A roar split the sky, so loud it could have been taken for thunder, but it was not. It was rage made manifest.

  Amon looked up, through the eyes of a thousand tar-ravens, he saw him.

  Lavia the Demanding.?

  He was small for an older Dragon, barely eighty feet from snout to tail, but he burned with the brightness of a second sun. His scales were a tapestry of crimson and gold, rippling with the heat of the magma that flowed in his veins. He folded his wings, a living comet streaking down toward the scar of Tharnell industry.

  Fear.

  It was instinctual. Amon had spent his life under the shadow of those wings. To see Lavia was to see godhood. It was to see the fire that cleansed and the claw that ruled.

  The Caregivers scattered. Bats dissolved into mist; birds dove for the earth. They knew what dragon-fire did to tar. It erased it.

  But the Tharnells did not scatter.

  Sirens wailed across the sprawling concrete city that had replaced the forest. It was a cold, mechanical scream that harmonized with the rumble of heavy engines.

  Towers of gray stone, hastily erected around the rift, swiveled. Atop them sat guns. Not the clumsy artillery that had pounded the Garden, but something sleeker. Barrels clustered like organ pipes, tracking the descending god with predatory precision.

  Flak-turrets.?

  Amon had seen them in the visions. Machines built for one purpose: to kill things that flew.

  "You dare harvest my forest?" Lavia’s voice boomed, shaking the very bedrock. "My subjects? My tribute?"

  He leveled out, his chest expanding. The scales along his throat glowed white-hot.

  WHOOSH.

  Fire poured from his mouth. It was a liquid column of destruction, melting Harvesters into slag, vaporizing the concrete roads, turning Tharnell soldiers into ash shadows on the ground.

  It was majestic. It was divine.

  It was bait.

  Click-whir.

  The flak-cannons opened up.

  It wasn't a roar; it was a tearing sound, like canvas ripping on a cosmic scale. Thousands of rounds, glowing with mana-piercing runes, filled the air. They didn't just explode; they shredded.

  Amon watched in horror.

  The bullets punched through Lavia’s scales as if they were wet paper. They tore through muscle, shattered bone, and ruptured the delicate sacs of volatile gas that fueled his breath.

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  The Dragon screamed.

  It was a sound that broke the heart of the world. The fire in his throat sputtered and died, replaced by a spray of boiling blood. One wing, tattered and useless, folded back.

  He fell.

  The crash shook the earth, a heavy, wet thud that vibrated through the mist and into Amon’s bones. Lavia the Demanding, the tyrant of the skies, lay broken in a crater of mud and twisted metal.

  Silence.

  Then, the engines revved.

  Tharnell trucks—long, flatbed scavengers—raced toward the corpse. Troops poured out, not with weapons, but with saws, hooks, and chains.

  They swarmed the body like ants on a fallen beetle.

  Why?

  The question burned in Amon’s mind.

  The Mist answered. Knowledge, cold and transactional, flooded him.?

  Scales.

  Plant a dragon scale, and you grow a Kobold. Plant a bigger one, you get a Draight. The Tharnells weren't just killing a monster; they were harvesting an army. They would grow their own slaves, twisted mockeries of the realm’s defenders.

  Meat.

  Dragon flesh healed the sick, strengthened the weak, and turned soldiers into juggernauts. Lavia was a feast that would feed a legion.

  Eggs.

  If he had them, they would be incubated. Domesticated dragons. Riding beasts for the badger-men.

  But the greatest prize…

  Amon watched as a team of engineers, wearing heavy protective suits, used a diamond-tipped saw to cut into Lavia’s chest. They pulled it out.

  A Dragon Core.?

  It was a ruby the size of a warhorse, pulsing with a terrifying, rhythmic light. It was the heart of the mountain, the soul of the volcano.

  Divinity.

  A mortal could not become a god on their own. The Soul had a limit. To break the Seal, to ascend from mere power to true Divinity, one needed a spark. A catalyst.

  They needed a Dragon Core.

  Amon understood now. The invasion wasn't just for resources. It was a safari. The Tharnell demigods—generals who had reached the ceiling of their power—were here to hunt. They were here to eat the hearts of dragons and become gods.

  They will come for them all.

  Below, in the tunnels, the Draights stopped fighting.

  A collective wail rose from the deep, a sound of pure, unadulterated grief. They felt it. Their father was dead. The bond that connected every Scale to their progenitor had snapped.

  Some of the dreamers in the mist stirred, tears leaking from eyes sealed by tar. They didn't wake, but they wept.

  For the living Scales, grief turned instantly to madness.

  Vengeance.

  It was a biological imperative. They would not rest, they would not eat, and they would throw themselves at the Tharnell lines, until every single one of them was dead, or the invaders were annihilated.

  The tunnels emptied. The Draights abandoned their assault on the Garden, rushing instead to the surface to die for a father who was already being butchered.

  Amon felt a hollow ache in his chest.

  Lavia had been a tyrant, yes. But he had been their tyrant. He had been the roof over their heads, the wall against the dark. Now the roof was gone, and the storm was pouring in.

  He looked at the rift.

  The pylons were glowing. The portal, once a flickering tear, was now a stable, gaping maw. More trucks poured through. More tanks. More demigods hungry for the taste of divinity.

  The invasion had barely begun.

  "May you find peace, old tyrant," Amon whispered, watching the trucks haul the pieces of his god away. "And may your ghost haunt them, until I can find it."

  He turned back to the dark, to the slow, patient work of the tar. The surface belonged to the monsters now. But the roots… the roots were his. And roots, given time, could crack even the strongest stone.