I Received System to Become Dragonborn-Chapter 1235: Done Playing

The scenes before them were so devastating that their minds struggled to process them.

There were too many screams, too much suffering layered atop itself. Yet what made it truly unbearable was the realization that there were not many deaths at all.

The people in those visions still lived.

They lingered in a state between life and death, bodies ruined and twisted, yet their minds remained painfully intact.

They screamed as they burned and suffered the pains.

They cried as their limbs rotted. They watched their families, their friends, and their children suffer beside them, fully aware and unable to escape.

Pain did not claim them and not even death granted them mercy.

It was the worst fate imaginable. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Zerathul’s voice rolled through the sky as the visions continued.

"This is your future," Zerathul declared. "I have already seen it. This is an ending carved into time that already happened. Inevitable."

Shock seized Erend, Eccar, and Aesa. Their minds reeled as the weight of it crushed down on them.

They knew what time power meant. They knew Krono could see futures, countless branching paths stretching forward. If Zerathul wielded that same power, then was this truly what awaited them?

Even if they fought. Even if they resisted. Even if they sacrificed everything.

Would it still end like this?

Doubt carved into them, sharp and merciless. Despair followed close behind it.

Erend’s lightning flickered erratically, fire sputtering and dimming along his scales.

Eccar felt his earth power lose cohesion, stone crumbling into useless dust that scattered into the void.

Aesa’s ice cracked apart, shattering into drifting crystals that melted before they could reform.

Their own fear weakened them.

Zerathul saw it. He felt it and a delighted feeling rippled through him. His tentacled face pulled into something far worse than a smile, an expression born of satisfaction and cruelty.

"That is right, Dragonborns,’ he thundered, his voice echoing through the fractured sky. "You will witness this end. Now stop fighting. Your struggle is meaningless."

The grip around their hearts tightened. Just as despair threatened to drown them completely, another voice cut through the suffocating weight.

"Do not listen to him!"

Thar’Zul-Vekar’s ancient and resonant voice flowed through the roots of light around them. It snapped their minds back into the present like a blade through fog.

Zerathul frowned deeply with a feeling of displeasure darkening his face.

"He is lying to you," Thar’Zul-Vekar continued, urgency and anger vibrating through every word. "This is not the future. This is only what he wishes you to see. He does not own tomorrow."

The forest god’s fury surged. How dare Zerathul claim dominion over what had not yet been written.

Erend, Eccar, and Aesa snapped fully back to themselves. Their eyes burned with renewed intensity as power surged again through their bodies. Lightning roared. Earth stabilized. Ice reforged.

Thar’Zul-Vekar was right.

"This is only a possibility," Erend’s voice rang through their shared link. "And possibilities can be destroyed!"

Eccar growled low and fierce. Aesa mirrored him and also let out a roar, as a sharp sound of resolve. They did not need words after that. They just stood with Erend.

Zerathul’s irritation deepened into rage. The ancient forest god had ruined his moment, again!

"You are wrong," Zerathul said coldly. "This ending cannot be avoided."

With a gesture, the visions expanded.

Down below, King Gulben, Aurdis, Aerchon, Adrien, Billy, and Arty suddenly saw it.

The devastating scenes also tore itself open before them, flooding their sight with destruction, undeath, and endless suffering.

The same shock struck them just as it had the Dragons above. Their focus shattered and fear crept in.

Debris that had been barely held at bay slammed into them.

Stone struck King Gulben’s shoulder, driving him backward with a grunt of pain.

Aurdis cried out as jagged fragments tore across her side, blood spraying into the air.

Aerchon took a direct hit to the chest, crashing through broken rubble before barely catching himself.

Adrien was thrown aside, coughing violently as debris smashed into his ribs.

Billy staggered as his arm was struck and his bone cracked audibly.

Arty was clipped by a spinning slab, sent tumbling with a curse torn from her throat.

Groans, shouts, and curses echoed as they fought to stay airborne, pain and fear clawing at them together.

Farther below, the four Archmages also saw the sky itself become a screen of horror.

They could not yet see the visions clearly before them, but from their vantage point, the scenes of ruin were unmistakable.

"What... is that?" Adrius asked, his voice trembling.

Saeldir, Lysander, and Sylmira stared upward, chills running down their spines as dread settled deep in their bones.

Their Magic wavered, just for a moment, as the weight of what they witnessed threatened to crush even their resolve.

"Do not fix your minds on that vision. It is a lie shaped to break you. Not the truth!" Thar’Zul-Vekar’s voice carried downward through the roots of light, firm and commanding, cutting through the lingering horror like a blade.

The roots pulsed again, brighter, as if emphasizing the words.

"Focus on what exists now," Thar’Zul-Vekar continued. "Focus on your task. The time power must be countered here, at this moment. Everything else is meaningless if you lose yourselves to fear."

The words struck the four Archmages hard.

Adrius sucked in a sharp breath and tore his gaze away from the sky.

"That’s right," he said, forcing steadiness into his voice. "Back to the construct. Now."

Lysander nodded, even though his hands still trembled as he re-centered the sigils.

"If we fail," he muttered, more to himself than the others, "that future becomes possible."

"Then don’t fail!" Sylmira snapped, her voice tight as she wiped sweat from her brow and adjusted the collapsing sequence. "Fear won’t help us hold this together."

Saeldir straightened, his ears flattening briefly as he reasserted control over his Magic.

"Anchor the lattice," he said calmly. "I will reinforce the outer harmonics."

They moved again, Magic flowing, symbols spinning back into motion as the sealing construct stabilized under their combined effort.

But the images lingered.

Adrius’s jaw clenched as screams he could not forget echoed faintly in his thoughts.

"That’s what happens if we slip," he thought grimly. "If even one calculation is wrong."

Lysander hesitated for a fraction of a second, the image of rotting cities flashing behind his eyes, and one sigil wobbled before he forced it back into alignment.

Sylmira’s breathing stayed shallow, her focus sharp but also strained, while Saeldir felt a cold pressure settle in his chest that no amount of discipline could fully dispel.

Their Magic wavered again, subtle but dangerous.

A rune trembled, then a rotation drifted half a degree off rhythm.

The construct held but just barely. The damned fear had not vanished. It had only been pushed aside.

Up above, Zerathul saw it clearly. The fear had cracked them but it had not broken them.

The roots of light still burned. The Dragonborn was still ready to fight. The Archmages still worked.

His plan had failed.

A thick and corrosive rage surged through him. The fractured sky trembled as his aura spiked, time distortion rippling violently outward.

For the first time since the battle began, Zerathul finally moved from his place.

The colossal mass of warped power and flesh peeled itself free from the stillness he had maintained, tentacles slicing through fractured air as reality bent around his advance.

"He’s moving!" Eccar said, his voice sharp with alarm.

The words hit them with alarm.

Panic flared instantly on their hearts. Not the creeping doubt from before, but raw, instinctive fear.

Zerathul had stayed still until now, looming and crushing them with visions and his power. Him moving meant only one thing.

He was done playing.

Erend’s scales flared brighter as lightning surged across his body, but his jaw tightened.

"So this is it," he thought grimly. "He’s going to strike for real."

Aesa felt the temperature around her plunge as ice gathered instinctively, her breath frosting the air.

"Brace yourselves!" Erend cut in, his voice hard.

Zerathul closed the distance with terrifying speed. His movement dragged and compressed space until the sky screamed under the strain.

The distortions below worsened instantly. Debris accelerated, loops collapsed violently, and the battlefield groaned as if on the verge of tearing apart.

A massive tendril lashed forward, not striking yet, but tearing a scar through the air itself.

It looks as if time fractured where it passed.

"Spread out!" Erend roared.

They moved just as the sky behind them detonated, caught in the wake of Zerathul’s advance.

Lightning screamed as Erend shot sideways, fire bursting from his limbs to propel him clear. Eccar dropped sharply, his scales thickening as gravity twisted violently around him.

Aesa surged upward in a spiral of ice, narrowly avoiding a collapsing pocket of time.

The pressure was suffocating.

Zerathul loomed closer, far closer than before, his presence crushing down on them now.

Zerathul’s tentacled face twisted, his eyes glowing with warped energy as power gathered around him.

"You cannot win!" he declared.

Erend leveled himself in the air and roared louder to the sky. His fear burned away, replaced by fury.

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