Chapter 1813: It Has Been Mine The words of the Third Prince were like a lash to Vyraak’s soul; hard-earned triumphs began to seem like manipulation by a hand he had never seen. He, Vyraak, the Dragon God, was a beast of burden. A cosmic fool. A delivery system. His head drooped, the horns that had gored Demon Lords now pointing impotently at the non-ground. The shimmering, impossible grandeur of the Palace of Time seemed to mock him, a prize he was never meant to claim, only to deliver. The warm, familiar weight of the Red Moonlight Blade against his side was no longer a comfort. It was a leash. The shame he felt at this moment was a physical sickness. The Third Prince watched, his expression one of detached, almost clinical pity. He could not feel empathy, but his powerful mind understood everything that was happening down to the smallest detail, and he did not want to miss a thing. "And so the scales fall," the Third Prince said, his voice soft, almost a whisper in the immense silence. "It is a painful revelation, but a necessary one. Surrender the blade. Relinquish the purpose that was forced upon you. There is a certain peace in accepting one’s true, small place in the grand design." Small. The word echoed in the hollowed-out cavern of Vyraak’s mind. He was small. He had felt it at the Arena, a terrifying insignificance. And now this... this janitor... was confirming it. His life was a footnote in another being’s story. He saw it then, a future of profound quiet. Of laying down the blade, of turning away from the Palace, of finding some forgotten corner of a broken dimension to live out his days in the humiliating knowledge of his own irrelevance. It would be a peace, of a sort. The peace of the defeated. The peace of a tool that has been used and discarded. But then, from the depths of that despair, a memory surfaced. He was not yet an Old One, but a great wyrm at the seventh-dimensional level, cornered in the remnants of his dying universe by a Celestial Creator. His fire was spent, his wings were tattered, acidic bile eating through his scales to the bone. He was finished. He knew it. Then, a heat at his side, and a light in his heart. The Red Moonlight Blade had come to him. Knowledge that was almost instinct flooded his mind: a specific angle of attack, a microscopic flaw in the Celestial Creator’s armor, a way to put all his remaining strength into ascending to the eighth dimension. This was the day he became an Old One, and his story, which should have ended, became more. ’What have I really lost?’ Vyraak thought to himself, as another memory took center stage in his mind. He was now an Old One, challenging a mighty Demon Lord called the Sun-Eater. The demon was a vortex of plasma and arrogance, and it was winning. It had absorbed his storms, his flames, his fury. It was preparing to finally consume him, to add his essence to its core. Despair had taken him. The blade, again. A pulse of warmth. A vision, not of a killing blow, but of a feint, a surrender. The knowledge of how to let his own power be pulled in, to overload the Sun-Eater’s core with a chaotic mixture of their combined energies. He had done it, a move that felt like suicide. The resulting explosion had scarred a hundred dimensions and left him the victor, the Sun-Eater’s power now his own. The blade had not just saved him; it had made him stronger. ’What have I truly lost that has not been given back to me in full many times over?’ Not allowing the words of the Third Prince to twist his own memories. Vyraak dug deep into the ten thousand years of conflicts and the one constant that had been with him all this time. He recalled memories of not just battles, but of choices. A whispered nudge to spare a tribe of mortals, who would later become his most devout worshippers, their faith fueling his vitality, giving him a sense of purpose outside battle. A subtle guidance away from a path that would have led him into the territory of a Primordial’s wrathful Throne. The blade had been there. Not just as a weapon, but as a mentor. A protector. A... partner. The Third Prince saw the change. The dragon god’s despair was hardening into something else. His previous enjoyment at Vyraak’s mental suffering turned to wariness. "Do not cling to the lie, Vyraak. The bond you feel is a manipulation. A sophisticated one, but a manipulation nonetheless, trust me, I have seen it happen many times before." Vyraak’s head rose. The shame was still there, a cold stone in his belly. But it was now surrounded by a hotter, more familiar emotion: a defiant, stubborn pride, one that this blade had nurtured. "You speak of its purpose." Vyraak’s voice was a low, gravelly rumble. "You lay bare the design of its maker. You call me a pawn. A Trojan Horse." He took a step forward. The ground, which was not ground, trembled. "But you do not speak of my purpose. You do not speak of the ten thousand years I have lived with this steel. You do not know the feel of its hilt in my claw as I faced oblivion. You call it a manipulation. I call it a covenant." The Third Prince’s eyes narrowed. "A covenant with a splinter of a will that sees you as expendable livestock." "PERHAPS!" Vyraak roared, and the sound was a clap of thunder in the silent realm. "But it is my covenant! This ’splinter’... it brought me back from death! It taught me how to fight! It gave me the strength for my vengeance! It is the reason I lived to become an Old One! It is the reason I survived the Arena!" His hands wrapped around the hilt of the Red Moonlight Blade. The warmth flooded up his arm, and now he was no longer viewing it as a collar; it was an affirmation of all they had become together. This was the same warmth that had comforted him in the cold of space after his defeats. It was the same certainty that had guided him through impossible battles. "The maker of this blade may have had his reasons," Vyraak snarled, his eyes burning with a stormy, wounded light. "He may see me as a beast, a tool, a key. But this blade... this fragment of his will... it has been mine, my companion, my teacher, my savior. I trust the millenia of partnership in my hands more than I trust the single moment of revelation from your lips!" The Third Prince sighed, a sound of infinite weariness. "Then you choose the gilded cage. A pity. I had hoped for more wisdom from one who had witnessed the Arena and the sort of forces that controlled Reality." "You hoped for obedience," Vyraak corrected him. "You are the caretaker. You wish to keep the doors closed and the floors clean. I am a dragon. I do not clean. I break." With a speed that defied his size, a speed honed in ten thousand battles and guided by ten thousand years of symbiotic practice with the blade, Vyraak moved. The Red Moonlight Blade tore through the air, not giving out a sound. It drank the silence like a sweep of absolute crimson darkness, a line of anti-dawn that carved through the space between them. The Third Prince did not try to block this. He did not try to dodge; this strike from a blade of Rowan’s making was inevitable. He simply looked at Vyraak, his expression one of resigned disappointment and a hint of profound jealousy hidden deep in his heart. The blade passed through him. It was not like cutting flesh or energy, more like cutting a concept. There was a sensation of severing a mathematical principle, as if a gear had been interrupted. The Third Prince’s form split cleanly in two at the torso. But there was no blood or viscera. The two halves of his body simply... persisted. They hung in the air for a moment, then dissolved into a shower of fading numerals, swirling temporal sigils, and the faint, echoing sound of a broken clock. A laugh echoed in the spacec, coming from the Third Prince who had been cut in two, dry and rustling, emerging from everywhere and nowhere. "A bold choice, dragon!" the voice of the Third Prince chimed. "You strike the caretaker to enter the house of the master! You trust the weapon over the word! We shall see what fruit this defiance bears! I tried to warn you, to show you the truth that has been forbidden to those not of their number, yet you spat on my gift, the consequences you shall face ahead will be yours alone." The laughter faded, leaving only the profound, humming silence of the Palace and the heavy, panting breath of the dragon. "It is my choice." Vyraak whispered, "Something I am sure no Primordial will permit."