They did not leave the mountain as heroes.
They left because they had stayed too long.
The descent was quiet. The air thinned, then warmed, trading sulfur and aether for smog and distant static. The road cut cleanly through the mountainside—old asphalt scarred by time but still clinging to the rock like a stubborn memory of civilization.
Lys walked on his own this time.
His steps were slow, measured. The dragon light in his eyes was dimmed, banked low behind human irises, but the heat under his skin remained—subtle, constant, dangerous.
Below them, the city spread wide.
Steel towers pierced the haze. Neon signage flickered to life as dusk settled in, painting the streets in electric blues and reds. Traffic hummed like a living organism, unaware that something ancient had just retreated from the sky above it.
"This place never sleeps," Nyra muttered. "Even after the world almost ends."
"That's why it survives," Valerius replied.
Elda said nothing. Her gaze lingered on the skyline, on the layers of concrete and light built over fault lines both geological and spiritual.
They entered through the eastern district.
Security drones hovered briefly, scanners sweeping over them. Elda twisted her staff once, subtly. The systems read them as tired travelers, nothing more. The city accepted the lie without question.
Their home lay beneath the streets.
An old transit hub, abandoned after the last restructuring, now reinforced with wards woven into fiber-optic lines and steel beams. The Heart of the Volcano slept far below, but its echo pulsed through the infrastructure—power grids humming in rhythm with something older than electricity.
Lys collapsed onto a couch that had seen better decades.
Screens lined the walls, feeds from every corner of the city scrolling past—news, traffic, energy fluctuations.
Nothing about dragons.
"Good," Nyra said. "No panic. No cult broadcasts. No 'end times' trending."
Valerius handed Lys a bottle of water. Plastic. Cold. Real.
"You scared them up there," he said quietly. "But down here? You're just another anomaly the city doesn't know how to name yet."
Lys stared at his reflection in one of the dark screens.
Human face. Dragon eyes, barely restrained—vertical pupils catching the light like molten glass.
"I don't belong on the mountain," he said. "But I don't belong here either."
Elda finally spoke. "You belong where the fault lines meet."
Outside, the city roared—sirens, engines, voices stacked on voices.
Time moved forward.
Far beyond the city, beyond the screens and satellites, the Time Dragon observed the shift.
The Fire Dragon had returned to civilization.
Which meant the next correction would not come as fire or shadow.
It would come as delay.
As repetition.
As a moment that refused to end.
And somewhere in the city, a clock skipped a second.
No one noticed.
Except Lys.