Chapter 22: Tiamait — The legendary Dragon

Karnazul's reaction was instant and volcanic. "DIE?!" he roared, the word tearing from his throat like shrapnel. He slammed his slime fist down onto the obsidian railing. The strange, dark material didn't crack, but it groaned under the impact, and fine spiderwebs of strain appeared across the surface of the prosthetic before smoothing out. His crimson eyes burned with raw fury, fixed on Lilith. "You think I fear death, Slimzy? After everything? After him leaving me like garbage?!"

Lilith didn't flinch. She met his rage with icy calm, her glowing purple eyes sharp as shards of amethyst. "Fear death? No, Karnazul. I think you crave it. A glorious end against an impossible foe. A warrior's finale. But chasing Theodric isn't glory. It's suicide dressed in pride. And it's stupid." She took a deliberate step closer, her voice dropping to a low, cutting whisper. "You faced him twice. You felt his power. But did you ever truly see it? Not just the swordsmanship, not just the dragon... but the source?"

Karnazul glared, breathing heavily, the heat of his anger warring with a flicker of confusion. "See what? I saw Taimat! That damned overgrown lizard! What else is there?"

"Taimat," Lilith echoed, the name hanging heavy in the sulfurous air. "Yes. The five headed World-Serpent's Scion. Impressive, terrifying... but just a piece. A fragment of the true horror." She gestured vaguely eastward, towards the unseen human continent. "You know Aethelgard has power. But do you know where its deepest wellspring lies? Not in castles or armies. In caves. Deep dark caves"

Karnazul frowned, his fury momentarily banked by morbid curiosity. "Caves?"

"Seven of them," Lilith continued, her voice taking on a lecturing, almost hypnotic tone. "Scattered across their land like bleeding wounds in the world's skin. The Empryean Caves. And within each... slumbered a Sacred Dragon."

"Sacred Dragons?" Karnazul scoffed, though it lacked conviction. The term felt heavy, ancient. "More beasts for the Dragon Knight to ride?"

"Beasts?" Lilith let out a sharp, humorless laugh. "Oh, Ash Lord, your ignorance is truly breathtaking. These weren't mere beasts. They were progenies. Direct offspring. Spawned from the blood and essence of the Legendary Dragons."

She paused, letting the weight of that sink in. Karnazul remained silent, his crimson gaze fixed on her.

"Primordial beings," Lilith breathed, her purple eyes seeming to look into a distant, terrifying past. "Creatures born when the world was still molten rock and screaming void. Beings whose very breath could reshape mountains, whose gaze could unravel lesser realities. Beings... as old and as powerful as our Goddess herself in her prime."

The comparison hung in the air, blasphemous and terrifying. Karnazul felt a chill crawl down his spine, deeper than any demon cold. "Impossible".

"These Sacred Dragons," Lilith pressed on, her voice low and intense, "were fragments of that primordial power. Living calamities bound to the caves. For millennia, they slept, or brooded, their power a cornerstone of Aethelgard's hidden strength. Each dragon knight is a rider of one of such serpent".

"The legendary dragons were nothing but mere myth, said to appear at the highest peak of Aethelgard once every millennium.

Until..." She paused again, her gaze snapping back to Karnazul. "Until a sixteen-year-old human boy had ambitions."

Karnazul's eyes widened fractionally. He knew where this was going. The name hung unspoken between them.

"He didn't sneak in," Lilith said, her voice flat. "He didn't bargain. He rammed his way in. Fought through the ravaging energy outburst by the serpent, shattered the ancient wards, and stood before the slumbering god-spawn. And he didn't beg. He didn't plead. He challenged it." Her lips thinned. "They say the battle shook the continent. That the peak became a crucible of raw elemental fury. And when the dust settled... Theodric von Adler walked out. Not just alive. Not just victorious."

She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that carried perfectly in the silence. "He walked out with its allegiance. Its power bound to his will. He had tamed a legendary Dragon. The only who had. At sixteen. He claimed Taimat. A legendary being"

Lilith straightened, her glowing purple eyes holding Karnazul's with terrifying intensity. "That, Ash Lord, is why he is the strongest human to ever walk the earth. He didn't just find power. He wrestled it from the jaws of a primordial nightmare while barely more than a child. He carries a sliver of the same power that birthed worlds. A sliver that could crush demon lords like insects."

She gestured dismissively at Karnazul. "You faced a dragon-rider, Karnazul. But you never truly faced what rides the dragon. That power in the Void Arena? That was him holding back. Because if he unleashed what sleeps inside him, bound to that dragon... the Citadel wouldn't just be ruined. It would be unmade, destroyed. Along with everything for leagues around."

She let the horrifying image hang. "So tell me," she finished, her voice regaining its sharp edge, "does your 'itch' still sound like a path to rivalry? Or does it sound like the frantic scrabbling of a bug towards a boot?"

Karnazul stood utterly still. The rage was gone, evaporated like mist under a scorching sun. In its place was a cold, hollow dread. He looked down at his slime hand, then out at the ruins of the courtyard where his pride had died the first time. Lilith's words weren't just a warning; they were a map of an abyss. The gap between him and Theodric wasn't a chasm; it was the gulf between a candle and a supernova. The itch for a rematch felt suddenly foolish, pathetic and unreasonable. The only thing burning in his crimson eyes now was the chilling reflection of a power he could never hope to match, wielded by a human who had conquered a fragment of creation itself at sixteen. The silence on the porch of the Citadel was deeper than the void— deeper than anything, filled only with the ashes of a warrior's impossible dream.