The rooftops had just stopped falling.
The scream was still caught in Yula's throat when the second strike came down.
There was no warning, just a rush of pressure, a sharp whistle through the smoke, and the sudden collapse of the sky.
The flying beast descended again, its jagged wings slicing clouds like frozen razors. It didn't flap. It carved through air. Ice shimmered across its body like fractured glass lit from within.
"Dima!" Yula hissed, ducking low as another icicle speared into the street beside them. "Hold on."
He didn't answer. He was barely conscious. His blood had soaked through Nadia's coat now, staining both their sleeves. The wound in his side pulsed with every breath, and those breaths were coming slower.
"Keep pressure on it," Nadia said tightly. Her voice trembled, not with fear, but restraint. She braced one knee into the snow and pressed both hands against the jagged shard lodged just beneath Dima's ribs.
Another icicle crashed to their left, blasting stone into white-hot shrapnel. Yula threw herself over both siblings, felt the splinters rake her back.
They had no cover. No one left to help.
Nadia shifted beside her, panting. Blood streaked down her temple from a fresh gash. Her hand didn't leave Dima's side.
"He's turning cold," she muttered. Not to Yula. Not even aloud, really. Like she was saying it to the wind.
Yula forced her own hands to stay steady.
The sounds around them blurred, people screaming somewhere deeper in the city, steel clashing with something too big to be human, and above it all, the sharp mechanical screech of the beast circling for another pass.
Nadia's eyes flicked toward the sky, toward the dark shape reappearing through the veil of fire-smoke and snowdust. The creature moved like it had no joints. Just muscle and ice and hate.
The breath in her chest turned raw.
She'd seen this before.
Not this exact shape. But the feeling. The moment before the world stopped pretending.
It came again. A scream through the air.
The beast dove.
Nadia didn't wait.
She moved, fast, threw herself up, arms out, body arched just enough to block the worst of it.
"Nadia!" Yula screamed. She dragged Dima aside, just barely as the icicle slammed into the stone behind them.
The shockwave flipped her sideways.
Snow and ash lifted in a blinding cloud.
She hit the ground and rolled.
Her hands burned. Her ears rang. The world was sideways.
She pushed herself up.
Nadia was still crouched. Shielded Dima with her own body. Shoulders hunched. Coat torn down the back where something had struck her again.
But she was still there.
Yula stared, unblinking.
Still standing.
Despite everything. Despite the weight of memories none of them spoke aloud. Despite the graves that didn't get proper markers. Despite the ache that had settled into the bones of their little family and refused to leave.
They had already lost once.
That was enough.
Another shriek overhead.
The beast looped around for a third dive.
Yula had no blade.
No plan.
No way to make it stop.
She stood.
She didn't even know why, only that her body moved before the scream reached her mouth.
Then—
CRACK.
One shot.
Clean. Cold. Final.
The beast jerked in mid-air.
Its wings twisted backward. Its mouth opened with a soundless cry. Then it dropped, lifeless, to the stone two streets away. Its corpse shattered on impact, splintering into fragments of ice and ash.
Silence followed.
Longer this time.
Yula turned slowly, heart still racing.
She saw him.
Smoke curled behind him like it had forgotten how to rise. The rifle at his side still glowed faint with heat. His coat was torn, blackened in places. But he didn't limp. Didn't waver.
Just stood there.
But somethings different.
His eyes were wrong. Pale. Hollow.
Like the color had been scraped out of him.
And from his sleeves, from his fingers.
Something darker than blood dripped, curling into the snow like veins turned inside out.
A black liquid, thick and slow.
The earth beneath him absorbed it like old hunger.
Yula's throat caught.
"Ilya...?"
No answer.
His eyes were locked on her.
She didn't recognize him.
Not really.
His coat was the same. His rifle too, its wood darkened by fire, its barrel faintly steaming. But the boy behind it had vanished.
His eyes, once sharp with calculation, were vacant now. Wide, and empty, and unblinking. Not hollow like grief. Not tired like guilt.
Empty.
Utterly, completely emptied.
What stood in the courtyard wore Ilya's shape, but not his weight.
Yula's lips parted.
"Ilya, what are you doing here?"
Still no response.
She took one step forward.
"Yula. Don't—" Nadia shouted.
Then it happened.
A faint voice, too small for the horror that followed.
A girl. No older than six. Her leg was pinned beneath a fallen arch beam. Her ribbon was half-torn, her cheek bloodied. She looked up from the wreckage with wide, teary eyes.
"Please—" she cried.
The name cracked the silence.
And for a moment, it looked like he heard it.
His head turned, slightly. Not sharply, not human, like a puppet adjusting its strings.
The girl reached out.
"Help me… please—"
CRACK.
The shot hit like thunder.
The beam splintered.
And so did the child.
Black liquid oozed from the floor beneath her, curling up like roots, swallowing the last of her silhouette. A twisted wooden shape bloomed upward from the blood-soaked stone, a malformed tree of bone and shadow, its branches limp and silent.
A shriek echoed. Not hers.
Her family had seen it.
A man, father maybe, screamed her name. A woman collapsed beside him.
They shouted. Begged.
CRACK.
CRACK.
The rifle bucked twice more
The bodies fell before they hit the ground. Ash swallowed their outline. A spray of black liquid marked where the bullets passed, like the snow itself bled.
Yula didn't breathe.
She couldn't.
The rest of the square reacted too slowly. They hadn't understood yet. They didn't believe what they'd seen.
Then someone shouted. "He's shooting—! He's shooting us—!"
And panic ignited.
People ran.
Some tripped. Others froze. Children vanished under the stampede of boots and coats and dragging limbs. The marketplace became a blood-slicked riot. Wooden carts overturned. Lanterns fell and shattered. One burst into flame near the edge of the road.
Ilya didn't move like he used to.
He moved with absolute calm.
His boots crushed glass. His coat dragged through ash. His eyes didn't search for threats, only for movement. He tracked anything alive.
A merchant ducked behind a stall.
CRACK.
His blood painted the canopy.
Yula still hadn't moved.
She stood behind the corner wall, just beyond the mouth of the alley, pressed tight to the stone like it might make her disappear. Her fingers trembled against the hilt of the stolen sword. Her lips were parted, but no sound came.
Her eyes were locked on him.
Ilya walked through the market like a shadow given form, a reaper built from war and grief.
His head turned. His eyes scanned the crowd. His mouth didn't move. No commands. No warnings.
A teenage boy ran toward a collapsed wagon, helping a girl limping beside him.
CRACK.
The boy went limp mid-stride. The girl screamed—
CRACK.
—and joined him.
A baker, wounded and dragging his leg, raised both hands in surrender.
CRACK.
A mother pushed her child ahead of her, yelling for someone to catch her.
CRACK.
The child stumbled.
CRACK.
The mother collapsed.
A soldier near the edge of the street fired once, twice, both bullets went wide. The third wasn't returned.
It was answered.
CRACK.
The soldier dropped, his helmet rolling away across the stone, trailing blood.
The street was nearly empty now. Just a scattering of the dead. A few crawling survivors. A doll lay in the slush beside its owner, half-drenched in black liquid. Its painted eyes stared up at nothing.
Ilya stood at the center of it all, framed by the frost-coated market stalls and the blackening sky.
Still.
Silent.
The rifle lowered slightly.
His head turned.
And then his eyes found her.
Yula froze.
Her breath hitched. Her chest tightened like something had coiled inside her lungs.
"Ilya," she whispered. "What are you—
CRACK.
The bullet had missed.
It had passed her by, close enough to whistle against her cheekbone. Close enough to carry her heartbeat with it for one long, impossible second.
She stood frozen. Arms slack. Sword barely held.
She told herself he wouldn't shoot. Not at her. Not Ilya. But even as she thought it, she didn't believe it. Not really. Not with the way he looked at her, like she was just another shape in the smoke.
Her chest ached.
Across the square, Ilya stood where he had been. His finger still on the trigger. Black goo still trailing down his arm, dripping from his wrist into the dirt below like ink bleeding through parchment.
He saw her. Or something did.
Yula opened her mouth. Just slightly.
"Ilya—"
A sudden roar heard before she could finished her sentence.
It was so deep it cracked the air itself, sent frost spiraling backward like it feared what was coming. The windows burst in buildings three blocks away. The wind changed direction mid-gust.
Yula's eyes flicked up, even before she knew why.
The ground beneath shivered. Her bones rang. The sword in her hand vibrated faintly, like it wanted to leave her grip and crawl toward the center of the earth.
Ilya still stood across from her, unmoving.
But even he paused.
His head tilted, just slightly.
The clouds above Crystalis split in an instant, not peeled, not parted, shattered. Wind shrieked down in a dozen directions at once. The air turned red. Not blood red, not sunset red.
Deeper.
Older.
Like the color of the world before names.
And through it, something fell.
No—
Descended.
Wings first. Then claws.
It didn't blur like the beasts. It didn't streak like the Astra. It moved with intent. With gravity. With the authority of something that had never been bound by the rules below.
It wasn't red like metal or fire, it was red like iron before it cools, like coals that never die. Its body gleamed with layered scales, each one edged in heatless glow. Its wings were impossible, too wide, too serrated, stitched together by spines of fractured bone and some older, colder magic. Its eyes were suns that had forgotten how to shine.
Those beast that had once crawled and scraped and shattered rooftops like mindless insects now screamed and bolted, no longer hunters but prey.
The wolves fled. Those flying things crashed into each other mid-air trying to escape the spiral of sky around its wings.
Yula had fallen to one knee without realizing.
Her hand still clutched the sword, but it felt useless now. Small. She looked up at the creature hovering above the skyline of Crystalis, and for the first time since this began, she understood what fear was meant to feel like.
It wasn't a myth. Not anymore.
It wasn't a dream. She'd begged it to be.
It was real. Too real to be called just a story in mere fiction.
It had not come to burn a city.
It had come to give an end.
The Red Dragon had returned to finish what the gods had once feared to begin.