The room smelled of ash and old prayers.
Caelan knelt inside a chalk-drawn circle, symbols carved into the stone floor beneath his knees. Candles flickered, arranged in spirals. The air was heavy, humming with unseen tension.
The younger priest — Brother Arvain — stood over him, voice rising in rhythm, reciting lines in a forgotten tongue. His fingers trembled as he held the relic above Caelan's bowed head.
Brann stood just outside the circle, one hand on his knife. He hated this kind of thing — the unknown, the powerless waiting — but there was nothing else left to try.
Caelan's breath came shallow. His vision blurred. He felt the warmth of the candlelight turn cold.
Then, the wind changed.
Not from outside. From within the room itself — a pressure that bent the flames sideways, snuffing some, flaring others. Brother Arvain hesitated.
Then Caelan opened his eyes — and they were not his eyes.
They shimmered black, like oil beneath the moon.
Brother Arvain gasped, staggered back, but it was too late. The relic in his hand burst into flame — no spark, no smoke, just white fire that climbed his sleeve in an instant.
He screamed. Brann leapt forward, dragging the priest out of the circle, slapping the fire with his coat. The holy books ignited in a sudden burst, their pages curling into cinders.
Caelan collapsed.
The fire stopped as suddenly as it had started.
A silence fell over the chapel. Thick. Suffocating.
The scent of scorched linen and burnt dust lingered.
From the far end of the chamber, footsteps echoed. Slow, deliberate.
An older man in heavy robes stepped through the door — taller than Arvain, with eyes the color of soot and a face carved by years of sleepless nights. He leaned heavily on a staff marked with strange runes.
Brother Arvain gasped from the floor. "Master Elyas…"
The elder priest said nothing at first. He approached the circle, now smudged and blackened, and studied Caelan with a tired gaze.
Then he spoke: "This is no possession. It is a curse."
Brann frowned. "A curse? What kind?"
Elyas's mouth tightened. "A forbidden one. Twisted into the soul like a nail into bone. Old magic. Cast by someone powerful — someone with purpose."
"Why him?" Brann asked.
The priest glanced at Caelan. "That… I cannot say. But whatever its intent, it was not meant to be survived."
Caelan stirred weakly, gripping the necklace Tammer had given him. His lips moved, whispering something only he could hear.
Elyas looked to Brann. "You must leave this city. Immediately. There are eyes in the dark that may already know you've come."
Brann helped Caelan to his feet, worry etched into every line of his face.
"Then we vanish again," he muttered. "Just like always."
They walked through the thinning fog in silence.
Brann's jaw was tight, shoulders hunched like he was carrying something heavier than Caelan on his back. The burned chapel behind them still flickered with light, a warning left unspoken.
"You're quiet," Brann finally muttered, not looking at Caelan.
Caelan didn't respond immediately. He held the necklace in his palm — rat bones, bound in thread, slightly warm to the touch. It always felt warmer when the dreams tried to reach him.
Then he spoke. "We can't keep running."
Brann stopped. "We've been surviving, Caelan. There's a difference."
Caelan met his gaze. "I know. But I feel it — whatever this is, it won't stop chasing us. Even if we hide in the belly of a mountain, it'll find a way in. But this—" he held up the necklace, "—it helps. Tammer gave it to me for a reason. It stops the dreams. The whispers. Something about it fights back."
Brann stared at the necklace, uncertain. "You trust that madman?"
"I trust what it's done."
Brann exhaled, long and slow. "Then we don't run. But we move smart. Let's hear what Alric's got cooking before something else goes up in flames."
They turned down a narrow alley in the South Quarter. The smell of brine and spiced smoke drifted from hanging fish stalls and oil-lit lanterns. The Sable Tankard stood crooked between two leaning buildings, its wooden sign creaking faintly in the wind.
Inside, the warmth of drink and whispered schemes wrapped around them like old smoke. Alric waited in a back booth, already nursing a half-drunk mug.
"Took you long enough," he said, gesturing for them to sit. "You both look like you've seen the wrong side of a funeral."
Brann dropped into the seat. "Close."
Alric grunted. "Well, you're just in time. I've got a problem. One that needs shadows and quiet hands."
He reached into his coat and produced a small, folded map. Unrolled it across the table — a stretch of coastline marked in faded ink, an isle not far from Viremont.
"This place is called Gravenreach. Long abandoned. Used to be a trading post before pirates turned it into a graveyard. Thing is… there's a vault beneath the old outpost. Locked away. Rumor says it's filled with records. Ledgers. Blackmail. Gold. Things powerful men buried when they thought the world might forget."
Brann narrowed his eyes. "What's in it for us?"
Alric smirked. "Other than staying away from bounty hunters and bloodhounds? Whatever we find, we split. And if we find nothing, you'll still be far away from Lord Darrick's reach."
Caelan studied the map. A dot in the middle of nowhere — but somehow, it tugged at him. A whisper in the dark part of his mind.
"How do we get there?" Caelan asked.
Alric grinned. "Ship leaves at dawn. Quiet crew. No questions. You in?"
Brann glanced at Caelan. The boy's answer came quickly.
"Yes."
Brann grumbled, "Course we are."
The sea was restless.
Waves slapped against the hull of the Grey Widow, a narrow cutter with sails like ragged wings. The crew spoke little, eyes wary of the sky and sea, as if both held secrets they'd rather not know.
Brann sat at the stern sharpening a blade, eyes flicking toward Caelan every so often. The boy leaned against the rail, staring at the distant shape on the horizon. Gravenreach.
Alric stood near the captain, drinking something strong-smelling from a flask. "Storm's easing," he said. "We'll make landfall within the hour."
"Smells like ghosts," Brann muttered.
"You're in luck then," Alric smirked. "They don't eat much."
As they neared the island, the jagged cliffs and blackened trees came into view — skeletal remains of what once might've been beautiful. Time and violence had carved the island into something grim.
The Grey Widow docked at a crooked pier, half-rotted and tangled with seaweed. Just beyond, a shanty of lean-to huts and broken carts lined the beach.
Only one soul awaited them.
A fisherman.
He sat on an overturned crate, one eye clouded white, the other sharp and blue like a knife's edge. His beard was the color of slate, his hands stained with salt and age. He chewed something foul-smelling and spat it into the sand as they approached.
"Another lot of fools," the man muttered, not looking up. "Storm brings you in, greed drags you down."
Brann frowned. "You know why we're here?"
The fisherman finally glanced up. "Everyone who comes here wants the vault. The gold. The secrets. You think you're the first? You won't be the last. And you'll all feed the same bones."
Caelan stepped forward. "What happened to the others?"
The old man chuckled — a dry, humorless sound. "They found what they were looking for. And then they found something else. Something older. Hungrier."
Alric scoffed. "You mean pirates?"
The fisherman's gaze darkened. "I mean the dragon."
Silence fell.
Brann squinted. "There haven't been dragons in a hundred years."
"That's what the dead thought, too." He stood, slowly, bones creaking like old wood. "It sleeps beneath the vault. Or waits. Or watches. I don't know what it does. But it's there. And it doesn't like to be disturbed."
Alric rolled his eyes. "Old man's been drinking too much salt."
But Caelan couldn't shake the chill creeping up his spine.
The fisherman leaned close to him, and in a voice barely more than a whisper said, "It'll know you the moment you step inside."
Then he turned and walked back to the shore, disappearing behind a dune.
Brann grunted. "Friendly place."
Caelan stared up the path that led toward the ruins atop the hill.
The wind shifted. And for a moment, just a moment, it smelled like ash.
The ruins of Gravenreach lay like a corpse picked clean.
Stone buildings, half-collapsed, sat crookedly against the blackened hillside. Vines had strangled the old walls, and the sky above hung gray, heavy with a silence that felt too deep for an island so small.
Alric led them through the overgrown path with a torch, flicking it toward cracked doors and shattered windows.
"Vault entrance should be beneath the old garrison," he muttered. "According to the smugglers I paid, it's sealed, but there's a tunnel network underneath."
Brann's hand never left the hilt of his blade. "Smugglers lie. That fisherman might've been mad, but his eyes weren't wrong."
Caelan paused as they passed a collapsed archway. He squinted. "There's something here."
He knelt beside a patch of soot-stained stone. The others joined him, brushing aside dirt and brittle leaves. What emerged made their skin crawl.
Claw marks.
Deep grooves in the rock — four of them — spaced wide as a man's shoulders. They weren't chipped by blade or weather. Something heavy, sharp, and alive had carved them.
Alric's smug confidence dimmed. "Could've been an animal."
Brann raised a brow. "What kind of animal rakes stone like this?"
Further in, they found more signs. A warped iron gate torn from its hinges and blackened by fire. Bones crushed beyond recognition, littered near a collapsed tunnel mouth. Scorch marks clung to the stone like shadows.
Caelan stared into the tunnel's black throat. "It's not just stories."
They descended in silence.
The air grew colder. Dust and ash clung to their boots. The deeper they went, the more the earth changed — the stone here was glassy in places, like it had been melted and hardened again.
A chamber opened before them — wide and circular, with a broken seal on the floor. Strange glyphs lined the walls, worn from age but still pulsing faintly with a reddish glow.
Alric knelt to examine the seal. "This was no common vault. These markings—this was made to keep something in. Not people out."
Brann's voice was low. "You don't seal gold behind glyphs."
Suddenly, Caelan froze.
There — at the far side of the chamber — a massive imprint in the dust, round and clawed. It was a footprint, bigger than a man.
The wind shifted again, deep underground where no wind should exist. And somewhere beyond the tunnel wall, a rumbling sound echoed — not like stone falling.
But like something… breathing.
The path narrowed until it was barely more than a crevice in the stone. They squeezed through, single file, the only sound their own breaths and the soft clink of Alric's tools.
Then, the space opened.
Before them lay the vault.
It was enormous — a circular chamber carved directly into the mountain's roots. Gold and jeweled relics littered the floor like spilled offerings. Crates, chests, and ancient urns were stacked along the walls. A towering obelisk, cracked with age and covered in arcane symbols, stood at the room's center.
And beside it — half-curled and cloaked in shadow — was the dragon.
Its scales shimmered faintly in the gloom like black glass veined with fire. Horns twisted backward from its skull like molten iron cooled mid-pour. Its massive chest rose and fell slowly — asleep, for now.
Brann halted, stone-faced. "We're leaving. Now."
Alric grinned, eyes glittering with greed. "We'll leave. But not empty-handed. That thing hasn't moved in decades."
"You don't know that," Brann growled.
Caelan stared at the slumbering beast, his breath caught in his throat. "What if it senses us?"
Alric ignored them, already slipping between gold piles like a shadow. "Quiet hands. No noise, no light, and we walk out rich."
Brann hesitated, but Caelan gave a subtle nod. Against all instinct, they crept behind Alric, lifting what they could carry — a satchel of ancient coin, a dagger encrusted with rubies, a crown dulled by time.
The dragon didn't stir.
For a moment, it almost felt like they would make it out.
Then Alric stepped back, standing near a cracked pillar at the chamber's edge. He gave Brann a smirk — not the usual cocky grin, but something colder. Sharper.
"Sorry, old friend. But I never liked splitting treasure."
And with a swift kick, he shoved the fractured pillar.
The stone cracked with a groan, dust raining from the ceiling. Brann lunged forward — too late.
The vault trembled.
The dragon's eyes snapped open — burning emeralds in the dark.
Its nostrils flared, its body stretching like an avalanche given breath.
Alric slipped through the crevice with the satchel and vanished.
Behind him, the tunnel collapsed in a roar of dust and stone.
Brann and Caelan were trapped.
The dragon rose, towering above them, its mouth splitting open into rows of jagged, ancient teeth.
It stared at them, not as prey—but as intruders defiling its sanctuary.
Brann drew his sword slowly, eyes never leaving the beast. "If we die here," he said, voice level, "at least I get to punch that bastard Alric first if we see him in the next life."
Caelan gripped the necklace Tammer had given him. It was faintly warm against his skin.
And the dragon exhaled, its breath like the stench of burning centuries.