When Tiamat Turns Battles Real

Your arm shakes as you strike. The impact runs up your bones. Your enemy.

Your battle-brother is at your side, back to back, like always. You know this fight.

It’s you or it. Then he stiffens. Not wounded. Not falling. Still.

Stone climbs his boots. His grip locks. His eyes fix on something

you can’t look at. You pull. Your hands slip. Stone is cold. You thought you

knew this battle. But this time, it’s real. This is Tiamat. Before games,

people believed she was the sea itself. They said fights didn’t end with

victory. They ended when bodies stopped moving. That’s why no one fought her.