The cavern trembled beneath the weight of her transformation.
Arlo could do nothing but watch.
One heartbeat she was a woman, the next she was something ancient and terrifying.
Charlotte's dragon form filled the ceremonial chamber, wings brushing the cavern ceiling, scales gleaming like molten jewels.
Firelight danced across her vast frame, each movement radiating power. Her eyes burned twin suns, pinning him where he stood.
The circle beneath their feet pulsed brighter, runes crackling like lightning veins, resonating with her presence.
Arlo's knees nearly buckled.
Every instinct screamed at him to run, but his body refused. He was caught—like an insect mesmerized by the gaze of a predator.
Then, impossibly, her voice reached him.
Deeper now, reverberating through the stone, but still unmistakably hers.
"Don't be afraid. This totally normal. Nothing to worry about."
'Normal?' His chest heaved.
Nothing about this was normal.
Charlotte suddenly inhaled.
The sound felt like a mountain drawing it's breath.
And then she unleashed without warning.
The stream of fire tore from her jaws—but it was no ordinary flame.
It surged forth in a torrent of brilliant blue-white, so bright it scorched his vision, so cold it glittered like shards of ice.
Flame and frost, paradox made manifest.
It engulfed him in an instant.
Arlo's first sensation was shock.
Not heat, not burning, but cold.
A biting, crystalline cold that wrapped around his chest, his limbs, his skull.
He gasped—frost crystallized in his throat.
His breath froze before leaving his lips.
Then it changed.
The cold seeped inward, worming into his veins, and with it came something else—a force, a current, raw and alien. It flooded through him like liquid lightning, burrowing deeper, pressing into marrow and nerve.
He staggered, clutching at himself.
The cold turned sharp, needles pricking every inch of his skin.
His body shook violently, as though trying to expel the foreign power forcing its way inside.
"Ghh—ahhh—" His voice cracked into a scream.
The pain came next.
Like his skin was being flayed away strip by strip, as if invisible claws raked across him from within.
He fell to his knees, clutching the stone floor, nails scraping uselessly.
The scream tore out of him, raw and primal, echoing against the cavern walls.
The power didn't relent.
It pressed harder, branding itself into him.
His bones rattled, his muscles spasmed uncontrollably.
His heart pounded like a war drum, then skipped, then pounded again as though trying to keep pace with the invasion.
Every nerve felt alight.
Every vein, every artery a conduit for something too vast for his fragile frame.
He clawed at the air, begging, gasping, but no words formed. His throat seared from his own screams, yet he could not stop.
Charlotte's flame never wavered.
The torrent poured over him, a river of paradoxical ice-fire, endless, relentless.
She watched him writhe, eyes unblinking, wings unfurled in quiet majesty.
Arlo's screams broke into ragged sobs, his strength shredded.
The circle beneath him glowed so fiercely it seemed carved from the heart of a star.
His vision blurred.
White sparks danced across his sight. The world tilted, spun, collapsed inward.
Pain reached its crescendo—then nothing.
His body slackened.
His eyes rolled back.
Darkness swallowed him whole.
The slowly flame ceased.
Silence descended, broken only by the crackle of fading magic.
Smoke and frost curled upward from the circle, wrapping Arlo's unconscious form in a spectral shroud.
He lay sprawled, chest faintly rising and falling, skin glistening with sweat and ice-crystals.
Above him hovered Charlotte.
Her massive wings beat slow and steady, stirring the air, keeping her aloft with terrifying ease.
Her vast form cast him in shadow, the light of the circle painting her scales in eerie patterns.
For a long moment, she only watched.
Her eyes—ancient, endless—studied him with unreadable calm.
Then, at last, she spoke.
"Now," her voice thundered, reverberating in both cavern and marrow, "let's see how you react to power."
Her gaze sharpened.
From Charlotte's eyes, the chamber looked different.
Arlo's body was no longer just a mortal form lying broken on the floor.
Around him shimmered layers of unseen light—lines of energy, fractals of possibility.
Power webbed through his veins, some strands snapping, others reforging stronger than before.
Above his chest, something appeared.
A symbol.
Glowing.
Eternal.
Her eyes glowed brighter in answer, ancient runes flickering across her irises.
Her lips curved into a slow, knowing smile.
"Oh, little human," she whispered in her dragon's growl, "you may yet surprise me."
The cavern hummed with power, as if even the stones where recognizing and acknowledging what had just been born.