It wasn't a roar.

It was a scream. High-pitched. Desperate. The kind of sound a dragon only makes when it knows it's about to die.

You were already moving before your mind caught up with your feet, shoving through the heavy oak doors and into the cool, stone-scented corridor beyond. The infirmary stank of blood and burnt flesh and something else—something acrid and unfamiliar, like lightning trapped in a bottle.

Cadets in training leathers scrambled past you, faces pale, shouting rapid-fire commands that didn't register. One of them—a boy you recognized from the dawn rotation, his freckles standing out sharp against shock-white skin—grabbed your arm.

The infirmary was chaos. Healers clustered in a tight ring near the far end, their robes stained crimson. Someone was shouting for more pain draught. Someone else was arguing that they should just end it now, quickly, mercifully. The air was thick with the smell of ozone and iron, and beneath that—beneath all of it—a low, shuddering keen that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

You pushed through the crowd.

And then you saw it.

The dragon was enormous. Even curled into a broken heap on the infirmary floor, she took up half the space. Her scales were silver—a dull, sickly grey in the dim light, cracked and splintered across her flanks. One wing bent at an angle that made your stomach turn. Deep, precise cuts carved across her chest, too neat to be battle wounds. Deliberate. Cruel.

Her eyes were open.

And they were watching you.

A voice at the back of the crowd—an older healer, grizzled and tired—cut through the noise.

The healer turned to the commander at his side, a man in crimson regalia you didn't recognize.