The forest was wrong.
Kael had hunted these woods for years, and they had never been this silent. No chittering of squirrels. No warbling of birds. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
The deer across his shoulders sagged heavily, the leather strap digging into the ridge of his collarbone. It had been a clean kill — an arrow through the heart before the beast even knew he was there. A good day's work, enough meat to feed his mother and the neighbors for a week. He should have been heading home with a smile.
Instead, something kept gnawing at the edges of his thoughts.
A smell.
At first it was faint, a thread of something bitter on the wind, almost drowned in the scents of pine and damp earth. But the further he walked, the stronger it became. It wasn't the smell of a campfire, or of cooking meat. It was sharper. Harsher. Acrid enough to sting his nostrils.
Smoke.
His gut clenched. The wind carried it from the west. His village lay west.
The deer slid from his shoulders, thudding onto the leaf-strewn ground. It rolled once before catching against a root, eyes glassy, tongue lolling. He didn't even glance back.
Kael broke into a run.
Roots and stones blurred underfoot. Branches lashed at his face, leaving stinging cuts. His breath came quick and hot, his bow bouncing against his back. The smell grew thicker, clogging his throat with every gasp. Ash was in the air now, gritting between his teeth.
And then he heard it.
Not the crackle of fire. Not the cries of men.
A sound so deep it made his ribs vibrate — a rolling growl that seemed to come from the earth itself.
The treeline broke.
Kael stumbled to a halt, boots digging into the loam. His village lay before him… or what was left of it.
Huts were split open like butchered animals, walls sagging inward, thatch ablaze. The watchtower was gone above its midpoint, the top half collapsed into the street. The well steamed, its stone rim blackened as if something molten had poured into it.
And above the carnage, wings.
They blotted out the clouds with each beat, sending coils of ash spiraling upward. The creature's body was long and thick with muscle, armored in scales that glowed like molten rock between plates of black obsidian. Heat rippled off it in visible waves.
A dragon.
Kael's throat tightened. He had heard the stories — every child in the frontier had — but stories were fragile things. They didn't tell you how the air grew heavy in a dragon's presence, how each step made the ground shiver, how your body instinctively wanted to drop to its knees and stop breathing.
It landed.
The impact sent splinters of wood and clods of dirt skittering down the street. Its head swung lazily, molten-gold eyes scanning the wreckage like a king inspecting his domain. Flames leaked between its teeth in thin streams, curling into the air before vanishing into heat haze.
People ran, stumbling over debris. Some screamed for help. Others didn't have time. A man Kael recognized — the baker who had once given him sweet rolls for helping stack flour sacks — was caught beneath a falling beam. His scream cut short. Old Mara, who had told him bedtime tales of the first dragons, was swallowed in a curtain of fire.
And then he saw her.
Elara.
She stood near the far end of the street, a child clutched against her chest, eyes wide with terror. Her once-golden hair was streaked with soot and ash. She looked at the burning houses, at the people dying all around her, then toward the treeline. She began to run.
The dragon's head turned.
Kael didn't think. His bow was in his hands before he realized it, an arrow drawn to his cheek. He aimed for the beast's eye and loosed.
The shaft streaked across the distance and struck the dragon's face with a sharp crack.
It snapped in half.
The dragon's gaze shifted. To him.
The air grew heavier, hotter. The molten glow in its eyes sharpened into focus, like a predator truly seeing prey for the first time. It took a single step forward, talons gouging deep trenches in the earth.
Kael's breath caught. The smell of burning was stronger now, so thick it felt like he was swallowing it. His body screamed to run, to throw himself back into the trees. But his legs refused to move.
The dragon's jaws opened. A deep hiss grew into a low, rolling thunder. He could see fire building in its throat — not the yellow-orange of a campfire, but something brighter, whiter, edged with blue, like the heart of a forge.
And then, beneath the rush of blood in his ears, he heard it.
A voice.
Not the dragon's. Not any voice that belonged in the waking world. It was low, impossibly deep, curling into his mind like smoke through a crack.
Do you want to live?
The question froze him even more than the dragon's gaze. He didn't have time to think. He didn't even have time to answer.
The voice came again, slower this time, each word thrumming in his bones.
I can save you.
The dragon's chest expanded. Its wings unfurled, blotting out the sun entirely. Heat rolled toward him in choking waves.
All you must do… is feed me.
---