Eldoria is a pretty town. Cobblestone streets, like everywhere, are accompanied by stone-and-timber buildings. And there lies a pizza shop.
But the unfortunate thing for a 17-year-old me is that I have to keep on taking orders.
"Waiter." Eh, another one.
And serve pizzas with a fake smile to keep customers happy.
But while everyone else seems to be comfortable in their little routines at Eldoria's market, like the bakers kneading dough at dawn, merchants haggling over overpriced silks. I'm somewhere else entirely: imagination. I'm out there slaying beasts, digging lost treasures from ruins, carving my name into the kind of history they write in gold ink.
I see myself standing where legends once stood.
Heroes like Sir Tiger the Brave, who dropped a colossal troll in the Whispering Caves with nothing but a warhammer, or Elowen the Speed, who outran an army.
But compared to them, my life here feels… minuscule. Insignificant. A cage, really. One that doesn't even let you flap your wings before it clips them. My Aunt April and Uncle Ten own this pizza shop, tucked in the corner of Maple Lane, right where Market Square gets loudest. One can smell the bubbling cheese and basil a whole block away. People call it a "heaven." But not for me. I have to move from one corner to another, listening to...
"WINTER." Uncle Ten's commanding voice. "Table 9. Quick." And keep on running.
Winter grabs the dish and makes his move from the kitchen to the outside table. As he was going through the hallway, his eyes caught a photograph of a young man.
Oh, Marcus. I love my uncle and aunt. They love me a lot, more than maybe one should have, but there's grief under it. They lost Marcus, their only son, five years ago to a border war. When he turned eighteen years old, he got drafted but was gone before he even had a chance to make it big. Uncle Ten never talks about it, but I see it in his hunched shoulders. The customers hear laughter, plates clinking, and the oven bell ringing. But beneath all of that lies the struggle of a family wounded by the past.
And then there's Equatonia. our "beautiful" country. A green jewel, yeah, but surrounded by wolves. To the north, Vorathia's barbarian warlords wait for the cold so they can raid our villages. To the east, Drakmoor's spies slip across our borders, stealing secrets. To the south, Kalyndor's desert riders strike out of nowhere, driven by grudges older than the stones in their temples. King Xavier XI keeps us barely holding together with border guards and a squad of elite summoners. Not only that, there are dungeons in which demons lurk. My mother was a victim of one. As for my father, never heard of him, and I haven't even seen his face.
School doesn't make it any better. Eldoria Academy feels like a punishment. I am not good at studies, nor do I want to put in any effort. All I think about is fighting beasts, slaying them, and with that, getting recognition and the love of people. Not everyone gets that. Being talentless in this world is a crime. Luckily for me, I do possess one such talent, summoning magic. Doing it is forbidden.
But I love doing daring things, and at the age of 13, a dagger was the result of my curiosity. I learned a spell from an academic book, which allowed me to bring objects from another world. People say I could summon heroes one day. That the king might even recruit me as a royal summoner.
Sounds fancy, right? But to me, that's just another cage, this one gilded. I don't want to sit in some high tower calling in reinforcements for wars. I want to be out there, bleeding, sweating, winning. Slaying enemies or monsters.
And Uncle Ten keeps hinting I should take over the shop one day. "The world's full of dreamers who starve in the gutters. This place kept us afloat after Marcus. It could do the same for you."I never answer. I am indebted to the fact that he took his friend's child and raised him as his own, but I yearn for excitement, not for cyclic boredom.
At school, I'm an easy target for guys like Jax, built like a wall and just as dumb and his slimy shadow, Silas."Look at the dreamer," Jax yells. "Gonna summon a pizza next?" Silas always chimes in: "Or maybe a backbone." I ignore them and sketch maps for quests that don't exist. But doing that made me like geography.
But today's different. Elara, our silver-haired, stone-faced teacher, announced that we're going on a field trip. Not to some museum. Not to some boring history site. No. We're going to see dragons. The moment Elara said "dragons," the whole class lit up like someone had cast a spark spell in the middle of the room.
Dragons, ancient protectors of Equatonia. The kind that nested in the cliffs beyond the misty forest, their wings stretching wider than a village square, scales glittering like gemstones under the sun. I'd only ever seen them in paintings and stories.
The academy did this kind of trip once every few years, and it was supposed to make us respect them or fear them. Probably both. But I wasn't just thinking about dragons. I kept stealing glances at Lila. Two rows ahead, sunlight catching in her auburn braid, her laugh carried over the hum of excited voices like music. She always had a kind word, always shared her notes when I "accidentally" forgot mine. And every time I looked at her, my brain did this stupid thing where it imagined telling her about my dreams under the stars, maybe. Asking her to come with me. On a real adventure.
The next morning, we set out. The misty forest was alive, fog curling around the trees like pale hands. Elara led us, her staff glowing faintly as she barked warnings. "Stay together. Keep away from the cliffs. Dragons are not pets. They are forces of nature. They can catch the faintest of noises."I wasn't about to argue. Still, I had my dagger in my satchel. My reminder of who I wanted to be. My proof that I could be something more.
During a break, I pulled it out to admire its build, the way it shimmered under the forest light. But then Jax's hand closed around it before I could blink."Well, well," he said, spinning it in his meaty paw. "That's not school-approved equipment." Silas was right beside him, grinning like the rat he was."Give it back," I snapped, fists curling. Jax dangled it higher. "Maybe after I tell Elara. Bet she'll keep it for good."
Something in me snapped. "I might be dismissed from school for illegal summoning. All summoning magic is forbidden if it's not approved by the king."I swung before thinking. My fist cracked against his jaw, and for a second, I thought I'd shut him up. He staggered, blood on his lip, then his face twisted into rage. Without a word, he hurled my dagger into the underbrush and stomped off, Silas on his heels.
My heart was pounding as I dove into the bushes. Thorns clawed at my arms, damp leaves slapping against my face. Then, I saw it. a glint of metal in the moss. Relief surged, but right before I could grab my dagger, a low growl froze me where I stood.
It stepped out from the shadows. Small, emerald-scaled, no bigger than a wolf. Eyes like molten amber locked on mine. Not one of the majestic cliff-dwellers. A stray, young dragon, but with the kind of confidence that meant trouble. It lunged. I grabbed the dagger just in time, swinging instinctively. The blade scraped its scales with a screech. It screamed, high, piercing, and a burst of flame tore from its jaws. I threw myself aside, heat licking my skin, the edges of my clothes blackening. Then claws raked my arm, tearing through flesh. Blood poured down my sleeve, the pain white-hot and dizzying.
And then, A roar that shook my bones. The forest darkened as something massive descended. Crimson scales. Wings that blotted out the sky. Eyes burning gold. It hit the ground with enough force to send wind tearing through the clearing.
It didn't even look at me first. It went for the smaller dragon, its own kind. One strike of those talons and the juvenile was split open, blood spraying, the sound of bones snapping sharp in the air. I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. The big one ate, tearing flesh like it was nothing, crunching bones between its teeth, until there was nothing left but scattered gore and the stink of death.
Then its gaze found me. My blood went cold. Every mistake I'd ever made came rushing back, blowing off my studies, ignoring April's pleas to help at the shop, dreaming of adventure without thinking what it might mean. This wasn't a hero's death. This wasn't glory. This was a stupid boy dying in the mud.
Its talons clamped around my torso. Pain ripped through me, hot and wet as blood poured from my ribs. The ground fell away. The forest shrank. Eldoria became a tiny speck in the distance. Rain stung my face as clouds swallowed us. Was it taking me to its nest? To feed its young?
The dagger was still in my hand, my fingers numb around the hilt. Maybe this was the freedom I'd been chasing—raw, brutal, without rules. But as the dark closed in around the edges of my sight, one thought burned hotter than the fire that had scorched me.
But then a beam of light came out of the forest. The beam pierced through the dragon's neck, killing it in an instant. We both descended toward the ground. As I was falling, my eyes started closing with only one question in mind.
Who can even kill this dragon?