The rage that forms in my chest is cold. Hard. Sharp enough to cut.
I’m failing Ember.
Because I wasn’t fast enough. Smart enough. Strong enough to protect her.
Because I let something sap my strength and couldn’t get her out of these godforsaken mountains.
The fury sharpens into something harder than desperation. Colder than panic.
Determination.
I need to get out of here. Need to save her. Need—
Then I feel it.
A faint vibration through the concrete beneath me, rhythmic, deliberate. Not machinery. Not the rumble of vehicles or the cycling of air systems.
A heartbeat. Slow. Deep. Impossibly vast.
The same pulse from the caves, the one that followed us through stone and shadow, that made the walls hum with unseen power.
I press my palm flat against the floor.
The beat answers: three deliberate thuds that ripple through my sternum, through the hollow where my dragon used to burn, through ribs that creak with the strain of holding too much.
The air shifts. Turns sharp, metallic on my tongue. Electric. Ancient. The kind of age that makes modern magic feel like a child’s trick.
I taste something familiar in it. Dragon. But not mine. Not any I’ve ever known.
This is older. Vast in a way that makes even the oldest clans feel young.
I close my eyes and reach inward for my own fire. Find only the void, the absence where my dragon should be coiled and waiting.
But beneath that emptiness, something stirs.
Warmth that isn’t mine. Immense. Waking.
Dragon essence, yes. But stretched beyond mortal scale, like standing at the base of a mountain and feeling the summit breathe above the clouds.
The power buried here. The one the Syndicate tried to rouse with their rituals and their arrogance.
The Sleeping King.
I don’t understand it. Don’t know if it’s ally or threat or something beyond those categories entirely.
But desperation makes strange bargains.
And right now, I’m desperate enough to bargain with anything.
I don’t pray; haven’t in centuries. Not since I stopped believing that gods or Fate or anything else gave a damn about what happened to creatures like me.
But I reach toward that presence with pure intent anyway:
I need out. Please. She needs me.
For long seconds, nothing.
Just the pulse. Steady. Implacable. Ancient enough that my three hundred years feel like a blink.
