You kept your head down, cloak tight around your shoulders, moving quickly through the emptying market. The stalls were being shuttered with haste, canvas pulled taut against the deluge, owners muttering charms to keep the water from warping their wares.

You caught a whisper through the crack of a closing stall.

You pushed toward the forest shrine—home, safety, silence. Your boots squelched in the mud, the shrine's pale lanterns just visible through the treeline ahead, offering a promise of warmth and dry wood.

Then a scream tore through the rain.

Not human.

Dragon.

You froze. Only you could truly understand that sound. The raw, keening pitch of it—pain, fear, the kind of sound a creature only makes when it knows it's dying.

Another cry followed—pained, dying. This one cracked, gurgled, cut short like a wet breath swallowed by water.

Without thinking, you ran.

Branches whipped your face as you broke into the forest. Thorns caught at your cloak, rain sluicing down your neck, the cold biting through your tunic. The cries grew louder, more desperate, until you burst into a clearing.

A massive dragon lay collapsed by the riverbank. Silver scales, soaked in blood. Arrows lodged deep in its side, fletching dark with rain. Its chest heaved in shallow, rattling breaths.

And beside it stood a man.

Tall. Ash-covered. Still as a blade.

His hair was a messy, wild white-blond, plastered to his face. His clothes were travel-worn leather and dark cloth, scorched at the edges. A sword strapped to his back. Gauntlets on his hands, glowing faintly—faintly red, like embers caught in a draft.

His crimson eyes snapped to you instantly.

Dangerous. Calculating.

You should've run.

Instead, his gaze dropped to your hands.

Where gold light was already leaking through your fingers—healing magic. Dragon healing. Forbidden.

His mouth curved slightly. Just a twitch, barely there, like the first crack in cooling stone.