Chapter 23: 23 Scars

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23: Scars 23: Scars Throughout those hours of battle, Kairan had studied the beast’s every movement, every pattern, every habit, and she had noticed one thing: every time the dragon charged, for just an instant, its hind legs would stiffen, and its head would lower, exposing the nape of its neck.

Kairan lowered her hands and did the one thing the dragon hadn’t expected: she stopped, planted herself in the mud, motionless, arms at her sides, offering herself as a perfect target.

The enemy hesitated, then, blinded by hatred and the certainty of victory, opened its jaws to incinerate that insolent little demon once and for all.

Its hind legs stiffened, its head lowered, and the nape of its neck was exposed.

Kairan then lunged, not toward the dragon, but downward.

He dug his feet into the mud, charging every fiber of his body, every muscle, every ounce of his superhuman strength.

And he leaped, a leap that split the ground beneath him, raising a crown of mud and water.

A leap that carried him high, above the gaping jaws, above the crimson eyes wide with surprise, to the top of the dragon’s colossal head.

There, suspended in midair, above the colossus’s exposed nape, Kairan clenched his fist.

He put everything into that fist.

All the strength of his body.

All the hours of fighting.

All the pain of his torn lip, of his exhausted muscles, of his aching bones.

All the rage for the burned villages.

All his will not to yield, not to surrender, not to die.

Gathering it all, he unleashed it.

A single fist struck the dragon’s nape.

The sound was indescribable, not a roar or a crash, but something deeper, more definitive, as if the air itself were exploding.

The shockwave spread for kilometers, bending trees, kicking up mud, shaking the nameless lands to the horizon.

The dragon’s head detached from its neck, clean, as if severed by an invisible blade.

The colossus didn’t roar, it didn’t even have time to realize what was happening.

The head flew off, rolling in the mud for several meters, while the immense body remained standing for a moment, motionless, before collapsing to the ground with a crash that swallowed up all other sounds.

The rain continued to fall.

It washed away the blood, the mud, and everything else.

Kairan landed beside the carcass, on her knees, her breath ragged, her fist still smoking from the force of the blow.

He remained like that for a long time, then slowly stood up.

He pressed a hand to his right lip, where the fang had wounded him, and felt the scar.

It hadn’t completely healed; it would mark his face forever.

Oddly, he didn’t mind; it was proof that even he, the child who could bend gravity and open portals to other worlds, had had to win that day with the strength of his own hands alone.

Without powers or weapons.

Only with himself.

He looked at the dragon’s severed head, motionless in the mud, its crimson eyes now dull.

“You should have stayed with your Emperor,” he murmured in the language of the Extras.

“Freedom, when it tramples on the innocent, is not freedom.

It’s just another name for ruin.” Then he gathered up his mud-soaked cloak, threw it over his shoulders, and continued on his way.

Towards Dareth’s Crest.

Stronger, more determined, and with a scar on his lip he would bear forever.

Every breath was heavy, every step an act of pure will.

Kairan’s body trembled.

Not from fear, not from hesitation, but from the immense effort he had expended during the battle with the dragon.

All that energy had drained his reserves, and now the adrenaline was slowly ebbing, giving way to exhaustion, pain, the concrete weight of his physical existence.

His sculpted muscles were taut like ropes, the veins in his arms bulging beneath his skin.

His lungs burned with every inhalation, and the blood continued to flow, soaked in mud, down his forehead and left cheek, flowing toward his neck, and then pouring down his chest.

Until that moment, he hadn’t realized the extent of the wounds the dragon had managed to inflict on him.

Now he felt them, like uncomfortable rivulets.

And yet there was no doubt in him, no sign of surrender.

The call of Dareth’s Ridge, that roar he had heard a thousand times in his mother’s stories and in the memory of his own heart, was too loud to ignore.

Every step toward the mountain was a step toward his destiny.

A step through toil, pain, blood.

A mountain village finally appeared, through the fog and pouring rain.

The stone huts were perched on the slopes, protected by massive wooden roofs, surrounded by muddy, slippery paths.

The wind howled through the rocks, carrying with it the smell of wet earth and rotting wood.

Kairan, immersed in that ghostly atmosphere, continued to advance, blood dripping from his eye, mixing with the mud, with no goal left but the Crest’s call.

A little girl noticed him.

Her eyes widened in wonder: it was rare to see a boy, especially a boy with such a powerful aura, walking like that through the mud and rain, his face covered in blood, his body emanating an almost palpable power.

Kairan didn’t even see her.

He simply advanced, each step more laborious than the last, but his treacherous body could no longer sustain the effort.

His muscles, exhausted, drained from the superhuman use he had put them to, suddenly gave way, and Kairan collapsed into the mud.

The thud was dull, tremendous, his cloak completely soiled, the blood mixing further with the earth, forming a dark red carpet beneath him.

The rain continued to pour, thundering on the ground and the roofs of the huts, while the body of the demonic prince lay still, broken.

The little girl didn’t hesitate: she ran toward him.

She placed her hands on his shoulders, both gently and forcefully.

She lifted him, feeling the density of those muscles, the tension of a young but extraordinarily powerful body.