ONE LAST TIME

They say paradise ended the day heaven fell.

It began as a light in the sky—blinding, impossible, growing larger with each heartbeat. Those who witnessed it thought at first it was a star breaking free from its place in the firmament. But stars don't scream as they fall. Stars don't tear the sky like parchment as they descend.

The God crashed into the heart of our empire. The impact shook continents. Mountains trembled. Seas rose in great swells that drowned coastal cities. And when the dust cleared, He stood in a crater five miles wide, bleeding light instead of blood, His form too radiant to look upon directly.

We thought He had come to save us. We thought wrong.

They came after Him—thousands of them, descending on silver wings through the wound He'd torn in the sky. Beautiful beyond words. Faces too perfect to be real, like sculptures given life. Voices that rang like choral hymns, making even hardened warriors weep at their sound. They moved with an impossible grace, trailing light and the scent of flowers we had no names for.

"Angels," someone whispered, and the word spread like wildfire through the gathered crowds. "The Divine Dragons have sent us angels."

We opened our arms in welcome. We rushed forward with offerings of water and bread. Children reached up with flowers clutched in tiny fists. The empire, in all its ancient glory, prepared to greet salvation itself.

The God screamed a warning, but His voice was lost in our jubilation.

The angels descended into our midst. They drew close to Him. And their disguises shattered like glass.

Perfect faces melted, revealing writhing masses of too many eyes. Mouths opened sideways, vertically, in directions that hurt to perceive—each filled with rows of teeth that had never been meant for speaking or eating but only for rending. Wings became tentacles, became limbs that bent in impossible angles, became shapes that our minds recoiled from understanding. The beautiful voices twisted into shrieks that shattered windows and burst eardrums, sounds that came not from throats but from somewhere deeper and more terrible.

The civilians who had run to greet them died first. Torn apart with casual brutality by creatures wearing the stolen skin of divinity.

And the God—wounded, bleeding, hunted—raised His hands and fought back.

For three days and three nights, He battled them. No two witnesses describe what they saw the same way, and perhaps that's because mortal eyes were never meant to comprehend such violence. Some speak of a sword of light that cut through not just flesh but reality itself. Others swear He fought with His bare hands, each blow striking with the force of collapsing stars. A few claim He sang, and His voice was a weapon that unmade demons with every note.

Perhaps all of it is true. Perhaps none of it is. What matters is this: the sky burned with colors we had no names for. Thunder rolled without ceasing for days. The ground split and healed and split again. Rivers boiled or froze solid without warning. Mountains rose from plains and crumbled into dust within the span of a heartbeat.

We tried to help—of course we did. Our mightiest warriors, our Ring-bearers channeling godlike power, the Dragonian elite who had never known defeat. But the God waved us back with one hand even as He tore demons apart with the other. "Stay back!" His voice crashed through our minds like thunder. "Their corruption will spread to you!"

So we watched. The greatest empire in history, reduced to spectators at their own salvation.

On the third day, as dawn broke over a battlefield that had once been fertile farmland, the last demon fell. The God stood alone among the dissolving corpses, His radiance dimmed but unbroken, and for the first time in three days, silence fell across the world.

Our Dragonian soldiers approached cautiously, weapons still drawn, not quite daring to believe it was over. What they found in that crater defied understanding. The land itself was wrong—blackened and twisted, the soil moving with a life it should not possess. The air tasted of copper and something fouler. Reality felt thin there, like cloth worn to transparency.

And the demon bodies... there were none. Only corruption spreading like oil across water, consuming everything it touched.

The God knelt in the center of it all, and when He looked up at our soldiers, they said His eyes held the weight of eternities. Those who were close enough to see Him clearly spoke in hushed whispers of what they witnessed: His golden hair glowed as bright as the sun itself, catching the dawn light and reflecting it back tenfold. His eyes were opalescent white, shifting and shimmering like the aurora dancing across a winter sky—beautiful beyond mortal crafting, and ancient beyond mortal comprehension. His armor, battered and scorched from three days of divine combat, bore an image they had never seen before—some great beast with a flowing mane like flame made solid, its visage both regal and terrifying. The scholars would debate for centuries what manner of creature it depicted, for nothing in our world resembled it.

When He spoke, His voice bypassed their ears entirely, resonating directly in their souls with a sorrow that made grown warriors weep.

"They followed me here. Across dimensions, across the spaces between stars, through the cracks in reality itself. They hunger for worlds like yours—rich with life. And now they know you exist. I cannot stay. My presence is a beacon that draws them like moths to flame. If I remain, they will never stop coming."

Our Dragon Emperor, ancient and wise, stepped forward with the weight of the empire on his shoulders. "Then what do we do? How do we survive what's coming?"

The God reached into His own chest—we saw Him do it, saw His hand disappear into His own radiance—and pulled out something that glowed like captured starlight. A seed. He planted it in the corrupted earth with hands that trembled from exhaustion, and where it touched the blackened soil, the corruption recoiled like a living thing.

"This will purify what they have poisoned," He said, and His voice was fading now, growing distant. "In one millennium—one thousand of your years—the corruption will be cleansed completely. But more of them will come. They will tear holes in your reality, gates through which they will pour endlessly, and they will be drawn to this tree as it grows. Protect it. Nurture it. It is your only hope."

Then, with movements deliberate and ceremonial, the God drew the sword from His side—the same blade that had carved through demons and reality alike for three days. He drove it point-first into the earth beside the seed, pushing it deep until only the pommel remained visible above the corrupted soil.

"I leave you one more gift," He said, His voice carrying a weight of prophecy. "My blade I plant beneath this tree. As the tree grows, so too will the sword be hidden within its roots, waiting. When the tree matures, when it reaches its full strength, it will recognize one who is worthy. The tree will call to them, and only they will be able to draw this sword forth."

He paused, and His opalescent eyes swept across the gathered soldiers, the watching empire, perhaps seeing into futures we could not comprehend.

"And when someone pulls that sword free—when they prove themselves worthy of my blade—I will appear. Sooner than promised. Sooner than the millennium's end. Seek the worthy. For in them lies hope greater than mere survival."

Our Emperor, who had ruled for three centuries and seen wonders and horrors beyond counting, asked the question that everyone was thinking: "Will you return to help us?"

The God smiled then, and it was the saddest thing any of them had ever seen. "Ask me again in a millennium," He said. "Or ask me when the sword is drawn."

And between one moment and the next, He was gone. Not in a flash of light or a clap of thunder—He simply ceased to be there, as if He had never existed at all.

But He did not leave alone.

Every dragon in the empire—the Divine Dragons who rarely walked among mortals, the Ancient Dragons who served as advisors to kingdoms, even the young drakes who had barely learned to fly—all of them felt the call simultaneously. It was not a sound or a command but something deeper, something that resonated in the very core of their draconic souls. One by one, in pairs, in flights, they rose into the sky. They circled the crater once, twice, three times, and then they followed the God into whatever realm He had vanished to.

The Royal Dragnirs, with their golden eyes that could see through time, watched their divine ancestors depart. The Dragonians, descended from those Ancient Dragons, felt the severing like a physical wound. Within a single day, every true dragon had left our world.

They took with them the old magic, the deep magic, the magic that had held our empire together for millennia. The Leviathans—those failed dragons who had been kept docile by the Divine Dragons' presence—stirred in their ancient sleep. The balance that had existed since time immemorial shattered like dropped glass.

And the seed the God left behind sprouted within hours.

It grew at a rate that defied every law of nature. Within days it was taller than a man. Within weeks it towered over the tallest buildings. Within months its roots had spread for miles in every direction, drinking in the corruption like water, and where they touched, the blackened earth slowly—so slowly—began to heal. The sword vanished beneath those growing roots, swallowed by the tree as it expanded, hidden somewhere in the wood and earth, waiting for the one who would be called.

We built around it. What else could we do? If the God said this tree was our only hope, then by every dragon that once drew breath, we would protect it with everything we had.

The city rose in concentric rings around the growing tree. We called it the Center, and it became more than just our capital—it became our purpose. The Academy trained warriors from all thirty-five kingdoms, the finest fighters the empire had ever produced. Engineers and builders designed fortifications that could even defend against Leviathans. Researchers studied the demons, cataloging their weaknesses, developing weapons specifically to kill them. The forges never cooled, the training yards never emptied, the libraries never closed.

Because the demons came, just as the God had warned.

At first it was only a handful, stumbling through weak tears in reality. Easily destroyed. But with each passing year, the gates grew larger and more frequent. The pattern became horrifyingly clear: the demons were drawn to the tree like moths to flame, as if its purification was an offense they could not tolerate.

And the tree kept growing.

Four centuries after the God's departure—four hundred years of constant growth, constant warfare, constant sacrifice—the World Tree finally pierced the sky. On a morning that began like any other, its crown broke through the clouds and continued upward, the trunk rising until it vanished into the blue vault of heaven itself. We watched in awe and terror as it climbed higher and higher, passing beyond where even birds could fly, beyond where the air grew thin, beyond mortal sight.

We named it the World Tree, and it became the axis around which our entire civilization turned. Its roots spread beneath continents. Its bark was harder than steel and impossible to burn. The Verdant's claimed they could hear it singing, a song of purification that never ceased, though the rest of us heard only silence. Within its shadow—within the five-hundred-mile radius where its influence reached—the corruption could not exist. Everything was clean, pristine, whole.

But the demons kept coming. Thousands. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Pouring through gates that opened like wounds in the fabric of reality, all of them drawn inexorably toward the tree, as if its very existence was a challenge they could not ignore.

And deep within the roots, somewhere in the incomprehensible tangle of wood and earth, the God's sword waited in silence.

That was five centuries ago. Now, nine hundred years have passed since the God fell from heaven like a meteor. Nine hundred years since the dragons departed. Nine hundred years of endless war.

Twenty-five of our thirty-five kingdoms have fallen. The Royal Dragnirs vanished three centuries ago, taking with them the only power that could control the rampaging Leviathans. The Dragonian elite disappeared with them, for reasons no one understands. The empire has fractured into ten desperate kingdoms, each clinging to survival, each guarding a single Ring, each sending what forces they can spare to defend the Center and the Crossroads.

But the World Tree still stands. Still grows. Still purifies.

And now—after nine centuries of blood and sacrifice and loss—only one century remains.

One hundred years until the millennium completes. One hundred years until the corruption is fully cleansed. One hundred years until we can finally ask the God the question our Emperor asked so long ago:

Will you return?

Warriors still train in the shadow of the World Tree. Researchers still work in laboratories built into its roots, occasionally reporting strange vibrations deep below, as if something ancient sleeps in the depths. Engineers still design defenses against an enemy that never stops. The Center endures, battered but unbroken, a city of millions dedicated to a single purpose: survive until the God's promise is fulfilled.

And some—a rare few—speak of dreams. Dreams of golden light and opalescent eyes. Dreams of a voice calling them toward the tree's heart. Dreams of a blade waiting in darkness.

The Luminari call them prophets. The Umbral call them mad. But they come nonetheless, these dreamers, these seekers, pressing their hands against the World Tree's bark and listening for a call that might never come.

Because the God left two promises, not one. And while everyone counts down the century until the millennium ends, a handful of faithful wonder: what if someone finds the sword first?

What if the worthy one already walks among us?

What if salvation comes not in one hundred years, but tomorrow?

One hundred years.

If we can last that long.

If the demons don't overwhelm us first.

If the Leviathans don't destroy what remains.

If the ten kingdoms don't tear each other apart over the Rings.

If the worthy one never comes.

If, if, if.

But we fight anyway. Because we have to. Because the God planted a seed and told us to protect it. Because somewhere, in some distant realm, the dragons who left with Him are watching to see if their descendants are worthy of salvation.

Because in one hundred years, we will have our answer.

Or perhaps, if the tree calls to the right soul, we will have it much sooner.

One way or another.