The man walked with an ease that felt almost foreign to him. Sometimes it felt as though his body still occasionally expected the weight of old armor or the blades that strapped to his belt.

  Instead, the only thing the man wore was a humble tunic.

  Here, in this small coastal town, there was sunlight that warmed the cobbled stones of the streets and glinted off the tiled roofs of humble homes. There was the murmur of gulls overhead, the laughter of children weaving between the market stalls and the scent of saltwater drifting in on the breeze. And the man, hands tucked casually behind him, allowed himself the indulgence of smiling as he passed familiar faces.

  People acknowledged him readily, waving and calling out to him without hesitation.

  In a past life, others greeted him because of his reputation and power.

  In this one, they greeted him because they welcomed him as one of their own.

  A vendor selling fresh fish straightened the moment he spotted him, the older man’s booming voice carrying over the crowds. “How are the girls?” he called, raising a hand in greeting.

  The man’s own smile widened, soft and honest.

  “They’re doing just fine,” he replied. “I’ll tell them you said hello.”

  The vendor nodded in satisfaction and returned to packing his morning catch, and the man continued down the row of stalls, still smiling to himself.

  This life…it was peaceful. It was comforting. Most of all, it was predictable in all the ways he had once believed impossible. Sometimes he wondered if this was all some kind of dream he had fallen into, a cruel trick that his mind was playing on him. But no illusion could have crafted the mundane perfection of this place. The clatter of crates, the chatter of locals, the vibrant colors of fruits piled in woven baskets or the familiar ache in his joints on when the air grew cold.

  This life was real, it was his and the man could not have asked for more.

  Of course, the world beyond Nozar was anything but peaceful lately. Even here, tucked against the coastline, news still drifted in like scattered debris on the tide. They had all heard of the Revolution in Easthaven and the man could not help but smile when he had learned who was leading them. That young girl had grown up so fast. Even the events of Khaitish, as impossible as they seemed to be, were true. People whispered of unrest and uncertainty, worried about how fate was shifting in ways no one could quite predict.

  But the man kept his distance from such conversations.

  Whatever storms brewed in the lands beyond this town had nothing to do with him anymore.

  His only concern this morning was getting his groceries before the midday rush, a task so ordinary it still brought him an odd sort of joy.

  Yet halfway to the baker’s stall, he stopped.

  It was subtle at first, a tightening in his chest, an instinct from old battles fought rising up again like a companion that the man had thought forgotten.

  His steps slowed and the back of his neck prickled.

  Something was wrong. Something was horribly wrong. And then the man heard it, they all did.

  A sound split the air, unmistakable and almost deafening.

  It was a roar.

  The entire marketplace froze. Conversations cut off mid-sentence. Vendors halted in place. Children stopped in their tracks. Slowly, as if compelled by some unseen force, every gaze turned upward.

  So did his.

  His blood went cold.

  There, up in the skies, were dragons. Hundreds—no, thousands—of them, their wings blotting out the sun, their roars shaking the very air. The man had seen his fair share of dragons before, but never like this.

  The man had only ever seen them chained up and starved, reduced to hollow creatures broken by the cruelty that humanity was capable of. But these dragons, they moved with power, with fury, with freedom in every beat of their wings. Their scales were no longer dull, they were vibrant, catching the sunlight like shards of living metal.

  The man had fought wars. The man had faced death so many times he had lost count. Yet nothing—nothing—had ever frozen him the way this sight did. For the first time, the man understood why the stories of old had spoken of dragons with awe, with fear and even sometimes with worship.

  Only then did he understand why the world had once bowed before the might of Linemall.

  For a heartbeat, silence held the marketplace in a suffocating grip. They all stood there suspended, no one dared to breathe, as though any motion might provoke the creatures that had begun to flood the skies above. They were so far away yet that did not change the looming threat that every living soul felt when their eyes fell upon those great beasts.

  Then the trembling began.

  At first it was faint, a subtle shift beneath the soles of his boots. But within seconds it grew into a violent rumble, the very stones of the street shuddering as though something immense pressed down upon the earth.

  The man staggered a little, his hand shooting out to brace himself and regain his balance.

  The silence was quickly shattered by the sound of screams.

  They rose in sharp, panicked waves as the ground shook harder, spreading through the marketplace with the inevitability of wildfire. The man’s gaze snapped toward the far end of the street, and his breath caught in his throat. Emerging from beyond the first row of homes were massive shapes; scaled hulking bodies they were, with reptilian wings and long muscular tails cutting through the air with lethal force.

  Among them were wyverns, huge and savage, their movements raw with a ferocity he had only seen in beasts pushed to the edge.

  Even in this distant coastal town, nobles with wealth and arrogance had kept draconic creatures enslaved, beaten into submission, chained in courtyards and cellars. The man had always despised the practice, but even in his darkest imaginings he had never pictured what it would look like when such creatures broke free.

  Now he saw it.

  One enormous dragon slammed onto the cobblestones, the impact cracking stone and sending a shockwave through the street. Its scales glinted like molten steel, its chest expanding as it drew in a breath before unleashing a roar so powerful it rattled the shutters of the nearest homes. The beast rose onto its hindlegs, towering over the town, clipped wings half-spread in a display of unrestrained fury.

  What was going on?

  How was this even possible?

  But there was no time to question it.

  The dragon dropped back to all fours and surged forward, tearing through the marketplace with terrifying speed. Stalls splintered beneath its weight. Crates exploded into clouds of debris. People scattered in panic, many moving too slowly, too stunned to fully comprehend the danger.

  The man’s instincts roared to life.

  “Get out of the way!” he shouted, his voice cutting through the chaos.

  Some heard him. Others didn’t.

  The dragon plowed through the crowd with no hesitation, its massive body carving a brutal path through the narrow streets. The man moved to the side quickly as the beast barreled forward, the ground trembling beneath each crushing step.

  But then, he saw her.

  A little girl stood directly in the monster’s path, frozen, her tiny body shaking as she stared up at the oncoming titan. Her parents were nowhere near her, trapped by the press of fleeing bodies, unable to reach her.

  The man didn’t think.

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  He lunged.

  His legs propelled him forward with a force he barely felt, his body moving faster than thought, faster than fear. He swept the girl into his arms and threw himself sideways, using every ounce of strength to push off the ground. They hit the cobblestones hard, rolling just as the dragon thundered past, its tail whipping through the air where they had been seconds earlier. The girl’s parents rushed to them the moment they could, pushing through the crowd, with her mother collapsing to her knees as she yanked her child into a desperate embrace. Tears streamed down her face, her arms tightening around the girl with ferocity born of sheer terror. She looked up at the man, gratitude shining through the fear in her eyes.

  “Thank you… thank you,” she whispered again and again, her voice trembling against the chaos unfolding around them.

  All around them, draconic shapes—wyverns, dragons and dragonborn, all creatures of scale and talon—rushed past through the narrow avenues with single-minded urgency. And strangely, despite the destruction, many of them ignored the humans entirely. They focused only on escape, heading towards the open waters. Their movements were wild and unrestrained. But not in the slightest were their actions malicious.

  In the midst of all the chaos, the man could not deny it.

  There was something beautiful about it.

  Not the carnage, but the desperation, the raw instinct to claim freedom after a lifetime of enslavement.

  The man could see it in the way some of them moved, not lashing out at the innocent but merely running, running as though for the first time in their lives they were allowed to. Because for some of them that was very well the case.

  There was power in that kind of liberation.

  A tragic beauty, sharpened by two hundred years of slavery.

  But freedom did not matter to all of them.

  To some, only vengeance did.

  A new wave of screams tore through the air, this time not of shock but of horror. The man whipped his head toward the sound and felt his stomach drop. At the far end of the street, another dragon perched atop the stone ledge of a merchant’s roof, its chest swelling with heat. Flames blossomed in its throat, glowing bright enough that the sky reflected the color.

  “Move!” someone cried but it was far too late.

  The great beast exhaled.

  Fire swept across the street like a curtain of living light. People ran, stumbled and fell. Some vanished beneath the blaze before they could even scream. Heat washed over the man’s skin from where he stood, scorching and merciless. The dragon’s roar followed, filled with a hatred so deep it shook him to his core.

  Rage.

  That was what the man saw in its eyes when it turned toward its next target. Not freedom. Not release. Simply pure, unfiltered hatred. Some among the draconic kind had no intention of simply fleeing for their lives. They had suffered too long, to allow this moment to pass without bloodshed.

  To them, this was justice.

  It was a reckoning, a chance to make humanity feel even the smallest measure of the torment they had endured.

  The man looked around, his eyes darting frantically before finding it. His hand closed around the nearest weapon, finding a fishing spear that had fallen from an overturned stall. The wooden shaft was slick with seawater, its metal tip dulled by years of use.

  It could hardly be considered a proper weapon.

  But it would have to do.

  Beneath his skin, something deeper stirred.

  Magic.

  Dormant for years, buried beneath the life he had chosen, but still very much alive. It surged up his spine like a breath igniting within him, familiar and fierce. He tightened his grip on the spear as power hummed through his veins.

  He had to protect them, anyone who could not protect themselves.

  Drawing back his arm, the man hurled the spear.

  It shot forward with force far beyond anything an ordinary man could muster, the very air compressing around it in a sharp, sudden burst. The spear became a streak that cut through smoke and flame, flying straight and true.

  It struck the dragon squarely in the skull.

  The creature’s roar cut off. Its body spasmed, wings faltering. For a long, suspended moment, it stood frozen—then it collapsed, its massive form crashing against the street in a loud thud.

  The man exhaled shakily. He might not have cared for the Kingdom…but this was his town. These were his people. And he would defend them from anything that threatened them.

  Yet the victory felt hollow.

  Because across the Outer Cities, more dragons rampaged, some in blind fury, others driven by hatred too old to name. Buildings crumbled. Flames spread. The air filled with screams, roars, and the weight of catastrophe.

  The man knew he needed to act.

  He needed to do something—anything—to slow the destruction.

  But then a single thought broke through the chaos.

  His family.

  A terror unlike any he had felt before slammed into him, colder and sharper than the fear of death.

  His wife.

  His daughter.

  Both of them were all alone in that small cobblestone cottage by the shore, waiting for him to return from the marketplace. Without another thought, the man turned and ran, shoving past panicked crowds; ignoring the chaos, the fire, the destruction and the screams.

  He ran towards the only thing that mattered.

  The man had sprinted across battlefields before, had pushed his body to its limits in the heat of war, but never—not once—had he ever run like this. His legs carried him with a desperate, almost savage speed, every stride fueled by the surge of magic pouring through his muscles. His heart hammered violently against his ribs, so loud and fast it drowned out nearly every other sound. Panic pulsed through him like a second heartbeat, sharp and all-consuming, until it seemed the world had narrowed to one single thought.

  His family was in danger.

  Wind tore at his face. Smoke thickened the air. And still he ran, faster, harder, refusing to let even a breath slow him.

  Just as he crossed the final rise overlooking the shore…

  His steps faltered. His breath hitched. And the man felt his heart begin to break.

  The cottage, their cottage—the home he had built with his own hands, brick by brick, the place where he had held his daughter as a newborn, where he had watched his wife laugh as the morning sun spilled through the windows—lay in ruins.

  Flames devoured the wooden beams.

  The stone walls had collapsed inward, the once-sturdy structure reduced to rubble and ashes.

  The man stopped walking.

  He couldn’t move. His mind refused to understand what his eyes were seeing.

  Then the scream tore out of him, ripped from the deepest part of his soul.

  Tears blurred his vision as he stumbled forward, the weight of grief so sudden and crushing it nearly brought him to his knees.

  They hadn’t heard it…they hadn’t heard any of it.

  Because in her love, in his wife's determination to protect their child from the influence of the Church and everything the man hated about Nozar, his wife had placed a spell around their home, an enchantment of silence through her Divinity.

  It had been a spell to keep the world out.

  They would never have heard the dragons, never have even known the danger.

  Not until it was already upon them.

  Not until it was far too late.

  “No… no, no…” The man choked on the words, rushing into the inferno. Flames licked at his skin, blistering and burning, but he didn’t care.

  The man tore through the rubble, throwing aside stones still glowing with heat. And then he saw her.

  His wife lay still, her body crumpled in a pool of dark, drying blood. The woman he had loved since the moment he met her…the woman who had changed his world…was gone.

  His knees nearly gave out.

  A sound escaped him; raw and broken.

  His daughter.

  But where...

  Where was—

  Then the man found her.

  She was alive.

  But barely.

  Her small body was covered in deep, ragged claw marks, her breaths shallow and wheezing. Blood soaked her clothes.

  For a moment the man could only stare, shaking his head, refusing to believe what he was seeing.

  This was his baby girl.

  Just yesterday she had sat at their kitchen table, animatedly telling him how she knew she could make it into Easthaven's Magic Tower. About all the adventures she had wanted to embark on and all the places she wished to see.

  Now, she lay here dying.

  The man fell to her side, scooping her gently into his arms as she fought to breathe. When her eyes opened and she saw him, she reached for him with trembling fingers.

  He caught her hand immediately.

  “Hey—hey, listen to me now,” the man whispered, voice breaking as flames crackled around them. “You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be alright, baby girl. Just stay with me. Stay with me!”

  But even he could hear the panic choking his own words.

  She clung to him, crying, gasping in agony. She couldn't even find the words, clawing for breath that was quickly fading. Her body shook with each second, each passing moment becoming a battle that she was clearly losing. He held her tighter, as if he could anchor her to life through sheer will.

  “I know it hurts,” he sobbed. “But you gotta stay with me, Andrea. You're going to be okay. We need to get you some help. Stay with me now.”

  Then her breathing hitched.

  Her eyes fluttered.

  The man saw it, the exact moment the light within them flickered out.

  Her body went still.

  “Baby girl…no. NO! Don’t do this to me…” the man whispered, horror blooming through him like poison. “Please don’t do this to me…”

  But there was nothing he could do.

  So the man held his child’s lifeless body to his chest, rocking back and forth amid the fire and smoke, there was nothing he could do but accept the day his whole world slipped away.

  ? AMAZON LAUNCH: Low-Fantasy Occultist: An Isekai LitRPG Adventure ?

  by Persimmon

  When magic is dying in one world, sometimes you get a second chance in another.

  Nicholas Crowley is used to scraping by in a world where magic is dying. The modern age has left the arcane behind, and the few remaining practitioners fight over scraps like starving dogs. But that's no longer his problem.

  While performing a ritual, something interferes, and his soul is ripped from his body. He awakens during the Class ceremony as Nick, a kid living on the frontier of the Green Ocean—a seemingly infinite expanse of trees brimming with rare ingredients and powerful creatures.

  Mana is abundant here, and the omnipresent System allows for feats he had once thought impossible. Nick receives the rare Occultist class, granting him access to forbidden knowledge and dark powers.

  And yet, not everything is as rosy as it seems. Legends walk the land, and Gods require their due.

  Will his experience as an Occultist be enough to navigate this wild new world?

  A reincarnation isekai LitRPG perfect for fans of The Beginning After the End!