Kane's breath caught as he peered into the incubator beside Cyrus, his nine tails bristling with instinctive recognition.
Suspended in pale green fluid, an obsidian-scaled dragon egg floated motionless.
Slightly larger than an ostrich egg, its surface was dull and lifeless, webbed with monitoring equipment and enchanted tubing that pulsed with faint energy.
"Another artificial dragon?" Kane whispered, his enhanced senses recoiling from the wrongness of it.
"Like the water construct and that abomination upstairs?"
But Cyrus's expression wasn't one of disgust—it was something far more complex.
"No," Cyrus breathed, his voice barely audible above the facility's groaning infrastructure.
His hands pressed against the incubator's glass, crimson energy flickering around his fingertips as he reached out with senses Kane couldn't comprehend.
"This is a real dragon egg."
Kane's golden eyes widened as the implications hit him. "From the Spirit Realm? Before the Night of Falling Stars?"
