The Dragon's Breath
"Sssssss..." She drew in a long breath. But the important part wasn't the air itself—it was the way she inflated her chest, carving out space inside her. What flooded into that expanded cavity wasn't oxygen but pure mana.
From her Dragon Heart came an endless torrent, and she gathered every drop, then gathered more. The space filled in an instant. She forced it down anyway, stacking layer after layer until a crushing weight settled inside her ribs. Even though mana had no physical form, she kept compressing it until it began to exert one. The clump that had once been no larger than a mote of dust swelled—from the size of a bean to the size of a fist.
As the mass grew, the others started to feel it too. They couldn't sense Serpina's otherworldly mana, yet instinct screamed that something was coming. Something that would end the fight the moment it finished preparing.
"Stop her! Stop her!" the Liberation Faction leader bellowed. The shout was pointless. Everyone had already begun casting. Reinforcements scrambled to prepare their own spells. They felt the ominous aura rolling off Serpina, but knowing it was on their side filled them with absolute confidence.
In the end, none of it mattered.
"It's… being absorbed?"
Every offensive spell hurled at her, every defensive barrier raised to block them—anything that came near her lost its shape and dissolved back into raw mana. That mana was then sucked straight into Serpina, feeding the growing mass.
"Wait. This phenomenon…" The Liberation Faction elf narrowed his eyes. It looked familiar. No, he'd read about it. His memory finally dredged up the passage from the elves' ancient histories—the dragons, the benefactors of the elf race.
"D-dragon?! How?! I thought they were only legends…!" The elf's face twisted in horror. Even if half the old stories were true, the creature before them was something they could never hope to oppose.
"No, that's impossible. Things like that can't exist…!" He shook his head and kept firing anyway, half in despair. Every spell only added to her power.
The leader realized they couldn't interrupt the attack. He opened his mouth to order a retreat, but it was already too late.
Serpina gave the colossal mass direction. That was all it needed. The mana had grown so vast that the word "enormous" felt pathetic. It had already surpassed the realm of ordinary magic.
KWAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!
A breath erupted from Serpina's mouth. Silver mana the exact shade of her hair swept forward with cataclysmic force… and then everything went white.
When she opened her eyes again, the world had been bleached. The forest that should have glowed with blue light was now frozen solid. Suspended water vapor glittered in the air like diamond dust. Every surface within sight had been painted the same blinding white.
Even this was an act of consideration. While firing, she had sensed Narel's mana threaded through the land and dialed the breath's power down to the absolute minimum. Had she unleashed it at full strength, the magical concealment Narel had fought so hard to maintain would have been destroyed.
The enemy mages, of course, received no such mercy.
……
A frigid silence descended. Everyone capable of making sound had become an ice statue. The ones who had turned to flee, the ones still chanting with arms raised, the ones cowering behind barriers—every last one of them frozen exactly as they had been, robbed of all warmth.
A single gust of wind blew through. It carried the kind of bone-deep cold usually reserved for the middle of winter. Those who could still shiver were the lucky ones. The statues simply shed icy flakes that the wind carried away. The sight looked disturbingly like their very existence was being shaved off and scattered. The survivors shuddered for an entirely different reason.
Crack. Craaaack.
The sound of something rigid being forcibly twisted cut through the quiet. All eyes turned. One of the ice statues was shaking violently. Then the shell shattered, crumbling to the ground. Out stepped Kurta, leader of Wolf Fang.
Several others followed, breaking free from their icy prisons. The strongest mages, or those lucky enough to have cast cold-resistant defenses. The biggest reason, however, was that Serpina had deliberately weakened the breath for Narel's sake. The fact that she remained in human form instead of her true dragon shape had also drastically reduced its power.
"Did we… survive?" Kurta stared down at his own body, dazed. The memory of his bones—and even the mana inside them—freezing solid refused to fade. It hadn't been an illusion. Those who hadn't escaped really had frozen completely. He himself could have joined them. He had accepted death the instant he saw that silver torrent burst from her mouth.
Judging by Serpina's casual attitude now, that strike hadn't even been at full power.
"Ahem. Hm. Ah. It's been a while, so it feels a little awkward," Serpina said, as if she'd simply strained her voice at karaoke instead of turning a battlefield into a glacier.
Kurta understood perfectly. The moment this woman had shown up, the fight had already been over. If they wanted to assassinate the leader, they should have finished before she arrived. They had moved as fast as they could, hoping to end it before reinforcements came. But even that had been too slow. They should have pressed the attack harder, even if it meant risking Narel's escape. They hadn't. So they lost.
Kurta raised both hands.
"Cough, cough… I surrender. Do whatever you want with the rest."
His own subordinates immediately protested.
"What the hell are you—ugh—talking about?! You think surrendering will save us?!"
"Then you fight and win."
"……!"
Kurta's blunt reply shut every mouth. They looked around at the field of white and the countless ice statues. Less than ten percent of their forces had survived. Even without Serpina, they didn't have the numbers to fight the reinforcements. The cold had frozen more than their bodies—it had frozen their will to resist.
Thud.
The frozen arm of the Liberation Faction elf—who had kept attacking until the very end—broke at the elbow and dropped to the ground. His face was locked in an expression that looked like equal parts rage and tearful denial. The final fate of someone who had carried grand dreams and rebelled against his own leader.
That empty sight was the final blow.
"Damn it… Shit!"
One by one, hands rose in surrender.
Serpina glanced at Negin. "What are you waiting for? I'm not supposed to round up the prisoners too, am I?"
"Huh? Oh… right." Negin issued orders to her mages, but kept sneaking glances at Serpina. Had she really seen what she thought she saw? It was almost impossible to believe, even with the icy wind still biting at her skin. The difference between before and after Serpina's arrival was simply too vast.
Rounding up the remnants didn't take long. Their will to fight was completely gone, and there weren't many left anyway.
"Um… we've secured all of them," Negin reported, fidgeting.
Hearing that uncharacteristically timid tone, Serpina let out a small laugh. "What's with that voice? It doesn't suit you at all. Talk normally, like you always do."
"Ah… yeah. Okay."
Telling someone who had just witnessed a dragon's breath to act normal was roughly the same as asking someone with a gun to their head to crack jokes. Even knowing the trigger would never be pulled, it wasn't easy. Still, when told to do something, you did it.
"Ahem. So… what are you going to do now? We're heading back…" Negin asked.
"Go ahead. I'll stay and talk with Narel for a bit."
"With the leader? Hmm…" Negin hesitated. The original plan had been to bring Narel straight back to Shinsi. But if Serpina wanted to speak with her, they would need to adjust.
"Can I stay too?"
"You? Sure, why not. It's not exactly a secret conversation… I think?" Serpina tilted her head. As far as she was concerned there was nothing to hide, but she couldn't speak for Narel. Ah, whatever. It would work out.
The Alliance reinforcements dragged the bound Liberation Faction mages away, leaving Serpina, Narel, Negin, and Lee Hogwang behind.
Serpina pointed at the muscular old man. "By the way, who's this guy?"
"First time meeting him? This is our branch manager."
"Nice to meet you! Name's Lee Hogwang!" The old man grinned brightly and started to offer a handshake, then noticed his hand was still covered in blood from his fight with Kurta. He chuckled awkwardly and withdrew it.
After the short introductions, they waited quietly.
"Mmm…" Narel stirred. They had expected her to sleep much longer, but she woke sooner than anticipated. Maybe the ground hadn't been very comfortable. She blinked sleepily, looking around, then froze when her eyes landed on Serpina.
"Benefactor…!"
She threw herself into Serpina's arms, burying her face against her chest and rubbing it back and forth like a spoiled child. "I missed you… I missed you so much… for such a long, long time…"
The sight was completely at odds with the dignified leader Negin and Lee Hogwang had always known. While the two of them stood there stunned, Serpina simply patted the half-sobbing girl on the back.
"Yeah. I missed you too."
Once Narel had calmed down a little, Serpina asked, "But was it really something to miss that badly? Ten years is long, sure, but for you and me it's not exactly a lifetime, is it?"
"…No."
"Hm?"
"It's not ten years. It's been a thousand years."
"…Huh??"
And so, Narel's story began.