Creation Details
Prompt: “"Gather close," she whispers, her voice like dry parchment rubbing together. "Before the wind carries the last of it away. You think the world has always been 'Mizu.' You think the dirt beneath your boots is kind."
A small boy at her knee looks up, his eyes wide. "Isn't it, Nana? The fields are quiet."
"Now, perhaps," she says, leaning forward as the light carves deep lines into her face. "But it wasn't always so. Before the maps were drawn, before the peace was bought, there was Valorian. It was a living, breathing monster of a world. You didn't just walk through Valorian; you survived it. In those days, the sky was heavy with wings—dragons, wyverns, things with too many heads and eyes that glowed in the dark. Even the plants would pull you under if you closed your eyes too long."
"Were people scared?" an older girl asks, pulling her shawl tighter.
"Terrified," the grandmother nods. "But beneath all that blood and teeth, there was a pulse. The Glyph ley lines. Roots of power, hidden deep, surfacing only at nodes to give off heat and a resonance that kept the world from shaking itself apart. That’s where the dragons lived. They’d huddle over those nodes for thousands of years, letting the earth's heartbeat cook their eggs. They were ancient, territorial beings of scale and fire. And we? We were small. We were angry. We hunted them, built towers of their bones to prove we were masters of the dirt, and they hated us for it. It was a cycle of red, children. Always red."
"But if they hated us," the boy interrupts, "how did anyone get close to them?"
The grandmother reaches out, her hand trembling slightly as she mimes the shape of a flame. "That is where the story shifts. Then came Vyren and Isara. They weren't like the others. They walked among the dragons, breathing in the heat of the nests. People watched from the ridgelines, terrified, because the dragons didn't tear them open. It wasn't love—never call it love—it was a hard-won tolerance. They stayed until the dragons stopped growling.
And then, the world shifted. On a ley line node, under the watch of Vyren’s destruction and Isara’s creation, a miracle was forced into the light. A mother dragon gave her own lifeforce to seal the bond. That was Exiros. The first of us. The first dragonkin born of blood, not just spirit."
"Was he born a dragon or a boy?" the girl asks softly.
"He was born of both," she says, her expression darkening with the memory of smoke. "But men fear what they cannot understand. They didn't see a miracle; they saw a threat. They attacked during the birth—a storm of steel meant for the dragons and the pair alike."
She pauses, her eyes reflecting a deeper, colder grief. "It was a massacre, children. Vyren and Isara didn't run. They stood their ground to protect the nest, to protect the lives inside, and that only fed the fire. When the humans saw them striking down people they knew—men they had farmed with, cousins they had shared bread with—the rage became a poison. Every man lost was a brother or a friend, and the survivors didn't care for reasons anymore. They just wanted blood.
They didn't stop until Vyren and Isara lay still in the dirt. And once the pair was gone, the humans didn't show mercy. They tore that nest apart. Every egg, every hatchling... they destroyed it all. Exiros would have died right there, a babe in the ash and the ruins of his kin, if a mother dragon hadn't snatched him up and flown into the clouds, leaving the war behind."
"Where did she take him?" the boy whispers.
"Far from the screaming. He grew up as a farm boy, can you imagine? Adopted by a family on a quiet patch of land. He spent years pulling weeds and watching the seasons change. But the world is greedy. A neighboring kingdom came for them, squeezing them for months, demanding more and more until they asked for the one thing a brother cannot give—his sister."
The children gasp, and she nods solemnly.
"That was the end of the boy, and the birth of the King. Exiros stood his ground and showed them the fire inside. He didn't just protect his farm; he rose like a tide. He took Valorian and forged it into Mizu. He ruled longer than any man had a right to, though with every generation that followed, the blood thinned. His children lived shorter lives, and their children shorter still."
"Is he still the King?" the boy asks, looking toward the door as if expecting a knock.
"No," she says, her eyes drifting to the embers. "The end of a King is a heavy thing. They say that toward the finish, his own power became a cage. The flame inside grew too hot, too wild for a human ribcage to hold. He felt it burning him from the inside out, every breath a struggle against the heat. He didn't have the answers, children. No dragon had ever whispered the secrets of the end to him, and his mother—kind as she was—didn't know the deep mysteries herself.
So, he did the only thing a man of honor could do. He gave himself up to the fire. He thought he was simply stepping into the dark to save himself from the burning. He thought it was the end of his breath."
She leans in, her voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial murmur. "But the old stories—the ones even he didn't know—say he didn't just vanish. They say he went to a place called the Inner Flame. A place where the oldest of their kind go when the world is finished with them. They say his human skin finally fell away and he took his true form there, but it is a place of no return. He left us behind to find a peace he didn't even know existed."
She settles back into her chair, the weight of the era pressing on her. "His grandson tried to write it all down. He tried to save the truth on paper, but paper rots. The records turned to dust, the stories turned to myths, and now... now you live in Mizu, and you’ve forgotten the fire that built it. But I remember. I am the last who remembers that we once walked with such entities."”
Art Style: Soft Romance
Color Mode: Full Color
Panels: 2
Created: