I meant to clear my head and, while the wind cooled my thoughts, help Vega shoulder some work. The second part was fine; look over there—CEO-model Vega No. 2579 is glued to her sweetheart pastry chef like syrup on warm bread, under a silk-bright banner called “Cake Support for Heroes,” yet half the march is just a joyride, like sparrows slipping past an open gate.

Vega can play how she likes; her kite of leisure is her own to fly. Since I promised to share the workload at the start, I won’t snatch the ribbon from her hands.

After last night’s confession duel with Elina, dawn found her not shy but sharp, like a hawk that spots prey; I mean in the field of romance, not on any battlefield of steel.

She wore the bruised crescents of sleeplessness like smudged charcoal, cradled homemade pastries warm as a hearth, and knocked at my door; the thud jolted Stini, who had slipped into my blankets like a cat at midnight, and our shouting storm drew Raven, who arrived with bedhead thunder and morning grump like a raincloud.

Miss Vangibia, our tour guide, sat aside like a spectator on a sunny hillside, happy to watch the fire spread while coughing into her fist and sipping coffee—looking exactly like Stini behaves when the blaze isn’t her problem at all.

So what could I do, with smoke in my eyes and drums in my chest? I was as helpless as a boat in chop. I’d slept too late after last night, missed the first chance to snuff the sparks, and I’ll own a sliver of the ash for that.

But there’s that saying that moves like wind through bamboo: no matter how many fixes fill the book, the first stratagem is to run, leaving only dust behind.

Any move inside a love-battlefield sliding into an Asura pit is quicksand for goodwill; so my retreat wasn’t the wrong cut, just a clean draw of the blade.

Except—

Why am I this foolish, moth to a lantern? Silver Era heroes are what they are: danger like cliff-edge wind draws them, and the shortest road to death is the one they sprint, feet drumming like war.

This sour daily grind gnaws like rust. I’ve had enough.

“Tell me your name—no, you don’t have to—well, Vega’s process insists we ask, so, fine, either way! Right, I know who you are. Abaddon. Dragon King Abaddon. Good morning.”

“…Abaddon.”

The young man looked blank as a fresh page. The warband behind him wore the same helpless half-smiles, like soldiers caught in rain without cloaks.

Dragons are born from concept and conjecture, like thunder imagined before the storm. Their power needs no footnote, but here’s what breaks common sight: in true sight, not the human lens of physics, they aren’t giant lizards or clawed flying serpents sketched across the sky.

People say claws and fangs, flame and scale, sinew like iron cables—therefore dragons are strong. The truth flows upstream: they are strong, so minds paint them with fangs, with fire, with armor-scales and corded muscle, as if strength demands its own costume.

Their power needs no explanation; the more ink you spill on a creature of dream, the more the line wobbles like heat haze.

Where common eyes see a dragon coiling like storm cloud, I see simply people—ordinary silhouettes, stronger than most, a field of human figures smelted a little harder.

Their leader, Abaddon, looked to me like a young man barely past twenty, acne like red dew on the brow, crownless under a sky full of omens.

“At times like this, what am I supposed to say…” I sat at my desk, a mask perched on my head like a second face, and cradled my temples, the way a tree cradles birds in wind. Yes, the worker was me. Across the table, the white-robed youth fidgeted, awkward as a crane in a tiny pond.

The Time Ruins are the final harbor of Silver heroes, a gray shore where tides don’t turn. Those most eager to do something with their own blade, yet blocked by the bars of the Silver Era, will sail for this place.

Like the Aerian and the dragons before me, feathers and iron both glinting like dawn and dusk.

Hidden races didn’t hide for fun; they’re mountains too tall in a plain, weights that break the scales of “balance.”

The Aerian are famed for group maneuvers like a flock wheeling in sun; even Catherine—not the peak of her kin—stands at mid-high strength among the Hero Squad, a lance tipped with light.

The dragons are famed for solo battle, each a fortress in motion; Saint Mire, bound by a Guardian Oath to never attack, could, together with our hopeless homeroom teacher Alpha, stall Slaughter Demon King Anna for hours, like two pillars holding back a flood.

The Creator shaped them as warriors, pure as hammered steel and heavy as thunder. For other races, they’re too much blade, too much flame. The Silver Era’s cup no longer holds such wine.

“Trouble?” The Savior Saint, who’d been guarding the Time Ruins’ gate from beasts like a lighthouse against dark surf, finally had an hour to return and rest. He caught a staffer by the sleeve and asked, voice a calm oar in choppy water.

Those few “failed heroes” have already guessed who I am, like wolves scenting a storm. But with my little reminder—if they make trouble, I blow the Time Ruins sky-high—they keep their faces sour as rain, and keep their distance.

With the peace pact signed, lords have started taking the line from my mid-tier vassals, swapping in human staff like torches replacing braziers; the Savior Saint soon learned how the stream had wound to here.

And in truth, no shadowy scandal bloomed. Just the clean cold of a winter road.

“The era approaches,” I said, letting the words fall like leaves. I ignored the Savior Saint’s little motions and asked Abaddon, “You know what that means, right?”

“I understand,” the youth said, bowing like a pine in wind. “My father taught me. The world has no space left for us, Your Grace Andor.”

He didn’t change much in expression; his face was a lake in dusk, quiet after storms. You can only be shocked so many times, only cry so many nights, before small talk about doom sounds like rain on a closed window.

Humans aren’t ruled by emotion, not most of the time. So even a man like me, blind to glances and tone like a statue in fog, gets by fine.

I won’t deny this either: power makes the road smooth as packed snow.

“Your father is Douglas, right? Chair of the Council of Sages. The one who shed his dragon power like a skin, extracted ‘Power’ itself, forged it into inner armor, and gifted it to the Hero household.”

“Yes, Your Grace. That’s my father, Douglas. Though he stepped down half a month ago, like an old candle snuffed with two fingers.”

Abaddon did respect to greatness like a well-taught prince, a bow clean as a blade’s line. Douglas’s wisdom passed to his son like fire along a fuse. Dragons don’t fear a Demon King, and the Forest of Steel warband—the strongest army under heaven—could roll a Demon King flat like a wheel over clay. Yet courtesy to what’s great is basic winter fire. This isn’t about “who’s stronger.” Don’t turn your own weight into a mountain. Know you’re human. Hold humility and cool like water cupped in both hands. That’s a king’s first lesson.

At the very least, angering a Demon King who holds Authority is pointless, like punching thunder.

“That’s what tangles things,” I said, voice like a knife on ice. “I mean to tell you not to enter the Time Ruins. It has no meaning.”

“The end of a warrior, the resting place of heroes—how can it be meaningless?” he asked, like a bell struck in a temple.

“For others, maybe it doesn’t matter,” I said, “but you are different, Abaddon—seven heads, ten horns, ten crowns, a great red dragon, a god’s enemy who knocked a third of the stars from the sky, also called Satan.”

“I don’t understand, Your Grace. I’ve only got one head,” he said, touching it like a boy feeling rain.

“You play a heavy role down the road. Ha. Say, a Final Calamity? Treat it as a Demon King’s little prophecy, a fireside ramble. Still, I should say it clear as a bell: only you must not step onto this field. Only you will not find the end or the rest you seek. In the last, you’ll have nothing but hollowness and madness, the Time Ruins’ last and only survivor, summoned into the world to give flesh-and-blood the ruin of a great red dragon.”

It’s a story thick with sorrow, like smoke that clings to cloth.

And it’s an ordinary story, like footprints in dust.

A superlative hero fights so long the clock grows mold. He loses himself like a name washed from stone. He drowns in the wine of past glory. He came to guard the world, and became the disaster that breaks it, like a shield turned spear.

It carries no moral lantern, offers no warm lesson, and you can’t read it to a child at night like a lullaby.

No need to unspool it thread by thread; there’s little point. Know the grand opening and the twisted end. Know who stands at the center. Like any crude old plot, it leaves a mark at one glance.

“It’s a story that makes people laugh until they taste bile. Unluckily, I’m the one who watched it happen, like a crow on a gallows. Also, your father and I—well enough,” to be exact, when Ferrel and I were sealed in the land of endings, he was among the few who came to see us, candles in a catacomb, “so before the wheel turns, I want to throw this favor back and ding it off that old man’s head.”

Not as noble as it sounds; just a stone tossed in a quiet pond.

I could say it, or not. If Abaddon insists on going to die, I won’t leash the wind.

“I shall speak thus—kidding. I don’t have to say it at all,” I said, like a smile under a hood. “Abaddon, go back. Carry no shame like a sack of stones. In truth, if you turn back now, the world may face one less Final Calamity.”

“…No.”

As expected, like thunder after lightning.

It’s nothing to me. Let great heroes haul the world from the abyss like barges on a river. The World Saving Demon King plans to fish in muddy water and take credit without lifting the boulder.

“Oh? So you think my prophecy might be smoke and mirrors? Maybe I’m lying?” I asked, voice as flat as rain.

Abaddon said nothing, chin lifted like a spear point.

“You think with warning in hand, humanity can beat the bleak future? Maybe human will can be a furnace that melts it?”

He didn’t speak. He held his head high, like a banner in wind.

“You think a fated tragedy is worth more resistance, like a cliff worth climbing? Maybe you’re strong enough to crack it?”

Silence again, stubborn as stone.

“You think even if you’re the one sacrificed, even if it’s your sorrow carved on the gate, as Dragon King you must call this warband, must lead your people into the last place that needs you. Lead them. For others, forge the hottest glory like iron in a blaze.”

“Exactly!”

The words hit like a hammer on anvil.

“You don’t need to answer. I can guess,” I said, letting the guess drift like smoke.

Even if I can’t read a look, I know the logic of human ties, of duty and name, like paths worn into earth.

“Go in,” I waved them on, hand like a fan ushering flame. “Why are you still standing? If you’ve chosen, don’t waste it. The obelisk will etch your names. One by one—speak your name.”

“First. Abaddon. Dragon King. Commander of the Forest of Steel warband.”

After that, the Aerian knightly order the Aegis of Holy Light joined the field, a winged tide—more than half their people by rough count, like a migration under a white moon. High Grand Knight Arivis didn’t talk like Abaddon; a great hero, but in the sweep of history just another crest swallowed by the sea. We recorded the name, opened the door to the Time Ruins, and sent them through like ships into fog.

Truth Seekers Assembly detachment. Azure Hand Magi Corps. Golden Vale Tribe Hunters. One by one, heroes walked through that door, their shadows long as spears.

Maybe they regretted. Maybe they feared. But each stepped forward on their own will, like feet on a chosen bridge, knowing the end of their road, and embracing both despair and hope like twin flames.

“Vega,” I said, drinking water cool as a spring and rolling my stiff wrist like a millstone, talking to the head maid sorting the lists beside me, “we’re witnessing history.”

“Ah, I know,” she said, voice soft as folded cloth. “But when weren’t we? In the end, with respect in our hearts and solemn faces, not a beat off, we kill.”

“Yeah. That’s how a hero should rest,” I said, like a bell rung once in dusk.

My spine went crack-crack like ice on a river. I shook the bell at hand. Its clear ring cut the air and called the next warrior forward.