Far from the struggle of sins and virtues, of heroes and villains, of the holy and unholy, there once was a single village in an unknown area, in an country unknown and uncared for by the great powers of the time.
A young boy, unremarkable for the most part, awoke to the smell of rain, the weather event had already subsided and he found himself in complete silence.
For a few moments, as the drowsiness was still strong, he thought nothing of it but it quickly became oppressive, why wasn't there any sound?
Why weren't the birds singing as they always did? What happened to the ever present sound of a branch scrapping and striking against the outside of the house?
Why wasn't there a single noise?
Feeling tense at the literal nothingness, the boy stood up from his bed and noticed that the sun wasn't shining directly into his face as he sat up.
It wasn't morning.
Why did no one wake him? Just like everyone one else, he had work to do in the fields and around the village, his parents wouldn't forget to wake him up, that was for certain.
He looked out the window, they had no glass here, meaning that the scent of the outside should have been able to enter easily and yet, he hadn't smelled what had happened.
Everything was blackened, not even ashes were left, no other houses were visible, no trees were to be seen and everything was deathly calm.
In shock, he wasn't even able to mutter a word, as his mind was in shambles, unable to understand what had happened, overworked by the endless questions in his head.
How could he have missed this? Where was everyone? Are mom and dad okay? Is it a dream? A nightmare? Why was his house fine? He really slept through this?
He walked toward the door of his home, traversing it in his entirety beforehand, finding no one else and seeing the same sight everywhere, on each side.
He stepped outside, the ground was still warm, warm enough for it to hurt.
A shadow was cast on him, he turned around and looked at what was on top of his house.
He had never seen one but this was clearly it, the legendary creature, whose family tree extended everywhere, from normal animals, magic beasts, people, monsters and even divinities.
A dragon.
Somehow, his subpar house was able to hold onto the weight of the humongous beast, its four paws laid on it, it was sitting and looking at the young boy curiously.
It was covered in white scales, although it ressembled some sort of stone more, its body was covered on blue crystals, beating with light as though they were hearts.
Majectic wings and a long, flexible neck as it moved it closer to the paralysed boy.
As it looked at the boy, it didn't feel like a creature and a human looking at each other, it had humanoid eyes, full of thoughts and intelligence, different from even the other sapient dragons, those eyes were truly exactly like that of a person.
"Boy, what is your name?" it spoke without moving its jaw at all, it had the voice of a young man, one filled with curiosity and a thirst for knowledge.
"..." he struggled to even thing straight, he struggled to even remember his name right now but faced with this beast of might, he soon found the answer.
"Iustus... My name is Iustus!" he responded, making the dragon raise his non-existent brows.
"I see, what did you do Iustus? That protected your house from my flames?" up until now, the young boy's mind had been completely clouded, unable to think rationally or evaluate the situation.
Riddled with questions he had no answers for but now, this was different, the questions remained mostly without answers but something had pushed them back, the dragon just admitted to have been the one to destroy this village, his village.
"Did... Did you kill all of the people here?" asked the boy, completey disregarding the question the dragon asked of him.
"Mmh? You have quite an attitude boy but yes, I made sure to silence everyone in a wide radius around here, only a few insects are still crawling around in the ground" responded the dragon, speaking as if it was nothing but small talk, a small inconvenience that had to be dealt with.
He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists audibly, making the dragon react.
"Oh, did you just break something? Be careful, you have to explain that little spell of yours before passing out" he pointed out casually.
"You know, there is no need to be angry about it, people come and go, same for materials such as those houses, don't break a bone over something so mundane" the dragon only kept adding oil to the fire, the fact that his voice had such a human tone, somehow made his words so much worse, making it seem like it wasn't a dreadful mythical creature but just a regular person.
Something appeared in front of the young boy's face, he didn't pay it any attention but had he, he would have seen the first ever notification written in clear words of his life, he had never gotten anything of that sort, only his status displayed in an archaic manner.
*You are experiencing Wrath, one of the seven sins harshly condemned by the God Of Control*
*Your overall power has been increased and you will experience a true taste of your powers for the duration of this feeling*
*Indulging in such sins is corrupting you*
*Your health will degrade for as long as it occuring*
He didn't read any of it for he was to focused on the abhorrent being in front of him.
"Hold on, what is that s-" the dragon was forcefully interrupted as his head was thrown up in the air.
"I knew it! You did use a spe-" as if his size and weight meant nothing, the dragon's whole body was flung into the air, still, a single flap of his wings and he landed with a loud explosion on the ground, a bit further away than the peculiar boy that was suddenly brimming with power and mana.
He held his hand forward, trying to fling a spell as if it had always been natural for the almost manaless boy from before.
"Are you trying to defy me in magic fool? I was prodigy before your bloodline was even a thing!" scowled the dragon as he slapped the pesky spell away, it blew up with tremendous force on the distance.
Opening his maw, without much telltale sign, he fired a beam of nothing but elementless, unrefined mana to demonstrate the difference between the two of them.
The boy was bloodied but still very much alive.
"Who the hell even are you? I just came here to raze this insignificant country and do as she instructed me to and I find some sort of super doped farmboy?" complained the dragon.
"You bastard..."
"Insulting me now? You can act tough since you are seemingly only lightly harmed but I know that I blew away more than ninetey percent of your HP boy, consider training your vitality up a bit" commented the dragon as he raised one of his legs, ready to crush the boy like a vulgar bug.
He met some sort of resistance however, he didn't sense a speck of energy at all, none of any kind and the boy was still unmoving, nothing was in the way and yet, he was stopped from killing him.
"No fucking way! My luck is rotten!" spat the dragon as the boy suddenly decided to act, not paying attention to what had happened, he simply let out everything he had, blowing the dragon away, far away.
He didn't hurt him at all even when giving his all and the dragon didn't feel like dealing with this any further either, making it seem as though he had just overcome a great challenge.
Or so he would maybe thought he hadn't been unconscious the second he pushed out that last attack.
That day, the heavens truly smiled down on him.