Dragon echos wispering into life

The cavern remains still. The howling angels hover above the sealed wyrm tombs, pale wings motionless, their vast chorus reduced to a low hum.

Black-gold runes peel from the tombs and turn together, pointing toward a narrow passage beneath the stone, where tangled roots choke the way.

From far below, faint dragon breath pulses through the rock. Each exhalation answers the angels' hum, marking a descending path into unseen depths.

No angel follows the indication. They stay behind as wardens over the tombs, halos burning coldly while the directional resonance gathers beneath the floor.

Dust settles around the devil's claws. The root-choked opening waits in the cavern wall, its darkness breathing once, then falling still.

The devil turns from the root-choked passage and lays his clawed hands over the nearest tomb. Arcane sight threads through every black-gold seal.

The spell passes from chamber to chamber, weighing memory, death, and the final choices each dragon made before its breath failed.

The verdict settles cleanly: none are wrongly entombed. Each spirit is guilty, though their crimes differ in scale and motive.

The examination costs the devil a measured reserve of power. Several runes dim, their gold bleeding into dull iron, and the distant breath below answers with a sharper pulse.

The angels remain fixed above the tombs, while the descending passage waits. The devil now knows the prison holds no innocent dragon among the condemned.

The devil crouches at the root-choked passage and sweeps arcane sight across its threshold, tracing pressure lines through dust, stone, and blackened roots.

The trap reveals itself a heartbeat too late. A buried sigil snaps awake, and the roots lash inward as the devil forces his way through.

The snare catches his cape and hurls a ringing shock through the passage, throwing him against the wall before the spell gutters out.

Stone plates grind shut behind him, sealing the tomb cavern away. Ahead, the passage splits around a pillar of living roots, each branch carrying a different rhythm of dragon breath.

The left branch exhales hot and steady. The right gives a colder, irregular pulse, and a narrow crack between the roots glimmers with faint blue runes, offering a third way forward.

The devil drives both clawed hands toward the branching roots. Electric force bursts through his orange scales, flooding the hot branch, cold branch, and blue-rune crack at once.

The roots convulse and blacken as the shock races along their living fibers. Every lower ward flares visibly, then breaks open, exposing one descending passage beyond the pillar.

The cost lands immediately: the discharge tears a burning line across the devil's palms, and thunder booms through the sealed stone behind him.

The hot and cold rhythms collapse into silence. Blue sparks gutter across the roots, while the opened way descends beneath a ceiling of pale, trembling stone.

The devil enters the exposed passage, burning palms held before him as arcane sight spreads through pale stone, root ash, and the newly awakened breath.

His search passes beyond the lower wards and finds a single dragon ghost hidden beneath the descending floor, coiled around a chamber of blue-black stone.

The ghost rises through the stone without breaking it, an unfinished dragon of smoke, bone-light, and translucent scales. Its empty eye sockets fix upon the devil.

A thin blue rune ignites beneath the apparition, revealing its exact position and binding the ghost visibly to the chamber below.

The devil raises his burning palms toward the blue rune. Dark crimson magic gathers between his claws, quiet as a held breath, then reaches through the apparition.

Vampire drain takes hold. A red-black current pours from the hidden witness into the devil, drawing out its strength while the bound chamber dims around them.

The ghost's smoke thins without blood or wound, its bone-light fading to a restrained ember. The blue rune bends toward the devil and yields its stored resonance.

The drain completes. Strength settles into the devil's body, while the witness remains conscious but weakened, its exact memory now exposed through the fading rune.