The dragon's head tilted, its horns scraping the cavern's ceiling like ancient pillars grinding stone. When it spoke, its voice was vast yet lazy, curling around him like a stormcloud drifting without purpose.
"Come now… speak, little ember. What tale coils behind your ribs? What song do your bones remember?"
He hesitated, throat dry. "I… have none," he said. "If I did, it has been long forgotten."
For a moment, the dragon's eyes flickered with something. It exhaled, the gust a sigh from a mountain bored of standing.
"Forgotten, is it? How quaint. Even ash clings to its fire longer than you cling to memory. Elaborate, then. I am… amused."
He searched himself. What story could he tell when his own name felt foreign? His fingers trembled around the ruined spear. But in the darkness behind his eyes, he still remembered the words carved into the mausoleum walls.
"I was a warrior," he began slowly, "from an empire called Krieg. The king sealed me, along with others, scattered us across the world to be unsealed in the future. That is all I know of myself. I woke here. I wandered the cavern. I fought the undead knights that prowled it."
The dragon's eyes opened a little wider—barely a flicker, but enough.
"Krieg…" it muttered, as if tasting a long-dead name.
"You know of it?" he asked.
The dragon's voice rolled like velvet thunder. "Only that it existed. I was born after the spread of the Scourge."
Those last words cut through him. He raised his head. "What scourge?"
The dragon stared down at him for a long while, its expression unreadable and ancient, with faint curiousity. Finally it spoke:
"A sickness, the greatest sickness. A curse that seeps into blood and soul, twisting. It devours not just flesh but soil, sky, and thought. It spread after Krieg collapsed. Your empire died, and in its corpse, the Scourge bloomed."
He fell to his knees. Tears traced his cheeks but his face stayed blank, like a statue weeping. The spear fell to the ground beside him.
The dragon looked at him with a gaze older than most of the world,yet not as old as his soul.
His thoughts grew hollow and cold. What use is a blade when there are no shields left to guard? What use is a warrior when his kingdom has rotted to dust?
He stared at the stone beneath him until his vision blurred.
The dragon's voice softened butnot in kindness,in understanding, it had lost a lot in it's semi-etetnal life as well. "Has the knight lost its kingdom?"
He raised his head slowly. "Dragon…"
The beast tilted its enormous head, one eye like a dying star fixing on him. "What? Want me to kill you?" it asked. The question was almost casual, like a child offering to snap a toy it had grown bored of.
"No," he said quietly. "Tell me… how do I get out of this dungeon?"
For a heartbeat the dragon looked almost surprised. Its pupils narrowed, then it gave a faint smile, showing teeth like broken moons.
"Usually a warrior in your place would rather crumble into nothing, blade in hand, than face the emptiness. But you…"
It leaned closer, the cavern quaking with the weight of its breath. The air itself shuddered, pressing against his chest like an unseen tide. Yet he did not cry out. Instead, he rose to his feet.
The dragon's face loomed vast before him, its eye alone larger than his head. But when he looked into that abyssal gaze, when his own onyx eyes met the beast's ancient orbs, something shifted. For an instant, there was no difference between them—two mirrors staring into one another, flame reflected in flame.
"…the blaze in your eyes burns still. Bright. Bright as the sun."
He looked at her.
"How large of an impact has this Scourge had?"
The dragon's gaze softened—not with kindness, but with a weariness that stretched centuries across the cavern.
His knees pressed into the cold stone. "How… how much of it is left?" he asked again.
The dragon tilted its head. One golden wing shifted, stirring the treasure around them. "Enough to drown hope, little ember. Enough that the kingdoms you hear of in tales. Do not exist. Only ruins, echoes, and the scattered bones of rulers clinging to empty thrones."
He swallowed. His hands gripped his spear tighter, though it had long since lost the strength to guard him fully. "And the people… the survivors?"
"They are fewer than the shadows of crows, hiding in hollowed lands and broken keeps," the dragon replied.
Silence stretched between them, heavy as falling stone. His mind turned over the horrors he had yet to see what the Scourge had done, what it could do to him if he faltered.
Finally, he asked, voice barely more than a whisper, "Why… why are you here, then? Why not leave?"
The dragon lowered her massive head, scales scraping the cavern floor. The shift of her weight sent a tremor through the treasure-hoard. "I cannot," she said, her voice muted, like wind through broken glass.
"Long ago… a wound. Another dragon… treachery, fire against fire. I was forced into this cavern. My body… my organs… most are damaged. My mana… tampered with, diluted by time and curse alike. I am too weak to leave, bound as surely as any prisoner."
He hesitated, gathering courage from some invisible well. "Then… why… why tell me all this? You could have ended me."
The dragon let out a hardy laugh first like a sound like stone rolling down a hill, rumbling but with a hidden mirth.
Then, slowly, she lowered her head closer to him. Her eye fixed on his soul, unblinking.
"I see it in you," she said softly, voice curling lazily through the chamber.
"I see a path of misery etched into the marrow of your bones. You are bound for a journey most miserable, yet… I find it amusing. A spark of fire where darkness should consume."
A short pause went by and then:
"Hahaha!!"
He laughed as well. A short, harsh bark that echoed oddly against the cavern walls. The dragon's eye narrowed in curiosity.
"Why… why are you laughing?" she asked, tilt of the head sharp, yet her tone tinged with amusement.
"I… I did not want to cry," he admitted quietly, voice strained. "So I laughed."
The dragon exhaled a long, drawn sigh, and for the first time, her amusement was plain.
"Hrrm… little ember… even in despair, you are… curious. Bold. Foolish. Amusing."
The cavern fell silent but for the sound of its slow, rumbling breath. Then, at last, the dragon spoke again, voice curling with sudden amusement:
"Tell me your name, little ember."
His lips parted, but no sound came. At last he whispered: "…I have none. Perhaps I once did. But I have long forgotten."
The dragon regarded him for a long time. Its massive lids drooped, the fire of its gaze half-hidden. A sigh escaped it, so vast and ancient that dust shook loose from the cavern ceiling. Yes... the dragon sighed.
"Pathetic," it muttered. "A knight without a name is like a sword without a hilt. But… very well. If you have none, then I shall bestow one upon you. See it as the highest of honors."
It tilted its head, humming faintly to itself as if turning the thought over, and over, and over again. The long pause stretched, almost comical, until the dragon finally rumbled with satisfaction.
"Alaric will do. Yes… Alaric. Here it,little ember...from now on…"
Its voice boomed, shaking every jewel and coin in the treasure-hoard like thunder rolling through the world.
"Your name is Alaric!"
He looked up, breath caught in his chest. The sound of that name echoed inside him, as if the syllables had always been buried in his marrow, waiting to be unearthed.
For the first time since waking up from that sarcophogous he felt whole.
"Could you tell me your name?" He asked.
The dragon's eyes narrowed.
"Hah..truly bold,fine,take it as a great honor. My name is Sassafras,The Silver Scholar Of Fate! The Bearer of Ideals! The Queen of The West!"
Alaric smiled.
"Pleased to meet you, Sassafras."