The streetlights across Sector Nine flickered once.
Then all of them shut off together.
Darkness swallowed the avenue.
Not ordinary darkness.
This felt deliberate.
The city sounds vanished next engines, voices, distant alarms all erased beneath the crushing silence pressing down from the sky itself.
Lin Z slowly looked upward.
The clouds above the city had split completely now, revealing not stars…
…but a massive circular structure hanging beyond the atmosphere.
Ancient.
Mechanical.
Alive.
Its surface rotated with impossible geometry, rings moving inside rings covered in burning silver runes larger than mountains. At the center floated a vertical slit of pale golden light.
An eye.
Watching.
SYSTEM WARNING: COGNITIVE OVERLOAD RISK DETECTED
SYSTEM DEFENSES FAILING…
ATTENTION LEVEL: ABSOLUTE
Lin Z's vision blurred instantly.
Just looking at it hurt.
People across the city began collapsing unconscious without understanding why.
Glass cracked.
Phones died.
Even the System interface itself started stuttering violently.
But Scrappy…
Scrappy stared directly at the eye.
And the eye stared back.
The tiny dragon's body trembled as glowing fractures spread across his scales like molten gold beneath porcelain skin.
"Scrappy?" Lin Z whispered.
The dragon suddenly floated upward on his own.
One inch.
Two.
Three.
His wings opened.
The pressure exploding from him this time was completely different from before. No longer unstable.
Ancient.
Veyl Kharon's expression changed for the first time since arriving.
Not shock.
Recognition.
"No…" he muttered.
The floating rings above the planet rotated faster.
A voice descended from the sky next.
Not loud.
Not quiet.
It simply existed everywhere at once.
"Designation confirmed."
The words were emotionless.
Cold beyond humanity.
"Lost Sovereign Fragment located."
Lin Z felt his blood run cold.
Fragment?
Scrappy tilted his head innocently.
The voice continued:
"Initiating retrieval."
Every instinct in Lin Z screamed instantly.
Run.
The sky split open.
A beam of white-gold light descended toward Scrappy from orbit itself.
Veyl Kharon moved instantly.
For the first time.
His hand cut through the air, and reality bent sideways.
Space folded like paper.
BOOOOM
The beam struck the redirected dimension instead, erasing an entire abandoned skyscraper behind them from existence without sound.
Not destroyed.
Removed.
Lin Z's eyes widened.
"What the hell was that?!"
Veyl Kharon didn't answer immediately.
Because for the first time…
there was tension in his face.
"The Dragon Council," he said quietly. "Or what's left of it."
Another beam began charging overhead.
This one larger.
The city below finally erupted into panic.
People screamed.
Vehicles crashed.
System users across Sector Nine activated abilities instinctively, only for their powers to flicker uncontrollably beneath the pressure radiating from the sky.
Scrappy suddenly cried out.
Not cutely.
Painfully.
Golden light burst from his chest.
And for a split second
Lin Z saw it.
Not Scrappy.
Something else.
A colossal dragon silhouette stretched across the heavens behind him, too massive to comprehend fully. Wings larger than continents. Eyes like burning suns. Chains of black stars wrapped around its body as though the universe itself had once tried to imprison it.
Then the vision vanished.
Lin Z staggered backward breathing hard.
SYSTEM NOTICE: UNKNOWN EXISTENCE DETECTED
THREAT RANK: ERROR
THREAT RANK: ERROR
THREAT RANK: UNDEFINED
The System crashed completely.
Every blue screen around Lin Z shattered into static.
Veyl Kharon looked at Scrappy silently.
Then at Lin Z.
"You truly don't understand what you found."
The second beam finished charging.
But before it could fire
Scrappy moved.
Tiny claws pressed against Lin Z's chest.
The dragon looked up at him with trembling golden eyes.
And spoke for the first time.
Not aloud.
Inside his mind.
One sentence.
Ancient.
Tired.
Terrified.
"Don't let them take me back."