Afraid.
And, beneath the fear, desperately hoping that whatever came next might finally be something worth breaking for.
Morgrith spoke, and the rest was silence.
His voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. It carried without effort, each word precise and weighted, wrapping around us like smoke. I found myself leaning forward, straining to catch every syllable even as half of what he said slid past my understanding like water through cupped hands.
"Before there were seven lords," he began, "there was one. The First Dragon. The eldest of our kind." A pause that felt like centuries. "His name was Valdris."
The name hit the air and stayed there, hanging like a storm cloud. Around me, the other Dragon Lords showed no reaction—their faces carved stone, revealing nothing. But I felt it. The way the atmosphere shifted. The way even ancient beings flinched from that single word.
"Valdris existed before the world took its current shape. Before the mountains rose, before the seas filled their basins, before humans learned to speak. He was meant to be a bridge." Morgrith's starlight eyes swept the chamber, finding each of us in turn. "Dragons and humans, united through the sacred bond. He was to take a mate—a human woman named Evara—and through their joining, forge a connection that would make both races stronger."
I knew something was wrong before he said it. I could feel it in my bones, in the hollow ache beneath my ribs. Stories that started this way never ended well.
"Evara rejected him."
Three words. Just three words, but they landed like hammer blows against my chest.
"The reasons have been lost to time," Morgrith continued. "Perhaps she was afraid. Perhaps she wasn't ready. Perhaps she had her own reasons that made sense only to her." Something flickered across his face—understanding, maybe. Recognition of a pain he knew too well. "What matters is what came after. Valdris's love did not simply end. It transformed."
He moved as he spoke, his long fingers trailing across the altar's ancient symbols. Where he touched, the stone seemed to darken, drinking in even the faint starlight.
"Love that turns to hate is the most dangerous force in existence. It knows exactly where to strike. Exactly what to destroy. Valdris became something else—something we call the Unnamed, because to speak his true name is to invite his attention." Another pause. "He seeks now to unmake the bonds that hold reality together. The connections between dragons and humans, between lords and mates, between existence and thevoid. He wants to tear it all down because the one bond he wanted was denied to him."
The weight of it pressed against me. Countless years of corrupted love, festering in the dark. A being so old the mountains were young beside him, consumed by a rejection he couldn't accept.
"He cannot be destroyed."
Morgrith's voice dropped, and somehow that made it worse. Louder I could have handled. This quiet certainty crawled under my skin and nested there.
"Valdris is woven into the fabric of existence itself. Kill him, and we unravel the world. Every bond, every connection, every thread that holds reality together—it all comes apart." He let that sink in. "But he can be healed."
Hope. I felt it like a physical thing, rising in the chamber. The other Dragon Lords shifted slightly. The mates straightened.
"The bond-love of a true mate is the only force that could reach past his corruption. Evara rejected him—but if she could be given a second chance. If her soul could make a different choice." Morgrith's hands stilled on the altar. "I have found a way to call her back. To release her essence from wherever souls go when their bodies fail, to let it incarnate anew in a vessel that can complete what was broken ten millennia ago."
The silence that followed was absolute.
I'd thought the chamber was quiet before. This was something else entirely. This was the silence of beings processing the impossible, of minds grappling with magic so vast it should have been myth.
I saw Davoren exchange a glance with Sereis—something heavy passing between them, some understanding I couldn't interpret. Garruk's massive hands clenched at his sides. Zephyron's lightning flickered erratically, casting strangeshadows across his face. Caelus had gone utterly still, which somehow seemed more alarming than if he'd started raging.
The mates moved almost as one. Kara's hand found Davoren's arm. Thalia pressed closer to Zephyron. Lark stepped back until her shoulder brushed Garruk's chest. Wren and Mira mirrored them, reaching for their partners like drowning sailors reaching for shore.
They knew. Whatever they understood that I didn't, they knew something terrible was coming.
Morgrith's eyes found mine again. This time, they held something I couldn't name. Something that looked almost like apology.
"The ritual requires a sacrifice," he said. "And it requires a wound-walker to ensure the sacrifice doesn't destroy the one making it."
My mouth went dry.
The chamber seemed to contract around me, the vast space suddenly intimate, suffocating. I wanted to ask what kind of sacrifice. I wanted to demand an explanation. I wanted to turn and run and never stop running.
Instead, I stood there. Waiting. The way I'd always waited—for the next patient, the next fever, the next pain that needed swallowing.
Whatever came next, I would face it.
