ONE
SERENYA
The Gloamspire Library crouched on the cliffs like a wounded beast, its ancient stone walls scarred by decades of elemental storms that swept across the Ashen Realms. Here, on this storm-lashed peninsula where the four dragon shifter Houses carved their dominion from fire and shadow, the library stood as one of the last bastions of accumulated knowledge. For centuries, this battered repository served the city-states ruled by Houses Obsidian, Ember, Storm, and Bone—and now its stewardship rested solely with Serenya Vex.
Serenya knelt on the stone floor, her fingers blackened with charcoal as she scraped another desperate line into the failing ward. As one of the few trained curse scholars in the Ashen Realms, she had been conscripted into reinforcing city wardlines ever since the shadow-plague advanced past rural borders. The air hung thick with dust motes that danced in shafts of amber light filtering through the stained glass windows, each one depicting the heraldic beasts of the four dragon Houses in their eternal dance of cooperation and conflict.
“Come on, you stubborn thing.” She pressed her palm against the fresh lumen sigil, watching as white-gold light sparkedbeneath her skin. The Vex sigil on her right wrist pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat—a circular eclipse surrounded by lightburst etchings that marked her as a practitioner of true lumen sigilcraft.
The magic caught, flared, then settled into a steady glow that would hold the corruption at bay.
For now.
The phrase had become her personal mantra these past weeks as reports trickled in from the outer settlements. Towns swallowed by creeping shadow. Livestock found drained and hollow-eyed in fields that no longer grew anything but twisted, gnarled husks. And beneath it all, the metallic tang of something older and hungrier than ordinary decay.
Gloamrot. She’d seen the signs in her texts, cross-referenced them with accounts from the Wars of Ash when entire witch enclaves had simply... vanished. Parasitic shadow-magic born from fractured dragon souls, according to the manuscripts she’d studied. The Council had spent decades pretending such corruption was extinct, a relic of ancient conflicts best left buried.
They’d been wrong. Again.
Serenya rocked back on her heels, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist. Her dark red hair had escaped its practical braid, the gold undertones catching the light as wayward strands framed her face. The leather pants and fitted blouse she wore were practical choices—no flowing robes to catch fire when channeling power, and no unnecessary ornamentation to interfere with spellwork. Only the rune-etched silver necklace at her throat and the hidden knives along her ribs spoke to her true nature.
“Brilliant work as always, but they’ll never call you for consultation,” she muttered to the empty library, her voice echoing off vaulted ceilings painted with constellations that hadguided witch-navigators centuries before the Houses claimed dominion over the peninsula. “Can’t have the witches being right about something. Might bruise their precious dragon egos.”
The truth burned worse than any curse. For decades, practitioners like her had warned the Dragon Council about the signs—shadow-touched animals, corrupted ley lines, and the slow spread of blight that followed predictable patterns if anyone had bothered to study the old texts. But dragon shifters ruled the Ashen Realms through fire and fear, not scholarship. Witches were useful for their sigilcraft when convenient, disposable when inconvenient, and never trusted with anything resembling authority.
Even now, with settlements falling to corruption magic that matched every historical account of Gloamrot she’d cataloged, the Dragon Council maintained their stubborn silence. No formal summons. No acknowledgment of expertise. Just emergency work orders like this one—”reinforce the library defenses”—as if she were some common hedge-witch dabbling in protective charms rather than one of the few remaining curse scholars capable of identifying magical contagion.
She pressed her ear to the stone floor, listening for the telltale vibration that would signal approach. This corruption magic moved differently than natural Gloamrot should. According to her research, it crept slowly and parasitically, feeding on life force until entire regions withered. What stalked the outskirts of Cinderhollow nowhunted. It tested defenses, probed for weaknesses, and retreated when met with sufficient resistance.
Almost as if something guided it.
The thought sent ice down her spine despite the library’s stuffy warmth. She’d read accounts of cultists who’d learned to direct Gloamrot during the Wars of Ash, using fractured dragon souls as conduits for their shadow-magic. Most of thosecults had been destroyed when the Houses united against the common threat, their knowledge scattered or burned.
Serenya pushed to her feet, dusting charcoal from her palms as she surveyed her work. The wardline now formed a complete circuit around the library’s foundation, each lumen sigil linked to the next in an unbroken chain of light-magic that would flare white-hot if the corruption magic tested these walls. Not a perfect defense—nothing was perfect against Gloamrot—but enough to buy time.
Time for what, though? For the Council to finally acknowledge they needed her expertise? For House Obsidian to stop treating curse scholarship as some quaint academic pursuit and recognize the existential threat bearing down on their volcanic stronghold?
She let out a laugh, retrieving her supplies from where they lay scattered across an ancient reading table. The leather satchel that held her charcoal, silver dust, and focus crystals had seen better days, its surface scarred from years of fieldwork the Council pretended didn’t require specialized training. Each tool had been earned through study and sacrifice, knowledge passed down through bloodlines like hers when formal magical education became too dangerous under dragon rule.
“Typical,” she said to a carved stone dragon whose eyes seemed to track her movement through the library’s main hall. “Create the problem through willful ignorance, then expect the solutions to manifest without input from anyone who might actually understand the situation.”
Her green eyes caught the light as she glanced toward the tall windows facing Cinderhollow’s sprawling cityscape. Somewhere beyond those volcanic ridges and lava canals, the corruption magic spread like an infection through the nervous system of the Ashen Realms. House territories that had maintained their independence for centuries now faced a threat that recognizedno borders, respected no ancient truces, and cared nothing for the political theater that passed for governance among the four Dragon Houses.
And here she sat, alone in a library, using magic they’d once tried to eradicate to protect knowledge they’d once tried to destroy, waiting for dragons too proud to admit they needed help.
“Well,” she said, shouldering her satchel with practiced efficiency. “When they finally swallow their pride and ask nicely, at least the wards will hold.”
The library’s heavy oak doors groaned shut behind Serenya as she stepped onto the narrow stone terrace that wrapped around the building’s eastern face. The air hit her like a physical thing—thick with volcanic heat and the metallic tang that had become Cinderhollow’s signature in recent weeks. Her fitted black blouse clung to her skin in the humid air, and she could already feel sweat beading along her collarbones where the silver necklace rested.
She lifted her face to catch what passed for a breeze in this volcanic hellscape, her braid swinging behind her shoulder as wind gusted up from the lava canals below.
The wind brought more than relief from the oppressive heat. It carried memory.
Twelve years old. The acrid smell of dragonfire mixing with burning wood and flesh. Her mother’s voice, hoarse from shouting protective incantations until her throat bled: “Run, Serenya! Don’t look back!”
But she had looked back. She’d watched Eris Hollow burn from the ridge beyond the village while Obsidian dragons circled overhead like gods passing judgment on mortals who’d dared practice magic without permission. Her mother had died in that smoke, her body found three days later clutched around a wardthat had protected a cluster of children until the fires finally died.
The children lived. The witches didn’t.
