───────────────⋆˖☽ 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝑯𝒂𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒅 ☾˖⋆───────────────

The tremor of the dragon’s passage was a fading heartbeat in the soil beneath my feet. A ringing silence fell in its wake, broken only by the wind’s mournful song through the skeletal branches of the pines. The scent it carried was of damp earth and coming rain—and something else, something acrid and reptilian. My gaze was fixed on the path it had carved through the wilderness. My path. The journey would be long. It would cost me everything. I would see it through. I had to.

With a final, sharp inhale, I tightened my grip on my bow and surged into a run. The forest closed around me, a familiar shield. Here, in the wild tangle of root and shadow, the agony of Caelfall began to recede. Something else took its place: a venom, cold and potent, coiling in the pit of my stomach. I welcomed it, fed it with every punishing stride. The air was ice in my lungs, a cleansing fire that screamed I am alive.

A grim smile twisted my lips. This was not determination. It was something purer. Something absolute. Let them call me cursed. I would become it. I would become a blight upon their kind, a whisper of fear in the beat of their leathern wings. I would hunt them down and unmake them, one by one, until their memory was nothing but ash on the wind.

A low groan ahead ripped through the air, heavy and guttural. I bled my sprint into a silent stalk, melting into the undergrowth. My pack slid from my shoulders to the base of a gnarled oak, the movement a fluid, practiced whisper. I drew my bow. Every motion had to be perfect. Precise. Its shadow, a flicker of darkness in the gloom between the trunks, crept forward.

And there it was. My breath hitched. The dragon’s scales were a crimson so deep it devoured the light. A filigree of gold swept across its chest and throat, intricate as a fine web. It was a creature of terrible, magnificent beauty. It lowered its massive head, its plated snout nudging something in the shadows, and my world shattered.

A man.

His hair was a shock of crimson, a perfect, startling match to the beast at his side. He stood tall, his back to me, radiating a quiet strength that hummed in the air. The question was not a scream in my skull; it was a blade twisting in my gut. Why?

His voice was a low murmur, the words stolen by the wind. He raised a hand, not in defense or command, but in a gesture of impossible tenderness. The great beast—the monster, the world-breaker—leaned into his touch, its golden eyes drifting shut in what looked like contentment.

The sight was a violation. A heresy. The world shifted, my carefully constructed rage faltering against a tidal wave of confusion. For a single, disoriented heartbeat, there was only the man and the monster and the unforgivable peace between them.

Then the ice reformed in my veins, colder and harder than before. It changed nothing. The creature was an abomination. And I was its doom.

The man’s arm dropped. Instantly, the dragon’s eyes snapped open and locked onto me. There was no searching, no scanning the trees. It just knew.

How?

A tremor shot through my hands. I crushed it, forcing them steady as I drew the bowstring to my cheek. The world narrowed to the space between my arrowhead and the beast’s luminous, reptilian eye. My pulse was a drum in my ears. One shot. That’s all you need. The thought was a hope. Let the consequences follow.

I released. The arrow was a black sliver of death slicing through the air, silent and true.

A flash of bronze. The man moved. He didn’t lunge; he simply was there, spear in hand. My arrow disintegrated into a puff of splintered wood, swatted from the air with casual, inhuman force.

“Stop,” his voice boomed, a command that vibrated in my bones.

Disbelief warred with a fury so hot it threatened to blind me. My fingers were a blur, nocking a new arrow, drawing, and releasing in a single, fluid motion. My next arrow was in my hand before the first had even crossed half the distance. One for the eye, one for the throat.

He didn’t move like a man. He flowed. A sweep of the spear shattered the first arrow. A half-turn and a flick of the bronze-capped shaft sent the second tumbling harmlessly into the dirt. He parried them both without taking a single step from his position.

The rage inside me detonated. “GET OUT OF MY WAY!” I shrieked, the sound raw and broken.

He didn’t answer. He charged.

“Zarina, go!” The command was absolute, a razor’s edge of sound.

A hurricane of wind from her wings threw me off balance as the great beast launched herself into the sky. Zarina. The name scraped at my throat; I swallowed and it tasted wrong.

For a single, fatal heartbeat, I was paralyzed by the sheer wrongness of it all. The hiss of a spearhead scything through the air snapped me back. I threw myself aside as he tore through the space where I’d been. He spun on his heel, his eyes meeting mine.

They weren’t human. They were molten gold, the same terrible, beautiful gold as the beast he protected.

I didn’t think. I ran. The forest was my ally. He might be a tempest on open ground, but here, in the suffocating embrace of the trees, I had the advantage. I put distance between us—just enough to sling my bow onto my back. A low branch whipped past my face. I leaped, caught it, and used my momentum to swing onto the trunk, scrambling higher, flowing from one tree to the next.

Landing silently on a thick limb, I spun, nocking an arrow as I turned to aim.

He was there. Not climbing, not running. Just standing at the base of the tree, looking up at me as if he’d been waiting all along.

My blood turned cold. He was impossibly fast. The thought was a useless whisper against the roar of my hatred. It doesn’t matter.

A ripple of muscle in his arms was my only warning. He threw the spear. It didn’t just hit the branch; it shattered it. Splinters rained down as I leaped into empty air, hitting the next limb with a sickening thud that stole my breath and scraped my chin raw. I ignored the blooming pain and hauled myself up.

“Done running?” his voice echoed from below, calm and lethal. “This ends one of two ways. Talk to me.”

“I don’t talk to those who associate with monsters,” I spat, drawing another arrow.

“Just listen!” he growled, a feral edge to his voice.

“No.” I let the arrow fly. He sidestepped it without effort. A grim smile touched my lips. That one wasn’t for him. My next arrow struck the ground at his feet. The second and third followed before the first had even buried itself, stitching a line in the dirt that broke his stance and forced him back.

My chance. I dropped from the tree, landing in a predator’s crouch.

The moment my feet touched the forest floor, he was on me. The spear was a bronze blur. A low sweep forced me to leap. A high arc made me duck. A thrust, straight for my gut. I threw myself into a roll, my bow clattering against a root. I looked up and saw it. He was smiling. A genuine, terrifying smile of pure exhilaration. His golden eyes danced.

He swept low again. I used the momentum to roll toward my bow. My fingers brushed the smooth wood—and the spearhead was there, whistling an inch from my face. I fell backward, kicking out with both feet to propel myself upright.

The sky didn’t just open; it ruptured. A cold deluge hammered down, turning the world into a blur of gray and green, the ground to instant, slick mud. He thrust, but the sudden downpour made him heavy, rooted to the earth. I was water. I flowed around his attack and, in the next heartbeat, I was on his back.

My legs locked around his waist like a vise. I snapped my bow over his head, the string biting deep into the flesh of his throat. With a guttural cry, I locked my grip and threw all my weight backward.

He went down like a felled oak. We hit the ground in a spray of mud and agony, his body a dead weight crushing the air from my lungs. But I held on. I pulled the string tighter, feeling his frantic, clawing fingers trying to find purchase, his legs kicking uselessly in the mire. I had him. He was finished.

Then the world ceased to exist.

First, a sound that was not a sound—a violent concussion that vibrated through my bones and teeth. Then, a searing white light that burned the forest into the backs of my eyelids. A tree a few paces away exploded into a shower of splinters and steam. The air crackled, thick with the smell of ozone and superheated earth. My grip went slack. We were both frozen, stunned into immobility by the raw, untamed power that had just torn the world apart.

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𝓓𝓸𝓷’𝓽 𝓯𝓸𝓻𝓰𝓮𝓽 𝓽𝓸 𝓪𝓭𝓭 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓼 𝓫𝓸𝓸𝓴 𝓽𝓸 𝔂𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓵𝓲𝓫𝓻𝓪𝓻𝔂 𝓼𝓸 𝔂𝓸𝓾’𝓵𝓵 𝓫𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓼𝓽 𝓽𝓸 𝓴𝓷𝓸𝔀 𝔀𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓷𝓮𝔁𝓽 𝓬𝓱𝓪𝓹𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓭𝓻𝓸𝓹𝓼. 𝓐𝓼 𝓪𝓵𝔀𝓪𝔂𝓼, 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓷𝓴 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝔂𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓲𝓷𝓬𝓻𝓮𝓭𝓲𝓫𝓵𝓮 𝓼𝓾𝓹𝓹𝓸𝓻𝓽!