The sky had never felt so far away.
Kaedra clung to the saddle as her trial dragon dipped suddenly, wings slicing the wind like razors. Her heart slammed against her ribs. The Aerie's spires spiraled far below, tiny and cold, and the world blurred in a dizzying swirl of clouds and sunfire.
She was falling again.
Not from the sky yet but from grace. From the ranks of dragonriders. From everything she'd spent the last three years clawing her way toward.
"Hold your line, initiate!" bellowed Master Theron from his perch on a larger crimson beast, circling above.
Kaedra grit her teeth, yanked the reins to correct her angle, but the borrowed dragon snorted in disdain. It wanted no part of her. It hadn't chosen her. None had, never .
She was the only initiate without a bonded dragon.
Her final trial wasn't just difficult it was humiliating.
Below, students rode in perfect formations, their bond evident in every tilt and turn. Kaedra's beast moved like it wanted to shake her off.
Maybe it did.
The skies weren't hers. Not yet.
Not ever.
By the time they landed, her legs trembled with fatigue and humiliation. A crowd had gathered near the training field, watching her dismount with veiled amusement or thinly masked pity.
"Still no egg, Kaedra?" someone muttered. "Maybe the dragons just know better."
She ignored them, chin high, boots crunching over the gravel as she made her way to the waiting platform.
She didn't trust herself to speak.
The wind swept her dark hair around her face, masking the sting in her eyes. Not tears. Just dust. Just exhaustion.
A golden-robed councilor stepped forward. "Initiate Kaedra of Wing Three, you have failed to form bond or command. By decree of the Aerie, your time as an aspirant ends today."
The words hit harder than a blade.
Kaedra stared straight ahead, nodding stiffly.
Behind her, the trial dragon lifted off without waiting.
They always left her like that.
Always.
The Aerie dorms emptied quickly once word spread. No one wanted to be seen with the girl who'd washed out. Kaedra sat on the edge of her bunk, tracing the seam of her satchel. She'd packed and repacked three times already.
Her gaze drifted to the egg tucked beside her footlocker.
Jet black. No glow. No cracks.
No life.
She had found it on her first year's journey to the Ember Caves an abandoned clutch, its shell unnaturally cold. The instructors had laughed when she insisted it pulsed once under her fingers.
They called it stone.
She called it hope.
Now, it was just a reminder of everything she wasn't.
She picked it up gently. It weighed more than it should, like holding a sliver of gravity itself. Still smooth. Still cold.
Still hers.
She wasn't ready to leave it behind.
With one last look at the sky beyond the tower window, Kaedra slung her satchel over her shoulder, tucked the egg beneath her arm, and walked out.
No one stopped her.
The Ashen Wastes were forbidden for a reason.
A sky of molten gray hung low, casting shadows over fractured cliffs and scorched valleys. Nothing lived here. No dragons flew. The air tasted of ash and something older—like burned magic.
Kaedra's boots cracked brittle earth as she climbed higher.
She hadn't meant to come this far. She just kept walking. Away from the Aerie. Away from pity. Toward… something.
The egg pulsed.
Once.
She froze.
Her hand gripped tighter around it. Had it moved?
She turned in place slowly.
Wind whispered through the broken stones. A soft sound. Like breathing.
The cliffs narrowed into a canyon veined with black rock, heat rising from deep fissures. A distant rumble echoed. Thunder? No. It came from beneath.
Her boots skidded on loose gravel as she made her way down into the canyon. The air thickened, heavier with each step. Her chest tightened, but she didn't stop.
She didn't know what she was looking for.
Until she found it.
A massive crater, lined in obsidian. In the center, a stone slab no, not stone. Glass. Black, smooth, and cracked with faint lines of gold.
Atop it sat a pedestal.
She stepped forward.
And the egg in her arms began to glow.
Soft at first then blinding.
Kaedra dropped to her knees, cradling it as heat rushed through her fingers.
It cracked.
A sound like a thousand breaking chains thundered through the canyon.
She stared in awe as the shell split. A sliver of flame licked free. Then a claw.
Then a snout, sleek and dark, eyes glowing like embers.
The hatchling lifted its head and roared.
The sky screamed with it.
Kaedra scrambled back as wind tore through the canyon. Rocks split. The pedestal before her cracked clean down the middle.
And from within the obsidian tomb…
A man exhaled.
Not breathed. Exhaled.
Like someone waking from a long, long sleep.
His body glowed faintly beneath cracked volcanic glass, like magma veins under skin. Chains of blackened gold coiled around his arms and chest, locked into the stone itself.
And his eyes—
They opened.
Golden. Burning. Endless.
And they looked straight at her.
Kaedra couldn't move. Couldn't think.
The dragonling beside her lowered its head. Not in fear.
In reverence
The man spoke one word in a language she didn't understand, but her bones did
And somewhere above, the dragons of the world shrieked as one.