The dust raised by the previous confrontation slowly settled on the shattered cobblestones of Marseille, forming a grayish veil that clung to the smoking ruins. Peter, kneeling amidst the debris, felt the metallic taste of blood invading his mouth. His split lips let a dark red stream flow that trickled down his powerful jaw, each drop tracing scarlet furrows on his golden scales now dulled by pain.

The air burned his lungs with each labored breath. His broken ribs protested under the strain, sending atrocious pangs throughout his torso. But it was his eyes that betrayed his condition the most: those golden orbs, once filled with the natural arrogance of noble dragons, now reflected only helpless rage mixed with a growing terror he refused to admit.

With a trembling hand, soiled with his own blood, Peter painfully straightened up. His clawed fingers clenched, leaving deep marks in the broken stone where he braced himself. Every movement was torture, every gesture a challenge thrown at his battered body that demanded rest, flight, anything rather than continuing this lost battle.

Yet draconic pride still flowed through his veins like poison. He turned his gaze toward his fellows - about ten dragons of different ranks who watched the scene, petrified by the horror of seeing their noble superior in such a pitiful state. Their scales trembled with fear, their tails nervously whipped the air, and several of them had already instinctively stepped back, ready to flee at the slightest opportunity.

- "What are you waiting for?!" screamed Peter in a voice torn by suffering, his vocal cords scraped like broken glass.

His voice broke on the last words, revealing how close he was to collapse. Droplets of blood spurted from his throat with each syllable, splattering the ground before him.

- "Go get reinforcements from Paris! I... I'll hold him until they arrive!"

The words left his mouth like a plea disguised as an order. Peter knew, in the depths of his being, that he would never last long enough. But draconic pride was stronger than logic, more powerful than survival instinct. He preferred to die rather than admit his defeat before his subordinates.

The dragons around them exchanged panicked glances. They had all sensed the monstrous power emanating from Mordred, that aura of death that seemed to warp the air itself. Several of them trembled openly, their primitive instincts screaming one thing: flee, flee at all costs.

A young dragon soldier, his green scales still gleaming with youth, took a step toward Peter, his mouth open as if he wanted to protest, suggest a general retreat. But his superior's golden and imperious gaze silenced him before he could even utter a word.

After a few seconds of hesitation that seemed to last an eternity, they finally scattered through the ruined streets, their alarm cries echoing against the collapsed facades. Their voices merged into a cacophony of terror that spread like wildfire throughout the conquered city.

Mordred observed this pathetic scene with an amused, almost benevolent eye. A cynical smile slowly bloomed on his lips still stained with the blood of previous dragons he had massacred. In his orange eyes danced cold flames, an evil joy that was anything but human.

He took his time, savoring every second of the terror he inspired. His steps resonated on the broken cobblestones with metronomic regularity, each impact seeming to make the ground tremble beneath his feet. His blade, still dripping with draconic hemoglobin, lazily dragged at his side, scraping the stone and leaving behind a dark red trail.

- "You know, Peter," he began in an almost conversational voice, "I admire your determination. Really. Staying on your feet despite your broken ribs, despite your punctured lungs, despite this internal hemorrhage that's slowly killing you... it's admirable."

He stopped a few meters from the dying dragon, slightly tilting his head as if studying a particularly interesting specimen.

- "But you know what fascinates me most? It's that gleam in your eyes. That little flame of fear you're desperately trying to hide. You're finally beginning to understand, aren't you? You're realizing that you're going to die here, alone, far from your precious kin."

Mordred's words insinuated themselves into Peter's mind like sharpened blades, each syllable rekindling his growing terror. The noble dragon felt his legs wobble, no longer just because of his wounds, but under the weight of this implacable truth that imposed itself upon him.

Mordred resumed his march, each step amplifying his prey's anguish.

- "Well, it's time to finish this," he finally declared, raising his blade in a fluid and deadly gesture.

Peter grimaced, his jaws contracting until his teeth cracked. His scales bristled under the effect of a desperate adrenaline surge, the last spasm of an organism that refused to accept death. In this ultimate attempt at survival, pushed to his final limits, he brutally released all his elemental magic.

The air around him suddenly began to swirl, first in timid spirals, then in increasingly violent vortexes. A gigantic tornado emerged from nothingness, sucking into its gaping maw everything that lay around: dust, rubble, metal debris, glass fragments, corpses of previously slain dragons.

The wind now howled like an enraged beast, its invisible claws lacerating the air and tearing away entire pieces of already weakened facades. Tiles flew into splinters, century-old wooden beams broke like matchsticks, and even the heaviest cobblestones began to lift from the ground.

The entire city seemed to hold its breath before trembling violently under the spell's violence. The few dragons still present in the vicinity were thrown against walls by the wind's force, their cries of terror lost in the deafening roar of the artificial storm.

Peter rose into the air, carried by his own magic, his deployed wings beating furiously against the gusts he generated. He began flying in increasingly tight, increasingly fast circles, accumulating monstrous kinetic energy that made the air around him vibrate.

Each rotation accelerated him further, transforming his massive body into a living projectile of devastating power. His scales now glowed under the effect of friction, and magical sparks crackled around his outstretched claws.

Then, in a flash of pure power that briefly illuminated the entire ruined city, Peter propelled himself straight toward Mordred. He was nothing more than a living comet, a meteorite of flesh and bone animated by the rage of despair, ready to pulverize any obstacle in his path.

The impact should have been cataclysmic. The attack should have shredded any enemy, reduced even the most resistant of adversaries to pulp.

But time suddenly seemed to stretch, deform, slow until it became almost motionless.

Mordred slowly closed his eyes, his breathing becoming deeper, more controlled. His perceptions sharpened beyond what was humanly possible. He could distinctly hear each beat of his own heart, feel each molecule of air that caressed his skin, perceive the most minute vibrations that ran through the ground beneath his feet.

[Instinctive Reflexes - Activated]

The world became crystalline, of supernatural sharpness. Every detail, every nuance of movement was visible with precision that surpassed understanding. Peter, frozen in his mortal charge, advanced with the slowness of a glacier, each scale of his body perfectly distinct, each drop of blood escaping from his wounds tracing graceful arcs in the motionless air.

Mordred observed with almost scientific curiosity the expression that slowly painted itself on Peter's face. He could see terror being born in the dragon's golden eyes, that progressive and horrifying realization that his attack was going to fail, that he was already dead before even having struck.

Mordred's muscles reacted with supernatural precision, his body shifting by barely a few centimeters, just enough so that Peter's mortal charge only grazed his clothes. The air displacement generated by the dragon's passage made his hair flutter, but his skin remained intact.

His orange eyes, implacable and cold like those of a perfect predator, slowly followed Peter's body as it passed before him in slow motion. He observed each scale, each muscle tensed by effort, each drop of sweat mixed with blood that beaded on the draconic skin.

But above all, he savored that expression of pure horror that slowly distorted Peter's features. It was the precise moment when hope died, when pride shattered, when the brutal reality of defeat imposed itself on the noble dragon's mind.

Peter felt his heart skip several consecutive beats when he painfully turned his head and met those merciless orange eyes. A visceral, primitive, absolute terror seized every fiber of his being. It was a fear that transcended simple dread of death, an existential horror that questioned everything he had always believed.

He understood then, with painful clarity, that he would not survive this encounter. Worse still, he realized that Mordred was not simply stronger than him - he evolved in a completely different dimension of power, inaccessible.

In that same suspended instant, Mordred pivoted with fluid and deadly grace. His gesture was of perfect economy, of terrifying efficiency. His blade sliced through the air as it would have cut silk, meeting draconic flesh with derisory resistance.

The sword sank deep into Peter's heart, piercing the golden scales as if they were wet paper. The enchanted metal pierced the skin, crushed the muscles, exploded the blood vessels and perforated the vital organ with an ignoble sound of torn flesh and broken bones.