, which he hadn’t shed in years, began to flow slowly down his face, tracing clear paths on his cheeks streaked with dust and blood—his own, perhaps hers too, he could no longer tell. His head remained bowed under the weight of sorrow, his shoulders shaking with uncontrollable spasms, his trembling hands pressed against a ground still steeped in her vanished presence.

He cried.

Far from watchful eyes, far from expectations, far from the image he had forged for himself. He cried like a lost child, his ragged sobs resonating in the devastated hall. It wasn’t just the pain of loss it was the pain of failure, of powerlessness, of the absolute certainty that he would never see her smile again, never hear her voice, never feel the warmth of her presence. She had disappeared in an act of absolute courage, and he had not been able to stop her.

Each tear that fell carried away a fragment of his already broken soul. Each breath he dragged from the tainted air was a cruel reminder of what she could never do again. His hands clung desperately to that charred surface where, mere moments ago, she had stood vibrant with life and determination.

A fleeting memory crossed his mind her laughter, crystalline and rare, during a stolen moment in the shadowed intimacy of a shared evening. Then another the determination in her gaze when she spoke of freedom. The warmth of her hand, once, brushing his by accident. These fragments of memory now paraded before him, an exquisite torture, memories turned into precious relics of an unreachable past.

- "Akane..." he moaned, his forehead pressed against the burning ground. "I’m sorry... I’m so sorry..."

His voice was swallowed by the silent echo of destruction. The words, insufficient, pathetic, evaporated into the air like the last embers of a dying fire.