The fire blazed on and on, bubbling stone, heating the entire room. Many heartbeats later, fire still flowing, Hephaestus heard in his mind, Thank you.

Confusion stole the remaining breath from the dragon—confusion that lasted only an instant before a chill began to creep into the air around him, began to seep through his red scales. Hephaestus didn’t like the cold. He was a creature of flame and heat and fiery anger, and the high frosts bit at his wings when he flew out of his mountain abode in the wintry months.

But this cold was worse, for it was beyond physical frost. It was the utter void of emptiness, the complete absence of the heat of life, the last vestiges of Crenshinibon spewing forth the necromantic power that had forged the mighty relic millennia before.

Icy fingers pried under the dragon’s scales and permeated his flesh, leaching the life-force from the great beast.

Hephaestus tried to resist, growling and snarling, tightening sinewy muscles as if trying to repel the cold. A great inhale got the dragon’s inner fires churning, not to breathe forth, but to fight cold with heat.

The crack of a single scale hitting the stone floor resounded in the dragon’s ears. He swiveled his great head as if to view the calamity, though of course, he couldn’t see.

But Hephaestus could feel … the rot.

Hephaestus could feel death reaching into him, reaching through him, grasping his heart and squeezing.

His inhale puffed out in a gout of cold flame. He tried to draw in again, but his lungs would not heed the call. The dragon started to swing his head forward, but his neck gave out halfway and the great horned head bounced down onto the floor.

Hephaestus had perceived only darkness around him since the first destruction of the Crystal Shard, and now he felt the same inside.