Aedana Vael'Thirax, Flameborne of the Crimson Coil, is surrounded by flames.
Flames that burn. Flames that destroy.
But not her.
No, these flames destroy on her command. They are her servants, and she is their commander.
The wind bows before her wings. Castles tumble beneath her roar. Smoke curls from her breath like incense at a war god's altar. The sky is hers, and beneath it, mortals kneel.
This is the dream.
It is always the same.
Until it isn't.
A sound cuts through the heat—sharp, tinny, repetitive. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Aedana frowns in her sleep.
The dream holds her tighter, trying to smother the noise. There—armored men in gleaming lines, chanting in tongues not meant for dragon ears. Swords drawn. Prayers like curses. The smell of ash and metal. One of her kin falls. Another screams. Wings torn. Stone blackened. The world ends in flame.
Then silence.
Then now.
Beep.
Again. That sound. Like a small bird locked in an iron cage.
Aedana opens a single golden eye.
Stone shifts around her. Pressure builds behind her ribs. Heat. Hunger. Confusion.
The cave responds. Its walls tremble as if afraid. A crack runs like lightning through the ceiling above her.
She exhales — and somewhere above, the world stirs.
Stone groans like an old beast rolling over in its sleep. Tiny rocks rain down around her, clinking off scales hard as diamonds. Aedana shifts her weight, testing ancient muscles. She's stiff, as though the very earth has tried to keep her prisoner.
She opens both eyes. Darkness greets her—but she sees through it easily, her gaze cutting the blackness into shapes and cracks.
The air is stale. Dry dust chokes her throat. She tastes iron and minerals and something else… old magic gone sour. Her wings twitch against the confines of the stone around her.
Aedana pushes forward. Rock splits like clay beneath her claws. Crystals snap and shatter underfoot. Each breath she takes comes out as a soft plume of red-gold fire, illuminating the cavern in bursts of flickering light.
A wall of stone blocks her path upward. She narrows her eyes, draws in air until her chest expands like a bellows, and lets loose a short, angry burst of flame.
Rock melts and weeps glowing rivulets down the cave wall.
She steps through, emerging into a chamber twice as wide as the one she left. Stalactites hang from the ceiling like the teeth of some monstrous jaw. Pools of ancient water reflect the flames dancing along her scales. She looks at her reflection — a long, serpentine neck, horns curling back from her skull, eyes like molten gold.
For a moment, the sight comforts her.
Then the chamber quakes again. Dust trickles from above.
Aedana tilts her head. Somewhere far above, she senses… noise. Low, rumbling vibrations. The faint hum of something alive, something unnatural.
Not the deep silence of the Middle Ages.
She presses her ear to the stone.
Thump-thump-thump.
Steady. Repetitive.
Wheels on stone?
Her nostrils flare. Smoke drifts out in thin, uncertain tendrils.
'What in the blazing embers is making that noise?' Aedana thinks, her irritation flickering like a tiny flame.
She's not afraid—but she's annoyed.
And curious.
Aedana digs her claws into the tunnel wall, hauls herself upward, and begins to climb.
Stone cracks and showers dust over her snout. She moves with power, but each shove feels strange—as though her body has forgotten its own weight.
Heat leaks off her scales, turning the narrow shaft into a steamy tunnel. She claws through old rock, dirt, and finally — metal.
Clang.
She blinks at the jagged edges of a rusty grate. Beyond it glows pale orange light, soft and steady like lanterns—but she can't feel the familiar flicker of fire coming from these alien light sources.
She snorts, smoke rising from her nostrils. Then with one mighty shove, she smashes the grate aside and emerges into the open air.
For the first time, Aedana stands revealed in full.
She unfurls herself, stretching out of the narrow shaft like a creature unfolding from a cage. Her body is long and sleek, covered in deep crimson scales that shimmer like polished garnet under the city lights. Each scale's deep colour fades to a dark charcoal black towards its tip, giving her hide an almost molten appearance when shadows fall across it.
Her neck arches elegantly, supporting a narrow, horned head. Twin ivory horns spiral backward from her skull like sculpted bone. Between those horns, thin frills of skin ripple with every breath, alive with faint embers glowing beneath the surface.
Her eyes burn molten gold, slit-pupiled and luminous, catching every flicker of movement around her.
Massive wings stretch out from her shoulders, half-membrane, half-leathery hide. They glisten like dark silk dusted with glints of copper when the city's glow strikes them. Veins of fiery orange pulse through the wing membranes, like magma flowing just beneath the surface.
Clawed feet as large as manhole covers press into the earth. Each talon is curved, obsidian-black, and sharp enough to gouge stone. Her tail whips behind her, long and sinuous, scales catching the light in a ripple of crimson and black.
Heat radiates from her body in shimmering waves. Sparks occasionally drift from the joints in her scales, like embers shaken from a forge.
She towers nearly twenty feet long from snout to tail-tip, standing tall enough that her horns almost brush the lower branches of the trees above her.
Aedana lifts her head and takes her first full breath of open air.
For a few precious heartbeats, she feels relief. The weight of rock is no longer pressing against her scales. Cool wind slides over her wings.
Then confusion crashes in.
This isn't the same cave mouth she remembers.
She blinks rapidly, as though trying to dispel an illusion.
'Where… where is the forest?' Aedana wonders, disoriented.
There had been ancient trees here, towering oaks and dense undergrowth, the perfect place to hide a lair entrance. Birds had sung overhead, and the air had tasted clean and green.
And there had been a farmstead — a humble scattering of wooden buildings where she'd occasionally helped herself to a sheep or two. The humans there were always so deliciously afraid but never truly harmed. She'd even planned her awakening around harvesting one of their herds.
But now…
Trees stand here still—but thinner, more orderly, their trunks young and pale. The soil reeks faintly of oil. Lanterns burn on tall metal poles without so much as a flicker of real flame. The breeze carries hints of chemicals and metallic tangs she can't place.
She turns slowly in a full circle, scanning the horizon, searching for familiar silhouettes—a timber roof, the shadow of the old stone church bell tower.
None of it remains.
Moonlight catches along Aedana's scales as she lifts her head, each crimson plate glinting like polished garnet. She blinks, adjusting to the silver glow above—and finds the sky strangely… empty.
Even the stars, once her ancient companions, are drowned beneath a veil of urban glow bleeding across the horizon. Neon lights and towering signs spill colors into the night, washing the heavens clean of constellations.
'What magic could possibly burn bright enough to overpower even the stars?' Aedana thinks, an uneasy chill coiling beneath her scales.
Only when she lifts her gaze beyond the trimmed tree line does she notice the rest of the world has changed in even more dramatic ways.