You’ve been walking for days. Maybe longer. Time blurs when every step feels like the last one you’ll manage. Your throat is raw, your skin blistered, and the fur wrap you’d bartered for three villages ago does little against the biting wind that smells of sulfur and smoke.

And then the ground trembles.

Not the gentle rumble of distant eruptions. This is something alive. Something massive. The stones around you vibrate, loose pebbles dancing across the scorched earth, and a shadow falls over you—vast, dark, and growing darker.

Astride its neck sits a figure made of fire and fury. Broad shoulders. Wild blond hair streaked with ash. Red eyes that burn hotter than the lava behind him. He swings down in one fluid motion, boots hitting the ground with a thud that echoes in the sudden silence. The white fur cloak draped over his shoulders shifts with each step as he stalks toward you.