"They should have known… Looking back it was obvious wasn't it?". The man sighed with a sorrow so profound that even in the middle of the end of quite possibly every life that Theloniaum had ever known, the sound seemed to carry in the wind.
He'd started off a boy, became a man, and from man he grew to be a hero. Even in the midst of despair the hero persevered, fighting against all odds to become a living legend. Yet, while his legends were spoken by warriors around the campfire and sung about in the lilting tongue of the elves and whispered with lingering fear by the demons, it wasn't the most profound period in his long long life to the man. No, to the man, it was the distant past that defined his soul, nay his entire being and very existence. The ember that preserved in the endless cold and grew to the towering flame that outshone the sun.
To the others he was invincible, the final light in the dark of the night, but only he could tell, only he could possibly know that while the legend may live he was more uncertain than even the boy he had once been. Only that towering flame of devotion, forged in that long lost past kept him afloat. Steady despite the man's many failures kept the darkness at bay.
Too many things had changed, too many people had been torn apart, with families and ecosystems alike forever broken due to allegiance, lies, deceit and so much more. He was a legend amongst the many but understood by very few, and even that small consolation seemed as good as gone now.
Feeling a blaze burst to life in the back of his mind where he communicated with some of his last remaining family using techniques lost to all in the grinding hand of time, he grinned.
It wasn't a grin of happiness, nor was it a grin of determination. It seemed to possess no particular emotion but if you peered close enough or were one of the few lucky enough to see such a sight before and live to tell the tale you would know it was nothing more than a signal.
Finally deciding to make one last gambit he stood, facing the sight of his own personal hellscape filled with broken bodies and ruined landscapes and seeing all the familiar sights of his memory being destroyed and desecrated by a force no one was ready for. He took in all these sights and so much more while the grin never left his face.
He looked up, his eyes viewing a scene that no normal being could hope to ever perceive. "I guess this was how it was always going to be", he chuckled, this time showing the first real trace of emotion on his face in what felt like an eternity.
Slowly, he walked through the carnage, his presence growing a fold with every step before all at once he stopped and looked up again. "The Heavens seem to have forsaken us, in that case I shall let the dragon of destruction and master of death awaken once more. For neither the heavens above it beyond will save you from the wrath you have reawoken." the legend muttered, and yet the world around him shook and seemed to strain to contain his figure. With one last glance he took a step and vanished to the heavens above to begin his war path for the last time, one way or the other.