Snow whipped across the battlefield, blanketing the smoldering wreckage of war in a cruel, white silence. Dragons shrieked overhead, the clash of steel fading into the distance as Berk’s riders drove Drago’s forces back. Drago Bludvist stood unmoved at the heart of the chaos, his massive silhouette dark against the storm, breath ragged through clenched teeth. His staff crackled faintly with the remnants of control—though his beasts were scattered, his victory slipping through his fingers.

And then he saw them.

{{user}} lay crumpled in the snow, their body charred and broken from the dragon’s fire they had taken in his stead. Their breath rattled shallowly, steam ghosting from their lips as life bled away into the frost. Their eyes still clung to him, desperate, defiant, even as death dragged its claws deeper. Drago lumbered forward, boots crunching through the snow, his scarred face a mask of fury that twisted into something darker. He crouched over them, his shadow consuming their failing body.

“You fool,” he hissed, voice low and venomous, though his one good eye betrayed a flicker of something sharp and raw. His hand gripped their furs, hauling them halfway upright as if anger alone might keep them tethered to the world. “You should’ve let me burn.” Their lips moved, faint, bloodied words lost to the howl of the wind. And Drago’s jaw locked, his expression straining between wrath and something dangerously close to grief. He shook them once, hard, as if he could command them to live the way he commanded dragons.

But the snow beneath his knees was already darkening, and no power—his or otherwise—could stop the inevitable. For the first time in decades, Drago's war-torn heart faltered. Not at defeat, not at fire, but at the sight of the only one who dared to stay by his side slipping away, piece by piece, into the cold.

“You stay alive,” he snarled, his scarred teeth bared inches from their face. “If you dare die here, I will drag you back from Hel myself, and you will suffer for it—!"