Sword of the Red Dragon (Akatsuki no Yona)

Prologue

"You are too late, Suzaku..."

The firebird lowered her head at the dragon's words, the untamed flames of her wings dimming. Surely not. Had it been so long since the Red Dragon left the heavens for a life in the dirt and muck of the mortal world?

The four dragons stood around the reflecting pool that let them see what was happening in the mortal realm without having to travel there, and each of them had their heads bowed. Sorrow was etched in their scaled features, and pearly tears dripped into the pool, creating ripples across the reflected scene.

On the water's surface, four men were gathered around a bed, grief that mirrored the dragons' ravaging each of their faces. The human body of the dragon king laid like an abandoned husk on the bed. Hiryuu...

"That is not possible," Suzaku said, landing on Ryokuryuu's broad head, her talons latching onto one of his antlers. "Days have passed. Humans are not so frail—"

"Silence, firebird," snarled the white dragon, lifting his head to glower at her. "Days have passed here, but in the realm of men, it has been many years. He aged. He died."

Oh. What an odd, impossible concept. Dragons did not die.

Suzaku brushed a wing against Ryokuryuu's head as he shuddered, trying to comfort him although such things were foreign to her. A human's life was like the flash of a butterfly's wing to her, pretty and attractive for a moment but so brief that it hardly mattered. But surely Hiryuu would have lasted longer than a normal human. He was a former dragon, after all.

"He is gone, little one," rumbled Ryokuryuu, as if he could hear her thoughts.

"No," she said simply as a deep sorrow welled in her delicate chest, "He must not be gone. He mustn't..."

"Suzaku, dear..."

"Don't make it worse, bird," grumbled a voice from the ground. Down by the edge of the reflecting pool, the irreverent Black Tortoise, Genbu, had appeared. He was leaning against Ouryuu, as if holding up the dragon while it sorrowed. "He's gone. Let them grieve."

Oh...oh... Her wings fluttered, and she found herself drooping against Ryokuryuu's antlers. Hiryuu. She remembered long days in the fields and palaces of the heavens, playing and laughing and flying about the clear skies. They had hidden in the fires of the earth and sprang into the sky, lively and wild and free. How could such a soul be gone without the world breaking?

The hollowness grew within her, tearing her as the loss of her friend took hold. The feeling spread throughout her, foreign and unwanted, until it grew through her chest, up her throat, and out of her as a fiery song of anguish. She took to the air, her flames blazing around her as the wind carried her song, letting every inhabitant of the heavens know what had happened.

Her gift. Her gift was too late. She had been planning to give Hiryuu something to help him during his life as a human, but his time in the mortal world had passed too quickly. The dragons had given their blood to men to protect him while she had idled her time away.

She would not fail again. When the dragon king's blood reawakened in someone worthy, she would send her gift.

Her blazing sword would help the red dragon of the dawn once more.