Rohan charged toward the thrashing dragon, desperation fuelling each stride. His boots pounded against the ice, a dangerous mistake. The beast whirled, its remaining eye locking onto him. Jaws snapped shut where he'd stood a heartbeat before as Rohan pivoted, using the dragon's blinded side to slip beneath its bulk. He scrambled toward the cavern wall, hammer already glowing with gathered light.

"This had better work," he growled.

Both hands clenched the haft as he swung. The hammer struck the wall with a peal like a splitting mountain. Light erupted from the impact, cracks spiderwebbing through the ice. The entire cavern groaned. Again. Again. Each blow sent shockwaves up his arms. Crystalline shards rained down as the fractures spread, pulsing with radiant energy. His muscles screamed; sweat froze on his brow. But he couldn't stop.

Thud. Thud.

The dragon's footsteps vibrated through the floor. Rohan raised the hammer for another strike.  White-hot agony ripped down his back. Claws shredded steel and flesh alike, sending him crashing to his knees. Blood pooled beneath him, steaming against the ice. The armour had spared his life, just. Behind him, the dragon loomed, its breath frosting the air with victory.

 

Rohan’s scream tore through the cavern as claws raked his back. Through the blur of pain, he saw the dragon’s maw lunge. He rolled. Teeth snapped shut on empty air, frost blooming where they struck. Gasping, Rohan ripped away the ruined armour, the relief of its weight hitting the ground short-lived. His hammer lay nearby, half-buried in ice. He snatched it up, barely dodging the tail that whipped past his head. Blood slicked his spine. His vision swam. He wouldn’t last much longer. The dragon loomed, its chest pulsing with that familiar, deadly glow, ice breath building in its throat. Rohan tightened his grip, the hammer’s divine light flaring in answer. Not at the beast. At the wall. He drew back, muscles screaming, and hurled the hammer like a comet.

It struck the fissure with a peal of thunder. For a heartbeat, silence. Then the world unmade itself. The crack exploded upward, racing to the ceiling. Stalactites shattered. Boulders crashed like falling stars. The dragon’s wings beat uselessly as the avalanche found it, ice met stone, stone met scale. A final, unearthly shriek cut through the chaos as the beast was buried alive. Rohan staggered through the maelstrom, dodging death by inches. The cavern groaned, its spine broken. Somewhere beneath the rubble, the dragon’s breath flickered, trying desperately to fight its fate, failing to stop what the heroes had promised to do, before it was snuffed out.

 

For a fleeting moment, Rohan exhaled, a shuddering breath that carried the weight of battles fought and prophecies undone. The endless winter would never come. They had seen to that.

"We did it." His voice cracked as he turned toward where Ayla lay. The words tasted like ash.

"It's over. We stopped…"

The stillness answered him. No flutter of breath. No rise of her chest. Only the quiet that comes after the last note fades. Rohan's knees struck the ice. Pain lanced up his ruined back, but it was distant now, drowned beneath the roar of blood in his ears. The dragon's final cries had faded beneath the mountain's collapse. Somewhere above, the cavern groaned its last. Ice sighed. Stone wept. Rohan bowed his head, and a smile touched his lips. Not of joy, but of weary victory, as the world collapsed around him into darkness.