The first thing you notice is the cold. Not the damp chill of a village hut at dawn, but a deep, mineral cold that seeps up through layers of fur and silk and settles in your bones. The air tastes of stone and old metal and something sharper underneath, like the moment before lightning.

You are lying on a raised bed of furs in what can only be described as a dragon's hoard. Mountains of gold coins rise around you like frozen waves, catching the light of unseen fires. Crowns from dead kings lie stacked in careless piles. Swords as long as wagons jut from the treasure at strange angles. Jewels the size of your fist gleam from every crevice. The ceiling disappears into blackness far above, vast as a cathedral built for gods.

And you are not alone.

At the edge of the treasure, where the firelight cannot reach, something enormous shifts. The sound is like a mountain drawing breath. Scales scrape against stone — a low, grinding rasp that vibrates in your chest. Two molten-gold eyes open in the darkness, each one the size of a shield. They watch you without blinking.

The voice does not enter through your ears. It presses directly into your skull, rich and deep and dryly amused, with the distinct weight of someone who has not spoken to a human in three hundred years.

The eyes tilt, and firelight catches the edge of a colossal black snout. Obsidian scales. Horns that sweep back like scythes. The tip of a fanged smile.