Night wrapped the wilderness beyond Twilight Town. Abler strode quickly along the cracked earth road, a cloth satchel on his back. The hem of his coarse robe brushed dried weeds at the roadside, raising thin dust. He did not take the Valo Duchy trade road—Goren’s checkpoints and Shadow-Tracker Hounds were there. Instead he cut toward the Eastern Marshes, a shortcut strewn with sharp stones that bit through his soles but would cut half the time.
The stench of marshland already carried on the wind. From the direction of Graythroat Pass came the muffled roar of catapults—more frequent than by night before. Kalos’s plight could only be worse. Abler clenched the short blade hidden in his satchel, his thumb stroking the runes on its hilt, but his thoughts ran cold. At this pace, Bleached-Bone Reef was still a full day away. Mo’s mental barrier could not last so long. Kalos’s Firebat Cavalry would not hold Goren’s Throatlock Formation either.
He halted atop a desolate knoll of broken rock. Moonlight split the clouds, laying mottled shadows across the ground. The swamp ahead shimmered with faint miasma, like the breath of ghosts. Abler sighed, reached deep into his satchel, and drew out a black scroll—not the dragon-contract hidden in the woodshed, but one tanned with scales of the Abyssal Dragon itself, edged with twisted skulls and talons. It was one of the demon realm’s most forbidden summoning tokens.
“In the end, I still owe this favor,” he murmured, fingers gliding the dark tracery. It was the secret pact he had sworn with Nidhogg the Dread Dragon, signed in the “Bone-Tomb Hall” of the abyss. Nidhogg had promised him one unconditional aid in direst peril, and in return Abler must one day help Nidhogg fulfill a single wish. Not even Andrea or Kalos knew of it—only the Demon King’s mantle allowed such contact. For to most demons, Nidhogg’s name was “the legend of world’s end.”
Abler did not hesitate. He pressed a thread of magic into the scroll. At once it blazed dark red. The dragon-claw emblem crawled alive beneath his fingertip, into his blood. The next instant, the demon realm itself quaked. From the volcanic rocks at Graythroat to the miasma over Bleached-Bone Reef, from the shattered walls of Demon King City to the frozen tundra of the north, every demon stopped and turned skyward in dread.
It was oppression born of the soul—an unseen mountain pressed to every chest. Breathing itself became heavy. In Kalos’s camp, Goren’s heavy infantry froze, weapons clattering from their hands. At Bleached-Bone Reef, Eroshadow’s assassins turned pale, poison-needles slipping loose. In Twilight, Andrea jerked her head up; the demon-marks at her throat burned. She had never felt such terror. This was no demonic aura, no dragon’s breath, but something older, darker, a force that could swallow all.
The rock underfoot split open. Dark red magma surged up, carrying sulfur’s reek. The sky turned bruised violet, clouds contorting into the shape of a colossal dragon. A black lightning bolt split down into the fissure. From it rose a claw plated in obsidian scales, talons longer than lances, its landing shaking the knoll until pebbles danced.
Nidhogg descended.
He was three times the size of the frost-dragons sung in tales. Wings spread, he blotted out the night. Scales gleamed with cold iron light, each as if forged of the hardest obsidian in the realm. His horns curled skyward, wrapped in violet lightning. His eyes were twin furnaces of black fire. Where they swept, grasses shriveled. His breath warped the very air, searing, reeking of annihilation.
“My friend. Long time.” His voice cracked the air like thunder, yet rasped with a lazy drawl, as if roused from sleep. “I was dreaming deep in the abyss. Why summon me now? So sudden—longing for old talk?”
He lowered his head. His vast muzzle loomed before Abler, blackfire eyes glinting mock. “And where is your king’s bearing? Your power’s faded so far. Not a tenth of what once ruled the realm.”
Dragon-breath scalded the ground at Abler’s feet, a torrent that would have blown any other demon to ash. He only stood, calm. “Draw back your aura. It draws eyes.” He gestured to the skies; already ripples of magic converged, demons drawn by the quake. “You want the realm to know you’ve woken?”
Nidhogg snorted. With a single wingbeat the violet lightning dissolved, magma fissures knitting closed, leaving only scorched scars on stone. The weight of his presence slackened, though the air still sagged heavy. “Speak then. What errand? You are not one to beg help unless cornered.”
Abler raised the shattered Messenger Crystal, bled a thread of magic into it. Kalos’s hoarse cries, Goren’s shouts, Eroshadow’s cold laughter, Mo’s failing breath—Nidhogg heard them all. His eyes narrowed, horns sparking anew. “Goren the traitor. Eroshadow, Krog’s cur. And you come to me, needing help against this rabble?”
“My forces are insufficient.” Abler lowered the crystal, voice flat. “Kalos is trapped at Graythroat Pass. Mo is nearly taken at Bleached-Bone Reef. I need you to break them free.”
Nidhogg paused, then dipped his great head. “The pact said I grant one aid in your crisis. So be it. But I think you want more.” He lifted a talon. At its tip coiled a sphere of black light, veined with fine threads, radiating ruin. “You seek this, don’t you?”
Abler’s pupils tightened. It was Nidhogg’s forbidden art—Darkfall. Its force rivaled the human legends of “nuclear fire,” able to erase a city in an instant, yet falling only on a chosen mark, sparing all else. Even the demon elders had never heard it whispered. Only Nidhogg—and the Demon Kings who bargained with him—knew.
“This is Darkfall. Only I command it.” Nidhogg set the orb before him, eyes of black flame deep with meaning. “I grant you one use. It will sweep away your troubles at Bleached-Bone Reef and Graythroat. But remember—you owe me.”
Abler took the sphere. It was cold, like holding hardened night itself. He nodded. “I know.”
“Then I return.” Already Nidhogg’s body turned transparent, the scroll’s time ending. “The abyss waits. I need sleep.” He hesitated, eyes flicking over Abler’s chest—at the jacket Linata had sewn. “Yet… you have changed.”
Abler stilled. “What?”
“You carry the warmth of the living.” A rumble of laughter shook the dark. “No longer that chill shell. As if you found someone to bind you. An attachment.” His voice grew faint as his body dissolved. “It seems you’ve found love, my friend. Next time—introduce her.”
His shape vanished, leaving only scorched stone and the orb of Darkfall in Abler’s hand. The wilderness fell silent, as if no dragon had ever torn the sky.
Abler gripped the orb and lifted his eyes toward Bleached-Bone Reef. The night was as heavy as before, but resolve gleamed sharp. He packed the orb into his satchel and quickened his pace toward the marsh. With Darkfall, neither Eroshadow’s assassins nor Goren’s heavy infantry could block him.
At the reef, Eroshadow still drove his agents against Mo’s failing barrier, unaware the force that would end him was already near. At Graythroat, Goren exulted at his siege of Kalos, blind to the shadow of death gathering over him.
Abler’s figure vanished into the marsh miasma. In his satchel the orb of Darkfall glowed faint, a bomb of pure night waiting to bloom in ruin.