Chapter 1251: When the Mirrors Fell
Everyone believed Caelric Stormbane had perished alongside the Tempest Dragon.
The kingdom raised a monument.
People laid flowers at its base, mourning the hero who’d killed the evil dragon for them.
But the real Caelric didn’t die.
He was trapped in the depths of the Vaelstorm Ruins, day after day enduring the storm’s torture. Dragon blood gnawed at his body. The Tempest Dragon’s leftover power tore at his soul. And that near-unstoppable regenerative ability meant he couldn’t even die easily when he wanted to.
Time crawled on.
Caelric forgot what the kingdom looked like. He forgot how many people had once stood before his statue. He threw away his old name with his own hands, letting dragon horns grow from his forehead, letting a tail and wings become part of him.
After that, he called himself Maelor Windscar.
The dragon slayer finally became the next evil dragon.
No one knew how much longer passed before new dragon slayers arrived at the Vaelstorm Ruins.
That group tore down Caelric Stormbane’s statue and stepped into the ruins, trying to complete another dragon-killing feat worthy of songs and royal praise.
They never found the hero from the legend.
They found only Maelor.
And later, every last one of them was swallowed whole.
"I really want to see what the outside looks like."
Eyes still closed, Maelor felt the energy sphere’s light spread across his body.
"No idea how long it’s been... hundreds of millions of years? Or whole eras?"
No one answered.
The energy sphere finally reached him.
The outermost infernal flame touched teal scales first. Blue-white rings unfurled across the surface immediately after, and white lightning raced along Maelor’s massive dragon body in every direction, lighting each scale so sharply it looked carved.
The next instant, every force compressed inward.
BOOM—!
A violent impact erupted from where Maelor was.
The energy didn’t explode outward right away. It churned and collided in an extremely tight radius. Infernal flame scorched wind. Death power corroded dragon flesh. Holy power speared through what remained from the inside.
Then, a crisp cracking sound pierced the roar.
Crack.
This space finally couldn’t take it.
The first fracture opened beneath the energy sphere, then raced over Maelor’s body and tore toward the top and bottom of the domain. Wherever the crack passed, the gray backdrop split apart and revealed the bottomless void behind it.
More fractures followed immediately.
The entire space shattered at once into countless mirror-like panes.
Each shard reflected a different scene. One showed Caelric Stormbane’s back as he walked into the Vaelstorm Ruins. Another showed the Tempest Dragon’s enormous corpse collapsing. Another showed the kingdom raising the dragon slayer’s statue, the crowd packed so tight it looked like a sea.
More shards reflected Maelor’s "present."
The moment he grew his first horn. The way he tore his own body apart in the storm. The later dragon slayers he swallowed. The long sleep—and the day he opened his eyes again.
Past and present were split across different "mirrors," like a history notebook ripped into pieces, recording everything that had happened inside these ruins.
But the images held for only an instant.
With space no longer supporting them, the mirror shards all fell into the void. The scenes on their surfaces shattered. Then the shards themselves vanished mid-descent, leaving nothing behind in the Vaelstorm Ruins.
The domain collapsed completely.
Power from the deep void surged in at once.
In that darkness there was no stable direction—only space tearing at itself, and wind that never stopped. The moment Maelor’s unprotected dragon body was exposed, layers of scales were peeled away.
Void-wind drilled into the wounds and ripped his body apart along the bone.
His massive wings snapped one after another. All eight were flung in different directions. Then his torso split under overlapping spatial pressure, and the remaining flesh was swallowed by the dark.
Maelor Windscar disappeared.
Caelric Stormbane left no trace either.
But the energy sphere still hadn’t finished.
After the space shattered, the unbound power spread out into the void. White lightning cleaved the darkness. Infernal flame kept burning in a place without edges. Blue ring-patterns pierced through stacked layers of space, driving deeper and deeper.
That disturbance finally drew the attention of the dragons that lived in the void.
The first thing to appear was a claw.
Its talons pushed through overlapping space, each "finger" larger than Maelor’s entire dragon body had been. Then the darkness in the deep began to move. Layered space was squeezed, folding to either side.
A dragon approached—one whose full form couldn’t be seen.
Its size had no end in sight.
All anyone could see was part of its scales and a coil of its body. Deeper sections were hidden behind overlapping space. Each time it moved, the nearby void was divided into layers by its mass, and distance stopped meaning anything at all.
It entered the broken zone where Maelor had been.
The enormous head rotated slowly, gaze sweeping around. It searched for whatever had disturbed it—yet found neither Maelor nor any trace in the remaining scraps of space.
Maelor had already been shredded by the void.
Not even a scent remained.
On the other side of the spatial gate, Ethan lifted his head before the entrance sealed completely.
He saw the energy sphere still hovering in the center of the ruined space—and he sensed a presence so vast it dwarfed Maelor into nothing.
Ethan didn’t linger. But as he stepped out through the gate, he gave it one last look, thoughtful.
The collapse created a pushing force that caught the energy sphere.
The sphere drifted off its original position and slid along a channel formed by the broken space—until it was pushed directly in front of the void dragon.
The dragon stopped searching.
It lowered its head and studied the sphere closely, watching it continue to absorb the surrounding power.
Meanwhile, the situation outside the Vaelstorm Ruins spiraled completely out of control.
With Maelor dead, the wind cores that had been restrained lost their final leash. They no longer held formation. They no longer guarded the teleportation array. Instead, they greedily devoured the wind around the ruins.
One wind core after another drifted toward the center.
Rotating currents linked together, rapidly forming several massive tornadoes. The pillars of wind rose from the ground, sucking in loose stone, shattered buildings, and the empty shells the butler had left behind.
The tornadoes climbed higher and higher.
The outer garrison was forced to retreat again and again, their defensive line carved into multiple broken segments by the wind.
Only then did the Emerald Castle army finally arrive.
The moment the soldiers neared the ruins, they slammed headfirst into the expanding wind blades. The front ranks snapped shields up. Energy barriers spread along the formation to both sides, while the rear-line casters and archers fired over the defense, pounding attacks toward the wind cores at the tornadoes’ centers.
A fight to the death erupted immediately.
Only now did Seraphina’s group finally get a moment to breathe.
They leaned against the teleportation array at its center, trying to enter the inner space. But as soon as the array’s light touched them, a force surged outward from the core and shoved them back.
Someone was coming out from inside.
The first figure stepped through the array.
Ataneya landed on the ruins’ ground, twenty-four tails spreading behind her one by one—several still bearing wounds sliced open by sword pressure.
Right after, Seraphine emerged from the light as well.
She touched down beside Ataneya. The gold radiance behind her drew inward, and the weapon in her hand scattered and vanished.
Ethan came out last.
He walked out of the teleportation formation without hurry, steps steady—as if he’d simply returned from an ordinary hallway. The array’s glow dimmed behind him, and the entrance sealed shut.