“Run! Keep running! Don’t look back! To the Temple!” The man yells at the group breathing heavily. I hope that the old legend is true.

The older man turns around, gripping the walking stick he always carried hard enough to show the whites of his knuckles. Spreading his feet shoulder-width apart, he takes a deep breath. “Let them come and see the desperation of an old man with nowhere to run.”

Taking another deep breath and holding this time. for a second, The older man expels his breath, shouting into the forest, “I’m over here, bastards!” Suddenly,

The forest goes silent. Seconds stretch into what feels like minutes. Abruptly, the neighing of a horse breaks the silence, disrupting the older man's focus. His heart raced at the sounds of horses neighing and hoofs striking mud.

Behind the older man heading toward the forest's center where a woman and two children who looked no older than five or six finally reached what they were looking for. In what would barely pass for a forest clearing, just a few yards from where she now stood, was a temple or what she thought appeared to be a temple.

As she approached, noticing decaying pillars in front of a door that sat rotting on the floor where it fell when the rusting hinges gave out under its weight. What kind of wood is that made of? The woman thought. Continuing through the building's oversized double doors, she enters the front antechamber.

The woman glances at depictions carved into the nearby wall. Continuing deeper into the Temple, the density of mana continues to increase as she pushes deeper into the temple. Looking around, she noticed plaques on the wall.

The two children holding her hands stare in wonder at the Dragons swirling with mana, fighting angels bathed in light, and ragged warriors mixing with similar but different energy rising from the ground. Not simply ragged, Undead, she realizes—giant trees emerging from a forest swinging massive limbs. Creatures the woman could not even name rising from oceans. It almost appears as though all of creation is fighting the Dragons. She thought while continuing into the large entry room containing a hall leading to a descending stairway covered in damp fungal moss.

The woman steps carefully into the stairway, walking silently with the children until she stumbles upon a large rocky archway leading to the mouth of a massive cavern, the temple air humming with mana. Triples in density, almost singing in the woman's ears, the mortal woman could feel it physically in the air.

The children, more sensitive to changes in the atmosphere, start to sniffle. The woman reached down to hug the children whispering comforting words for the children. When she spots a massive statue in the center of the almost lightless cavern looking around, she approaches the statue depicting some long-forgotten entity with the likeness of a dragon.

The head alone is so large she could freely walk into its jaws without touching the roof of the mouth. The dragon's body rippled with muscles artfully sculpted to display the perfect balance of brute strength and grace, wings outstretched, melding into the cavern ceiling in a terrifying wingspan display. A tail stretched until it met with the cavern's far wall ending in serrated spikes spreading out like a fan from the tip and then climbing vertically up the dragon’s spine.

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The woman, bowing her head slightly to the statue and clasping her hands in desperation, prays, “Please, I do not know which deity you may be or were, yet if you still live, you are my family's last hope, they are coming, this lowly one asks that you guard and protect the children until they can carry their weight…” putting the children in the slight spacing between the dragon’s chest and the ground between its forelimbs. She pulls a black ring out from around her neck, and after a blue flash of light, she puts it around the boy’s neck. The woman walking over to the girl does the same but with a white ring. Finished putting the rings around on the children, she departs hastily. The woman pulls another ring out from her bosom, admiring the worn ring with a crack running through the center of the ring, choking back a sob.

The woman sprints back up the stairs and through the hallway to the antechamber. To find she was too late. The older man tossed like a potato sack onto the ground before her, with a sword sticking through his stomach and a dagger in his side. The woman screams a horrible wail of anguish, lifting both hands.

She begins a chant putting her long-retired skills to work after nearly twenty years of peace. The man sneers, leaning forward, sword arm bent slightly; he dashes so quickly that dust scatters into the air. When the dust clears, he stands behind the woman, her head falling on the floor, blood forming a pool where her head used to be.

All the while, in the cavern, the "statue" is throbbing with power. A faint bestial roar passes through the air. The hunter who left the dead woman where she died ventures deeper into the temple, going down the hall and stairs into the same cavern the woman left her children, who are now sobbing and crying out for their parents.

As the man walks into the cavern filled with mana, he starts to smile a grotesque smile that could compete with even Liche in ugliness. He approaches the sound of the children’s crying and stops as the sculpture comes into view. Letting out a low whistle in appreciation, he moves closer to the children when he suddenly stops and listens to the slow pulsing vibrations running through the sculpture.

The statue emits an ear-piercing CRACK, the right foreleg cracks continuing up and down the dragon's body, akin to a frozen lake cracking under too much weight, revealing underneath stone scales that are dark violet. The sound travels over the dragon's back and up to the neck and head. To suddenly stop, an eerie quiet leaves only the children’s quiet sobbing and the hunter's strenuous breathing audible.

But if you listen closely, you may hear the sound of a heart beating. “Thump tha Thump, thump tha thump” continues as the area's mana swirls into a whirlpool leading into the dragon's maw. The man’s legs start quaking while he mumbles,

“No one ever said anything about dragons….” Not even an A-ranked hunter would survive such an encounter.

The dragon’s now free front leg lifts, moving protectively in front of the children, who are now hysterically screaming between sobs.

The rest of the rock encasing the dragon’s body explodes, showering the cavern with shards of stone.

The hunter standing there looking at the dragon with a terrified expression no longer has life in his eyes, his chest full of holes he collapses. The children, however, were safely shielded by the massive foreleg and paw in front of them like a guardian beast. Listening to the sobbing of the children, the dragon’s head turned to them, piercing them with one eye with a diameter longer than the children's height.

“You, whom I have received a charge, what are your names” The children looking up into the dragon's eye, looked at each other, then the boy, the first to stand straight using the full six years of growth he has to maximum effect, states with an iron tone that no six-year-old should have “My name is Ruren, she is my sister Cora.”

The dragon turned his eye onto the silver-haired sister, then back to the black-haired brother and spoke: “My name is Virtus, the one known as Chaos.” The cave shook at the rumbling of his voice, unsettling thousands of years of dust.

When he finished speaking, the dragon began to shrink, first getting smaller when he was about the height of an average human.

He began to change hind legs, becoming more human-like and slightly taller, forelegs shrinking and paws turning into feet, then into hands. Then the snout shortens into a human’s face, his head growing hair a dark shade of violet, with similarly colored reptilian eyes.

Turning to look at the children,” It has been a while since I last roamed free in our realm. Would you two like to join me? For the chance to become more than you are now? To gain power that you could not even dream of?" The children looking at the self-proclaimed powerhouse with nothing left for them, follow behind him. The lack of corpses on the way outside the temple makes the bloodstains even more striking.