Darkness.
Then...
Consciousness.
"..."
Riko slowly opened his eyes.
Silence greeted him.
He frowned.
"...Where am I?"
As he pushed himself upright, he realized he wasn't lying on soil.
Nor was it stone.
Beneath him stretched an endless floor of translucent purple glass, smooth as a mirror. Faint currents of violet light drifted beneath its surface, like rivers flowing through crystal.
There was no sky.
Only an endless void illuminated by a soft, dreamlike glow.
Riko slowly rose to his feet.
"..."
Something caught his eye as he looked down.
The face staring back wasn't a young black dragon.
It wasn't Mia.
It was...
Him.
The face from another world.
The face he hadn't seen in years.
The face of Riko.
For a long moment, he simply stared.
Then a small, nostalgic smile appeared.
"...It's been a long time..."
He raised a hand, touching his own cheek as if to confirm it was real.
It felt strangely unfamiliar.
As though this body belonged to someone else.
Eventually, Riko lifted his gaze.
His breath caught.
Countless crystalline shards floated overhead.
Each one shimmered with a faint purple light.
Inside every shard...
A memory.
A tiny black hatchling struggling against the leash.
Leo laughing as he gently patted her head.
A six-year-old Mia happily nudging Leo until he nearly fell over.
Count Vinson smiling quietly from a distance.
Ebruhan correcting her stance during training.
Another shard drifted past.
The memories changed.
A small apartment.
A crowded street.
Friends laughing over dinner.
Long nights at work.
Rain against a window.
And finally...
The blinding headlights.
The screech of tires.
The accident.
Riko quietly looked away.
"..."
Some memories were still too painful to revisit.
Then...
A distant voice echoed through the endless space.
"Mia! Don't give up, okay? I'm here!"
The words rippled through the air.
Another voice followed almost immediately.
"If you wake up..."
"I'll buy you lots of food."
"You must be starving."
Riko's shoulders relaxed.
A warm smile slowly spread across his face.
"...Leo."
He let out a quiet chuckle.
"So..."
"You really are cheering me on..."
"...just like you promised."
The crystal shards shimmered gently around him as Leo's voice continued to echo through the endless purple world.
The moment Riko took another step, the endless glass beneath his feet trembled.
A low vibration rippled through the purple surface.
"...?"
He stopped.
The trembling grew stronger.
Then—
CRACK.
A jagged fissure split open a short distance away.
From within the darkness, black-and-purple smoke surged upward like a volcanic eruption, swallowing the air around it.
The temperature dropped.
The pressure rose.
Riko instinctively took a step back.
"...What...?"
The smoke churned violently.
Something moved inside it.
A deep, guttural growl echoed from within.
It wasn't loud.
It didn't need to be.
The sound alone made every instinct in his body scream at him to run.
Riko's heartbeat quickened.
"What... is that...?"
A massive claw emerged first.
Jet-black scales.
Razor-sharp talons.
It slammed onto the glass with enough force to fracture the surface beneath it.
Then another claw.
A long tail followed.
Gigantic wings unfolded from the smoke, each movement stirring violent gusts through the empty world.
Finally...
The smoke slowly drifted away.
And Riko froze.
Standing before him...
...was a dragon.
A colossal black dragon.
Its scales were darker than the void itself, reflecting faint streaks of violet beneath the strange sky. Brilliant blue eyes stared directly into him without a trace of emotion.
It was enormous.
Far larger than Ebruhan.
Far larger than anything Riko had ever seen.
Nearly forty meters from head to tail.
His mouth slowly fell open.
"W..."
"...What...?"
His brain refused to process what he was looking at.
"...What the..."
"...What the fuck?"
The dragon lowered its head.
For a heartbeat...
Silence.
Then—
ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAR!!
The world exploded.
The roar wasn't merely a sound.
It was force.
A violent shockwave ripped across the glass plain.
Memory shards scattered through the sky like leaves caught in a hurricane.
Riko threw both arms in front of his face.
"GH—!"
The blast shoved him backward, his shoes scraping helplessly across the smooth surface.
The wind alone nearly knocked him off his feet.
When it finally stopped...
He slowly lowered his arms.
His eyes were wide with disbelief.
"...WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!"
The dragon never answered.
It simply watched him.
Then...
It slowly lifted one massive foreleg.
Riko's instincts screamed.
MOVE.
The enormous claw crashed down.
BOOOOOOM!!
The impact shattered the glass beneath it.
A ring-shaped shockwave burst outward.
Riko threw himself to the side just before the claw struck.
The force of the impact still caught him.
"WHA—!"
The shockwave launched him several meters through the air before he hit the ground and rolled across the purple glass.
He groaned, sliding to a stop.
"...You've got to be kidding me..."
He looked up.
The colossal dragon was already turning toward him again.
Its blue eyes never left him.
Not for a single second.
"fuck"
------------------------------
The morning sun climbed steadily over the camp, washing the rows of tents in warm golden light. Soldiers were already awake. Some stood in orderly lines waiting for breakfast, while others checked armor straps, sharpened weapons, or quietly shared conversations before another uncertain day.
Life had resumed.
Or at least, everyone was pretending it had.
Near the largest tent, Ebruhan stood in his human form, calmly discussing patrol routes with several officers. His voice remained steady, but every so often his eyes drifted toward the enormous tent nearby.
Toward Mia.
Not a single day had passed without someone checking on her.
A short distance away, Leo and Vinson sat together on a pair of wooden crates, eating a simple breakfast in silence. The stew was warm, but neither of them seemed particularly focused on it.
Leo kept staring toward Mia's tent.
Finally, he spoke.
"...Father."
Vinson looked up.
"It's been sixteen days..."
Leo lowered his spoon.
"I'm... starting to worry."
His voice became quieter.
"What if she..."
The sentence refused to continue.
What if she never woke up?
What if something had gone wrong?
What if—
A firm hand settled on his shoulder.
Leo looked up.
Vinson was already watching him.
There was concern in the Count's eyes.
The same concern Leo had been trying so hard to hide.
But despite that...
Vinson smiled.
A calm, reassuring smile.
"Don't think like that."
His voice was gentle.
"You've spent the last sixteen days cheering her on."
"You told her you'd be here when she woke up."
"You promised her that."
He gave Leo's shoulder a light squeeze.
"So keep doing exactly that."
"Cheer her up."
"Trust her."
"...Believe in her."
Leo stared at his father for a long moment.
Then he slowly nodded.
"...Yeah."
A small smile finally appeared on his face.
"...You're right. I believe her, "