Requiem of the Forgotten

Two things became immediately clear the moment we set foot inside the ruins.

First, this place wasn't built by humans, elves, or dwarves. The architecture was too alien—massive, intricate, carved with precision that felt almost unnatural. The second? Whoever had built it… they were long gone.

The air was thick, but not with dust or decay. No, it felt… waiting.

Caelith ran his fingers over the walls, his silver eyes narrowing. "This is not a city of elves."

"No shit," I muttered, stepping past him.

Carmen trailed a hand across a carved mural. "It's too perfect. These walls should have eroded over time, but they haven't. It's like this place is frozen."

The hall stretched out in front of us, lined with massive stone pillars covered in symbols none of us recognized. It wasn't elven script. It wasn't dwarven runes. It wasn't even anything close to what humanity had ever written.

Amina knelt beside a section of inscriptions, tracing a hand over the carvings. "These markings… they tell a story."

I stepped closer. "Can you read it?"

She hesitated. "Some of it. It's not a language, exactly. It's more like… impressions. Meanings carved into stone rather than words."

Daisuke crouched beside her, pushing his glasses up. "Then tell us what it says."

Amina inhaled deeply and began reading.

We were the First. The First Children. Made in His Image.
We were blessed, eternal, untouched by decay. The world was ours.
We knew no war. We knew no hunger. We knew no loss.
We were loved.

She paused, fingers tightening against the stone. "It repeats that phrase a lot. We were loved."

Something about that sent a cold shiver down my spine.

Carmen frowned. "Then why aren't they here anymore?"

Amina exhaled and continued.

Then the Sky fell silent.
His voice, which had always guided us, was no more.
We waited. We prayed. We searched the heavens.
But no answer came.

The air around us felt heavier, as if the ruins themselves had held onto that silence. A weight, pressing down through time.

And so, we began to unravel.
Not through war. Not through disaster.
But through emptiness.
Without Him, there was nothing.
And so we became nothing.

Daisuke swallowed. "They… just faded away?"

Amina nodded slowly. "They lost their will to exist."

Caelith, silent until now, finally spoke. "A creation without a purpose cannot sustain itself."

Something about that made my skin crawl.

Because it felt too close to home.

A sound echoed from below.

A deep, reverberating vibration, like a breath drawn from the depths of time itself.

We froze.

The air shifted, thickening like a storm about to break. Dust trembled along the stone floor. Something was waking up.

My hand tightened around my knife—not that it would do much against whatever was making that sound.

Then, slowly, we moved forward.

The descent was slow, the walls narrowing as we made our way deeper. The temperature dropped, but not from cold. It was something else—something ancient, something untouched.

And at the very bottom, in a massive open chamber, lay him.

A dragon.

He lay curled at the center of the room, wings folded, scales dull with the passage of time. He did not look dead. He did not even look asleep. He looked like something that had simply stopped moving, stopped existing, but had never quite let go.

Then—

One eye cracked open.

A slitted pupil, glowing faintly in the dark, fixed itself on me.

A voice, not spoken aloud but pressed directly into my mind, filled the chamber.

How many years…?

I stiffened. Carmen let out a barely concealed curse. Daisuke looked like he was ready to pass out.

I forced myself to breathe. "Who… are you?"

Slowly, the dragon lifted his head, his gaze sweeping over us like someone looking at ghosts of the past.

You are not them.

Aleks: "Yeah, no shit."

Then why are you here?

I hesitated, then said, "We were looking for answers."

The dragon regarded me for a long moment before shifting his massive form. Stones cracked under the weight of his body. His wings, once grand and mighty, twitched slightly before stilling again.

You seek knowledge. But do you understand what was lost?

Carmen: "We were hoping you could tell us."

There is nothing left to tell.

The room went silent.

Then Amina, of all people, asked, "Why are you still here?"

The dragon blinked slowly. And then—

Because I could not follow them.

No one spoke.

His voice was not bitter. Not angry. Just… tired.

Aleks: "So, what now?"

The dragon studied me. Really studied me, like he was looking straight through my skin, through my thoughts, through every stupid thing I had ever done in my life. Then he closed his eyes again.

You will fight, won't you? When the darkness comes.

It wasn't a question. It was a certainty.

I exhaled. "Yeah. We will."

A long silence stretched before he spoke again.

Then I will fight with you.

No grand speech. No dramatic moment. Just a promise.

And somehow, that was enough.

We left the ruins, the weight of history pressing against our backs.

As we stepped out into the open air again, I glanced back once. The dragon hadn't followed us—not yet. But I had the feeling that, when the time came, he would be there.

Carmen broke the silence. "So… are we just not gonna talk about the fact that we recruited a damn dragon?"

Daisuke: "Statistically speaking, this significantly increases our survival chances."

Aleks: "I swear to God, Daisuke—"

Carmen grinned. "Hey, maybe we should put 'Dragon Ally' on our Dragontown welcome sign."

I exhaled, shaking my head.

Maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't end up like the First Ones.

But something told me… this was only the beginning.