CHAPTER ONE
It started with a storm.
Rain fell in sheets against the city streets, turning neon reflections into rivers of blurred light. Evelyn pressed her forehead against the café window, half-watching raindrops chase each other down the glass. The scent of coffee lingered in the air — bitter and warm — but it did nothing to calm the unease twisting in her chest.
Midnight had passed. She should have gone home hours ago.
Instead, she sat curled into the corner booth like a ghost clinging to the edge of someone else's life. Her laptop was shut. Her tea had gone cold. A fantasy novel lay open on the table, forgotten. A dragon on the cover, wings spread like smoke. She'd read it a dozen times.
Escape, she thought bitterly, was best served with just enough fiction to make reality hurt a little less.
She pulled her coat tighter, her fingers shaking.
You don't belong anywhere.
The thought came without permission. The kind that burrows deep and feels like truth. She tried to blink it away, but the café's dim lighting cast her reflection back at her — pale, sharp-boned, tired. Her dark hair was damp with mist. Her blue eyes looked too large in the glass.
Empty.
The storm outside pulsed with thunder.
Then… the light changed.
She sat up straighter, frowning. The city had been painted in cold grey for hours, but suddenly everything outside was bathed in a strange, pulsing glow — like red fire bleeding through fog.
Evelyn stood and stepped closer to the window.
And there it was.
A moon. But not the one she knew.
This moon was crimson — deep, glowing, alive. Clouds moved around it like ink in water, and lightning danced silently across the sky in crooked veins. People outside didn't notice. They passed under it, umbrellas and phones in hand, oblivious.
But Evelyn… felt it.
In her bones.
In her blood.
Something ancient stirred.
Then the light bent.
Like reality was pulling in on itself.
She gasped and stumbled backward as the café windows rippled, as if heat shimmered across them — and then they cracked. The walls pulsed. The floor shifted beneath her feet.
And then… silence.
Total, perfect silence.
The kind that exists in the moment before something ends.
Or begins.
The world shattered.
Light consumed her — not blinding, not white, but red and gold and alive. It burned through her thoughts, filled her lungs. Her body jerked as if her soul had been yanked from her spine, and then she was falling, wind screaming past her ears, no up, no down, only fire—
And then:
Stone.
Cold. Slick. Ancient.
Evelyn slammed into solid ground, rolled, and gasped as the air knocked from her lungs. Her fingers clawed at rough stone. The scent of ash filled her nostrils.
She was no longer in the city.
She wasn't even in the world she knew.
She sat up slowly.
The sky above her was black and red — a swirling void pierced by floating embers. A shattered moon hung low, casting crimson light over ruins carved from obsidian. Symbols glowed on the walls: circles, flames, runes she couldn't read but somehow felt.
The air was thick. Not hot — charged.
A circle surrounded her, burned into the floor. Fire runes flared under her hands.
And then…
Footsteps.
Boots against stone. Heavy. Purposeful.
She turned toward the sound — heart slamming — and froze.
A group approached from the shadows: warriors, not men, not entirely. Their eyes glowed in the dark. Armor shimmered like molten steel. They moved like predators, wings tucked behind their shoulders.
And at the center…
A figure larger than any of them.
He didn't wear armor. Only a long black cloak over bare shoulders. Scars cut across his chest, glowing faintly with the same red fire in the sky. His hair was long, black, pulled back from a sharp, regal face. His eyes…
Gold. Slit-pupiled. Ancient.
They locked on her and held.
She couldn't move.
He stepped closer. And the others stopped.
Only he walked into the circle.
Evelyn scrambled backward. "Who are you—what is this—where—
He raised one hand.
And she froze.
Not magically.
Because his voice — low, deep, like thunder across stone — slid over her like heat and command and darkness wrapped in silk.
"She is not what we summoned," he said, eyes narrowing. "But something… has claimed her."
She trembled as the runes flared around her. Her back burned.
He tilted his head slightly. "You have fire in you, little mortal. But it's not your own."
She swallowed hard, chest heaving. "Where am I?"
The man knelt, just out of reach, but close enough that his presence pressed into her lungs.
"You are in Drakorya," he said. "Realm of dragons. Flame-forged. Bloodbound."
"And you?" she whispered.
He smiled then. But it wasn't kind.
"I am Kael'Zhyr," he said. "King of Fire. Warden of the Veil."
"And you," he added, reaching toward the mark on her back that she couldn't see, "are in far more danger than you understand."