The final immortality

“Whoever said death was merciless never truly knew it.”

That was what I had always believed.

For death, contrary to what the living imagined, was not always an executioner. Sometimes, it was the final refuge for souls so exhausted by life that they could no longer see their continued existence as anything but an endless punishment. Souls for whom the world had become unbearably suffocating, who wished they could simply disappear from it without leaving a trace or having to explain their suffering to anyone.

To them, death was a door that closed upon everything that hurt them, a fitting end to stories in which life had never once dealt them a fair hand.

I had never seen any purpose in human life worth chasing beyond enjoying the brief time they were given and leaving behind something good, something that might make their existence in this world a little less meaningless.

That should have been everyone's purpose.

Not climbing to the highest peaks over the corpses of others. Not competing for thrones that would never last. Not spilling blood for the sake of power that its possessors could never take with them to their graves.

Damn humans and their endless stupidity!

How I wished I could sit in the front row and watch those fools face the consequences of their actions. Those who had spent their entire lives amassing fortunes, devouring the rights of the weak, and manipulating the fates of others, convinced that the world had been created solely for their benefit and that their end was still far, far away.

I would laugh.

I swear, I would laugh until tears streamed from my eyes as I watched them tumble from the very heights they had spent their lives climbing.

For this was the human world, after all.

A world riddled with greed and desire, where fools wore the masks of sages and monsters hid behind human faces, while the innocent were forced to pay for sins they had never committed.

A world that deserved to burn.

---

The cold was the first thing that brought me back to consciousness.

A bitter, merciless cold seeped into my bones, followed by a suffocating sensation, as though something heavy were pressing against my chest and preventing air from reaching my lungs.

I forced my eyes open.

Water.

I was underwater, sinking toward the bottom of a lake, while above me, the moon's pale radiance filtered through the surface in shimmering silver beams.

I tried to spread my wings.

Nothing happened.

I tried to summon my flames.

Nothing answered.

And the moment I realized that I could no longer perform even the simplest actions I had always taken for granted, fury surged through me.

Who had dared to restrain me?

No, wait. I wasn't restrained?!

I unleashed my will, commanding my body to return to its original form as a dragon, calling upon the power that had always obeyed my every command.

But my body refused to respond.

No white scales emerged.

No claws extended.

No roar reverberated through the depths.

All that escaped my mouth was a tiny, pathetic bubble of air that floated toward the surface before disappearing.

I stared at it.

Then I tried to scream.

All I heard was a muffled, unfamiliar sound that bore no resemblance to my own voice.

What had happened to me?!

Before I could even begin to comprehend the catastrophe, the air in my lungs started to run out.

How utterly ridiculous!

A dragon who had lived for thousands of years, survived wars and calamities, might actually meet his end by drowning in a pond barely deep enough to swallow a tree!

I raised my head toward the surface and forced my body upward with every ounce of strength I possessed.

My movements were sluggish and clumsy, as though I were learning to swim for the very first time.

When my head finally broke through the surface, I dragged in a sharp, desperate breath. A painful fit of coughing followed, tearing at my throat.

I clung to the nearest rock and hauled myself toward the frozen lakeshore before collapsing onto the damp grass.

I remained there for what felt like an eternity, though I had no way of knowing how much time had passed.

Gasping.

Coughing.

Trying to convince myself that this nightmare would end as soon as I caught my breath.

But it didn't.

Because when I finally raised my hand before my face, I noticed something terribly wrong with my body.

Long fingers. Pale skin. No claws.

Slender joints that bore not a single trace of the scales that had once covered my entire body.

I slowly sat up, an unfamiliar heaviness settling into my limbs. My legs were so thin that the sight of them filled me with disgust, so frail that I wasn't even certain they could support my weight.

I staggered to my feet and had to lean against a nearby tree to keep myself from falling over again.

What a pathetic excuse for a body!

In the past, I could travel hundreds of miles without growing tired. I could soar above the clouds for days on end and carry creatures heavier than this entire tree in my claws.

Now, I had nearly lost my balance simply by standing up.

I stumbled toward the lake.

Its surface was still, reflecting the moonlight that filtered through the trees. Nothing about it suggested that I had nearly drowned in its depths mere moments ago.

I bent over the water.

And looked at my reflection.

I froze.

This wasn't my face.

This wasn't my body.

The person staring back at me from the surface of the lake was a complete stranger, as though someone had ripped me out of my own existence and thrown me into the body of a human I had never seen before.

His hair was white and silky, falling in long strands around his face and cascading down until it nearly reached his feet. His features were delicate, almost unnaturally so, with a small, straight nose, pale lips, and skin so colorless that it seemed devoid of life.

His body was alarmingly thin, so much so that the bones of his wrists were clearly visible beneath his skin.

No horns.

No scales.

No wings.

Nothing.

Just a human.

A weak, frail human who looked as though a strong gust of wind might be enough to knock him to the ground.

The only things that had followed me into this body were my golden eyes, the color of molten gold swallowed by flames, like the sun sinking beneath a burning horizon.

I took a step backward, nearly losing my balance again.

This wasn't a dream.

I was alive.

But I was no longer myself.

I was wearing a loose white shirt, its buttons left undone halfway down my chest. The soaked fabric clung to my body, revealing a degree of thinness I wasn't prepared to witness.

And on my wrists were bruises, blue and purple, scattered across the pale skin.

Near my collarbone, distinct marks resembled the imprint of a violent grip, as though someone had seized this body with considerable force.

I studied the marks for a moment.

Then I heard a sound.

The rustling of branches behind me.

I spun around, instinctively assuming a defensive stance, though this body failed to execute the movement properly.

A small deer emerged from between the trees. It paused for a moment when it saw me, then bolted away.

I slowly exhaled.

I was just about to laugh at the absurdity of the situation when I noticed something else.

Footprints.

Clear impressions marked the damp earth, stretching from the forest toward the lake before continuing back in the opposite direction.

They weren't the deer's tracks.

They were human footprints.

I crouched and touched one of the impressions with my fingertip.

Fresh.

Whoever had left them hadn't been gone for long.

Good. Let these be my guide to finding the humans.

I'm already hungry.

For the first time, I heard my own voice clearly.

It was soft and low, carrying a delicate quality that was entirely at odds with the words coming out of my mouth.

I hated it immediately.

I hated this voice.

This body.

This absurdly long hair that seemed to have no end.

And more than anything, I hated the fact that I could no longer fly and would have to rely on these useless legs to get around.

I turned toward the forest and began following the footprints.

I had no idea where they would lead me.

But I knew that remaining beside the lake wouldn't restore my original body, and if I wanted to discover what had happened to me, I would need to find someone who could answer my questions.

---

I hadn't realized a forest could be this vast.

The deeper I ventured between the trees, the thicker the darkness became, until the moonlight could barely reach the ground, appearing only as pale threads filtering through the tangled branches.

My footsteps made irritating noises against the dry leaves, while the pain in my feet grew increasingly unbearable.

I stopped and glanced down at my legs.

What a pathetic excuse for a body.

I had barely covered any distance, yet I felt as though I had spent an entire day running. Meanwhile, my stomach had begun producing embarrassing noises unlike anything I had ever heard, even during the hungriest days of my wars.

I placed a hand over it and frowned.

"Silence."

Naturally, it refused to obey.

I let out a mocking sigh and continued walking.

I needed to find food first. After that, I could think about how to regain my strength.

There had to be an explanation for what had happened to me, and there had to be a way to return to my original body.

Or, at the very least, find another body that wasn't completely useless.

And if someone had dared to do this to me...

A cold smile spread across my face.

I would make them regret the day they were born.

After an amount of time I couldn't begin to estimate, the footprints started to multiply.

They were no longer the tracks of a single pair of shoes. Dozens of footprints now crisscrossed the ground, some overlapping others, as though a considerable number of people had passed through the area recently.

Then I caught the scent of smoke.

I raised my head.

Beyond a row of trees, I spotted a faint orange glow flickering between the branches.

Fire.

For the first time since awakening in this wretched body, I felt something resembling relief.

Finally, something familiar in this strange world.

I quickened my pace, ignoring the pain that had begun to spread through my feet, until the trees parted to reveal a narrow dirt path.

At its end stood a cluster of modest wooden houses gathered around a small square, where a fire burned brightly in the center.

A village.

There were humans here.

Real, living humans.

I stopped at the edge of the path and observed them from a distance.

Some sat around the fire, while others busied themselves unloading wooden crates from a cart parked beside one of the houses. A few more were occupied with cutting up the meat of a deer. On the opposite side of the square, a woman held a child in her arms, rocking him gently as she spoke to an elderly man.

An utterly ordinary scene.

Almost painfully boring.

And yet, I felt a strange sense of comfort at the sight.

For humans, despite all their flaws, possessed something I had been missing ever since I awoke.

Information.

And information was the first thing I needed.

After food, of course.

I stepped onto the path, only to stop when I noticed several pairs of eyes turning in my direction.

One of the men had spotted me.

Then another turned around.

Within moments, the voices around the fire began to fade. Conversations trailed off, one after another, until everyone in the square had turned to stare at me.

At first, I couldn't understand why.

Then I looked down at myself.

Long white hair dripping with water, clothes soaked through and clinging to a frail body, and a pale face that must have looked more like that of a corpse freshly pulled from its grave than a living person.

Well, this certainly wasn't my finest entrance.

I raised my hand and lazily pointed toward the deer meat they were about to eat.

Keeping my eyes fixed on it, I said,

"I'm hungry."

---

To be continued...