Even in the blistering summer heat of Beh-REET one hundred millennia ago, the air inside the preparation chambers of the Val'dora ran cold.
The water in the basins had turned a murky purple, stained by the dragon's and O'nor's blood.
Three collared easterners hovered around him in the steam-filled room, their hands trembling as they scrubbed his skin with coarse sponges and scented oils. O'nor tolerated it for exactly three minutes before he caught a servant's wrist and pushed it away.
"Enough," he grunted, his voice echoing sharply off the tiled walls. "The blood is gone. I am not a prized hound to be polished."
The oldest of the servants, a man in commoner's clothing with a thick scar across his neck where his iron collar rested, immediately dropped to his knees on the wet stone.
"Please," the man whispered, his eyes wide with a frantic uncertainty. He stared firmly at the floor. "If you appear before the Val'dora lacking the proper ceremonial sheen..." The man's voice cracked. Behind him, a look of stark desperation and fear washed over the other two servants. "I beg you, allow us to finish."
O'nor looked down at the terrified man. The servant was fed. He had a roof of slate to block the harsh winter. He was safe from the meat grinder of the border wars.
Yet he was kneeling in a puddle of dirty water, terrified over a patch of scented oil.
O'nor let out an irritated exhale and slowly lowered himself back onto the stone bench. He extended his arm, staring up at the vaulted ceiling in utter annoyance as the servants rushed forward to resume scrubbing.
He closed his eyes against the heavy steam of the bathhouse, but the white mist instantly morphed into the black smoke of the battlefield. Through it, he saw the striking, blue eyes of the Anai champion, trapped against a wall of dragon fire.
He had run. He had vaulted into the inferno, risking the entire war, risking his own life, to put himself between her and the beast.
Why?
The question gnawed at him. She was the enemy. If the sky had not fallen, she would have driven her blade through his throat without a second thought, and yet he had thrown himself into the fire to save an Anai.
I was denying the beast its kill, O'nor told himself, his jaw clenching as the servants finally began drying his form. A mindless beast does not get to claim the greatest warrior on the field.
A childish smirk washed over his lips at the memory of the clash.
With a heavy exhale, O'nor pushed past the bowing servants and stepped into the long, arched corridor. His boots echoed loudly against the stone, the heavy, measured footfalls of a warrior marching without pride but under orders. Halfway down the hall, the corridor split. To his left lay the towering, iron-banded doors of the Val'dora council chamber. To his right, an open stone archway led out to the gardens.
O'nor stopped at the crossway. A warm breeze drifted in from the archway, carrying the scent of mountain air. Through the columns, he could see the quiet, shadowed paths of the courtyard. It would be so easy to just turn right. To walk out into the quiet air, shed this ceremonial armor, and let the members of the senate scream themselves hoarse arguing over his victory.
But his father was in that room.
Kal'nor was sitting on that dais. To walk into the garden now would be abandoning his first commander.
He turned his back on the fresh air, squared his shoulders, and pushed his weight against the doors of the senate.
O'nor stood in the center of the carved room. He stood in his ceremonial armor, the freshly polished steel doing little to hide the exhaustion pulling at his features. O'nor's victory today had inadvertently handed his father even further political power and complications .
Seated at the center of the semicircular dais was Kal'nor. He was an older man, his dark hair heavily threaded with silver, and his face weathered like the stone of the outer walls. Among a council of politicians draped in imported silks, Kal'nor still wore his worn leather bracers and the heavy mantle of a field commander.
Looking down the row of seated council members, the divide was palpable. Half the Val'dora looked at Kal'nor with deep, deferential respect, recognizing the undeniable strength of the 'nor bloodline.
The other half looked to the far right of the dais, where Elder Tor'val sat steeped in bitter, ancient resentment. Tor'val wore robes of pristine, heavy white silk—the garments of a man who had not seen mud or blood in several decades. Now, with Kal'nor's son heralded as the savior of the armies, the elder's political influence was crumbling, and the desperation showed.
"The beast is dead," Tor'val sneered, his knuckles drained of color where he gripped the arms of his obsidian chair. He leaned forward, his voice thin and venomous. "But the Anai escaped while our troops were paralyzed by awe. You stopped a monster, O'nor, but you lacked the discipline to finish the actual war. You let the rebellion slip through your fingers."
Kal'nor's eyes narrowed, the seasoned war general recognizing Tor'val's ambush.
"If my son had not stepped into the fire, Tor'val, the beast would have roasted you in your pristine robes by nightfall," Kal'nor rasped in a controlled tone, the weight of his authority dropping the entire room into a heavy hush. "Be thankful he only let the rebellion slip, rather than your life. Though I recall a time in the eastern valleys when you nearly managed to lose both."
Tor'val's mouth snapped shut, his face flushing at the public reminder of his greatest disgrace. Before he could sputter a retort, the heavy doors at the back of the chamber groaned open.
The tension of the senate broke as Dak'nor strolled in. He was unapologetically late, his scholar's robes dusty at the hems, and his fingers stained with dark ink. He completely ignored the glaring eyes of the most powerful rulers on the continent, walking straight up to his brother in the center of the floor.
"I leave you alone for one afternoon," Dak'nor sighed, crossing his arms and shaking his head in mock disappointment, "and I hear you're out in the dirt, squashing winged rats."
The utter absurdity of calling the most terrifying apex predator in history a 'winged rat' echoed off the vaulted ceilings. The council members stared in stunned shock.
O'nor let out a sudden, booming laugh. The tension drained from his shoulders, and for a moment, he wasn't a hero standing before a tribunal; he was just a younger brother. "It was a bumpy ride, Dak," O'nor grinned, rubbing his still-sore shoulder. "But the view from the top was decent."
Kal'nor covered his mouth with a scarred hand, masking the proud, quiet smirk that touched his lips.
Dak'nor turned his attention away from his brother and looked up at the council.
"Honored members of the Val'dora," Dak'nor said, his voice carrying effortlessly through the chamber with restored composure. "My brother has done you the immense favor of stopping an apocalyptic threat. I have come to ask for my share of the spoils."
Murmurs rippled across the dais. "What is it the scholar wants?" one of the elders asked, eyeing Dak'nor's ink-stained hands with suspicion.
"The corpse," Dak'nor stated plainly. "The dragon. I want the beast moved to the outer courtyards of the grand archive. I require unrestricted access to study its anatomy, its scales, and the residual energy of its flame breath."
Tor'val scoffed.. "Absolutely not. The carcass of a dragon is an imperial prize. Its scales alone will forge armor for the royal guard. It is not some carcass for a librarian to dissect."
Dak'nor didn't flinch. He just looked at Kal'nor, who gave a subtle, almost imperceptible nod.
"The beast is a myth made flesh," Dak'nor countered, his voice hardening. "It defied the natural laws of our world to produce that fire. If you want to understand how to truly enhance your armies, you will let me find the source of its power. Or, you can deny the request of the family that just saved your empire."
Silence settled over the dais.
One elder shifted in his chair.
Another lowered his gaze.
A third glanced toward O'nor, then quickly looked away.
No one spoke.
Tor'val sat rigidly in his chair. He swallowed hard, his knuckles remaining tightened where they gripped the armrests.
"The scholar," Tor'val began, the words dragging from his throat as if pulled over broken glass. He paused, his lips thinning into a bloodless line. "Shall have his... winged rat."
Autopsy
The outer courtyard of the Grand Archive smelled of scorched copper and the musk of a predator that had never known a rival.
The dragon's headless corpse took up nearly the entire stone plaza. Even in death, the mass of the black-scaled beast seemed to warp the air around it. Its bat-like wings lay folded like tattered siege tents, and thick, viscous pools of black blood stained the ancient cobblestones.
Dak'nor paced the length of the creature, his ink-stained fingers practically vibrating with a manic, irrepressible energy. He carried a set of long, wickedly sharp obsidian surgical tools. Behind him, Kal'nor and O'nor walked at a much slower, more measured pace.
"You broke him today, but you did not end him," Kal'nor warned, his voice pitched low so the archive scribes wouldn't hear. "Tor'val's pride is his lifeblood. You humiliated him in front of the entire Val'dora. He is a threat in the here and now, O'nor. He will look to resolve this defeat in the shadows to reclaim his standing."
O'nor let out a breath, idly scratching at the dried blood still caking his jawline. "Let him try, Father. What is he going to do? Send a squad of silken-robed assassins? I just chopped the head off a nightmare that fell from the sky. I think I can handle a bruised politician."
"You fight what is in front of you," Kal'nor said, his tone grim. "Tor'val will attack what is behind you."
"You are both thinking too small!" Dak'nor interrupted, spinning around. His eyes were wide, alight with a feverish brilliance that made him look wilder than his warrior brother and general father. "Tor'val is the past. Petty squabbles over borders and grain lines. This," he slapped the flat of his hand against the dragon's impenetrable hide, "is the future."
Kal'nor frowned. "It is a carcass, Dak'nor."
"It is a miracle," Dak'nor corrected, his voice dropping into a breathless reverence. He pointed one of his obsidian blades at the beast's severed neck. "I have read every text on combustion, every alchemical treatise in this archive. The fire this creature produced defies natural law. It shouldn't exist. I told you about the power I have dreamt—the speck of infinite light walled off by an ocean of absolute darkness. What if this beast doesn't just breathe fire? What if its biology is naturally doing what I have only theorized? What if it is a living conduit, pulling power directly through the Void?"
"If it draws from the dark, then it is a poison," Kal'nor cautioned, the war general recognizing a trap, even an academic one. "Do not let your curiosity blind you to the cost."
"But if we can understand the conduit, we can replicate it," Dak'nor pleaded, his excitement palpable. "We could harness the light behind the dark. Father, it could mean an end to all war. It could usher in an entirely new age of the world!"
Kal'nor looked at the massive, bleeding stump of the dragon's neck, his weathered face grim. "Men who go digging for a new age usually just end up burying the current one. Study the beast, Dak'nor. But do not let the dark into my city."
The patriarch turned, his boots scuffing the stone as he left his sons to their prize.
Dak'nor watched him go, the feverish brilliance in his eyes finally cooling into a teasing smirk as he turned back to O'nor.
"He worries too much," Dak'nor said, pulling a pristine cloth from his robes to wipe his ink-stained hands."Besides, if my baby brother can conquer the greatest terror of the skies, we have nothing to fear. Though, I must admit, your skill with a blade is only second to your skill with avoiding the consequences of your... social conquests."
O'nor blinked, caught off guard. "What?"
Dak'nor simply nodded past O'nor's shoulder.
O'nor glanced back, his eyes widening. "Keep your voice down, Dak," he hissed, suddenly looking frantically toward the archive scribes.
"Oh, please. Half the servants in the eastern wing know you are completely unable to tell her 'no' whenever she decides to hunt you down to... talk," Dak'nor chuckled, turning back to his surgical tools. "Though I am curious how the great hero of Beh-REET plans to explain to our father that he is in bed with a 'val."
Approaching across the courtyard was a young woman of the high court. She wore a dress of deep crimson silk, her dark hair pinned back with silver combs. She moved with a lethal poise, completely ignoring the massive dead monster taking up the plaza. Her eyes were locked entirely on O'nor, burning with a furious heat that rivaled the dragon he had just slain.
The war hero who had thrown himself onto the back of a myth suddenly looked terrified. He cleared his throat, subtly taking a half-step behind his big brother's dirty ink-stained robes.
Dak'nor let out a booming laugh, leaving his brother to face the wrath of his political fling, and turned his full attention to the beast.
He climbed onto the dragon's chest, his boots slipping slightly on the slick scales. Normal steel had barely scratched the creature, but the surgical obsidian—honed to a razor's edge—bit into the softer, ventral flesh beneath the neck. With a wet tear, Dak'nor pulled back the heavy hide and cut into the xiphoid process of the sternum, exposing the colossal chest cavity.
He was looking for a fuel gland. A sac of alchemical liquid. A biological furnace.
He found none of those things.
Dak'nor froze, the obsidian blade slipping from his numb fingers to clatter against the dragon's ribs. The manic excitement drained from his face, replaced by utter awe.
Nestled between the beast's massive, still lungs was an organ that shouldn't belong to a living creature. It looked like a geode made of shattered glass and raw muscle. But it was what lay inside the organ that made the scholar's breath catch in his throat.
It wasn't a biological furnace. It wasn't a reservoir of chemical fuel.
It was a prism.
Inside the crystalline lattice, a faint energy still pulsed—a microscopic storm of light that refracted a shattered spectrum, like a rainbow drowned in shadows.
Dak'nor's mind began to race, the scholar's discipline violently overtaking his fear. He started piecing the mystery together, laying out the biological facts like clues at a murder scene, his thoughts moving in rapid, analytical strikes.
Observation: The dragon's fire broke every known law of physics and alchemy.
Fact: This crystalline organ lacks the structure to generate that kind of power. Its geometry isn't a generator; it's a receiver.
Deduction: The dragon isn't making the fire. It's channeling it.
He leaned closer, entirely oblivious to the thick black blood soaking through the knees of his robes. He stared into the dimmed light of the mixing colors. The speck of power hidden behind the dark.
If this beast is tethered to an infinite beyond, then it wasn't simply born of the earth, Dak'nor thought, the scale of the revelation making him dizzy*. Someone or something had built it.* It was proof.
He stared at the prism.
Not of magic. Not of alchemy.
His fingers tightened around the crystalline structure.
Of design.
It was the first true creation from whatever lay beyond the veil, built with a direct, biological umbilical cord to the infinite.
But as the profound weight of that answer settled over him, the analytical part of his brain—the part that could never leave a puzzle half-finished—snagged on a glaring contradiction.
If they are the first creations of an infinite power... why were they created? He stared down at the massive, lifeless cavity. If they possess a direct link to the beyond, they should be gods. They should blanket the skies. Why has it been over a decade since the last speculated sighting? Why is their population essentially nonexistent?
The logic didn't align. You don't build a perfect, nigh-unkillable machine and then only make a handful of them. Unless they weren't perfect.
They were a failure, Dak'nor realized, a sudden chill running down his spine. They were flawed. His mind fired off a rapid sequence of new questions. What went wrong? Does the conduit burn them out from the inside? Does the power drive them mad? Is that why they attack so indiscriminately?
And the most terrifying thought of all: If the dragons were abandoned as a failed experiment... then are we the things meant to replace them?
Dak'nor slowly reached out, his trembling fingers closing around the crystalline structure, and pulled it free from the beast's chest. He had cracked open a legend hoping to find a single, world-changing answer. Instead, as he turned his back on the plaza to stalk back to his scribing estates, he carried only the heavy weight of impossible questions.
At the edge of the courtyard, the scholar paused, glancing back over his shoulder.
O'nor was backed against one of the stone columns, an uncharacteristic blush creeping up the war hero's neck. He tried to take a subtle step away, but Jo'val simply stepped with him. Her hand reached out, her fingers hooking casually into the leather belt that holstered his sword. With a slow tug, she anchored O'nor exactly where she wanted him.
In hopeless defeat, he looked up at the cloudless sky and slumped his broad shoulders.
Dak'nor let out a quiet snort, a teasing smirk breaking through the trill of his discovery. His baby brother could conquer the greatest terror of the skies, but he would inevitably give in to a pretty face.
Shaking his head, Dak'nor turned and made his way toward their estate to study the prism, leaving his warrior brother to his fate.