Nox opened his eyes.
He wasn't in the Proving Ground anymore. He was floating in an endless, empty gray space. There was no ground, no sky, just a featureless void that stretched on forever. He tried to move, but his body felt heavy and slow, like he was trapped in thick syrup.
Then he saw the eye.
It was bigger than a car, a massive orb of molten gold with a slit of a pupil that was a crack of pure darkness. The eye blinked, a slow, world-ending movement, and he realized it was attached to a face. A face covered in scales that were each the size of a dinner plate, a snout so vast he could have parked a truck inside one of its nostrils.
He was looking at a dragon.
