Talent Awakening: Draconic Overlord Of The Apocalypse

Chapter 467: • The Heart of The Storm Part Four

Alister’s foot pressed down harder, grinding the Emperor into the rubble-strewn earth as the dragon’s voice dripped with scorn.

“Falsely accused, you say?”

He gestured with one sweeping motion, his golden claw trailing through the air like a comet, as if inviting the Emperor to witness the full extent of his failure.

“Look around you.” His voice resonated like a bell. “Isn’t this world—your world—a tangible monument to your greed?”

Alister could see it all play back.

The sky above was bruised with perpetual crimson, clouds choking with ash. The air, once vibrant and full of promise, now stank of rot and despair.

The once-prosperous lands had become barren, cracked and broken like shattered glass, each inch of soil soaked with blood.

Towering spires of broken temples pierced the horizon like bones jutting from a corpse. In the distance—

“These ravaged lands,” Alister continued, stepping back to allow the Emperor to rise slightly—just enough to force him to look, to see. “This polluted air. This silence where there was once laughter. This is your legacy.”

The Emperor’s fists clenched against the shattered stone beneath him, veins bulging in his arms as he tried to rise despite the weight of his wounds. Blood dripped from his lips as he rasped out, “I had no choice!”

Alister’s gaze remained fixed, unmoved. “And yet you picked this.”

He gestured to the world around them.

The Emperor coughed again, a wet, gurgling sound echoing through the ruins. He raised his head just enough to meet Alister’s eyes. “This wasn’t the future I envisioned… it wasn’t what I hoped to achieve.”

Alister tilted his head slightly. “Oh really?” His clawed fingers flexed slightly, crackling with residual energy. “Then tell me—now that you stand knee-deep in the ash of your dreams, with your people turned to beasts and your empire a corpse—was it simply bad luck?”

He leaned down, eyes burning like twin suns. “Or was it poor decision-making?”

The Emperor couldn’t answer.

His jaw trembled. The words were there, struggling to claw their way out, but the truth choked him harder than any blade ever could.

Alister straightened, stepping away with the grace of a predator no longer interested in the chase. He gestured broadly at the destruction surrounding them.

“Every tyrant in history tells themselves the same lie. That the weight of the crown made the fall inevitable. That their choices were sacrifices made for the greater good.”

He turned to face him again.

“But deep down, you know. You weren’t a martyr. You were a coward with too much ambition and too little restraint. You thought you could rewrite fate with blood and silence the gods with fear. All because you were a war-hungry mad emperor.”

“It was never a war I wanted to be a part of!”

The Emperor’s voice suddenly erupted, gripping the blood-red soil with trembling fingers.

“I was a lord of a minor kingdom—insignificant, barely a blip on the map. My lands were raided year after year, my people slaughtered like cattle for sport. And I… I was the fool of a king who only wanted peace.”

Alister narrowed his eyes.

Then he saw it—unfolding before him not as memory, but as truth made manifest by the power in his gaze. A youthful man with soft brown hair and earnest green eyes… the Emperor, once uncorrupted, walking among the charred remains of a village, eyes hollow as he stared at the burned corpses of those he’d sworn to protect.

The Emperor continued, voice quivering now, almost human.

“I begged for peace. I brokered treaties, held banquets, offered gold, land, anything… but they only laughed. They wanted war. They wanted our blood. And I… I couldn’t let them keep butchering my people.” He coughed, blood flecking his lips. “But I had no strength. Our armies were weak. We lost battle after battle. My people whispered of my failure. My retainers began to conspire. And I…”

His voice broke.

“I had no time for my queen. No time for my son. I buried myself in scrolls, maps, anything to find a way to keep my lands from being conquered.” His fists trembled. “Until… they were assassinated. My wife. My child. Poisoned by the very retainers I trusted—men who were promised wealth and power by the same vultures I once tried to reason with.”

His eyes, bloodshot and wild, turned to Alister, almost pleading.

“I no longer wished to rule. I only wanted vengeance. And that… that was when he came to me.”

Alister’s eyes narrowed.

“A being who whispered promises. That I could make them all pay. That I could end this senseless war. That if I ruled the world—if I unified it under my banner—I could end all war. No more blood. No more conquest. No more betrayal.”

The Emperor let out a shaky, half-mad laugh.

“But there was a price. The gods who ignored my prayers? They had to die. The fools who invaded my lands, the people who fled out of fear, the comrades who betrayed me—they all had to suffer. It was justice, don’t you see? Divine, beautiful justice.”

His laughter swelled, echoing through the ruined city like a hymn of madness.

“And I succeeded!” he cried. “I rule the world now, Dragon. And look around you—there are no more wars! No more empires clashing! I brought peace! PEACE!”

He laughed harder, tears streaming down his cheeks, whether from sorrow or joy, even he didn’t know.

Alister stepped forward, shadows licking at his heels, eyes glowing with a cold, ancient light. He crouched beside the Emperor, his voice low—not a whisper, but something deeper, something that echoed in the bones.

“What is peace in chaos?” he asked softly, his breath visible in the cold air.

“What joy is found in suffering?” he continued, staring into the Emperor’s crazed, tear-streaked eyes.

“What is a world without war… where people no longer smile?”

The Emperor flinched, his expression twitching. That madness—that hollow certainty—shivered.

Alister’s voice sharpened, slicing through the madness like a blade.

“You brought silence, not peace.”

“Obedience, not unity.”

“Fear, not order.”

He stood, slowly, towering over the dying man like judgment itself.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!