Chapter 1: The Dying Flame

The dragon came down from the mountains on the first day of the long frost, its wings tattered and its scales dull as old iron. Kael saw it from the forge window, a shape too large to be a bird, spiraling in slow, uneven circles above the valley before crashing into the meadow beyond the village wall. She dropped her hammer and ran. She was seventeen, an apprentice to Master Brannock, the only smith in the village of Thornfield. She had spent three years learning to shape steel and mend plowshares, her arms growing strong, her palms thick with calluses. She had never seen a dragon. No one alive had. The last recorded sighting was over a century old, etched into the village chronicle as a footnote to an age when magic still burned at the edges of the world. The creature lay on its side in the frozen grass, its ribs heaving, each breath producing a thin stream of smoke that curled upward and vanished. Its eyes were amber, enormous, and filled with an intelligence that made Kael stop ten paces away. It was dying. She could see that clearly. The frost had reached it, coating the edges of its wings in a pale crystalline layer that crept inward with every passing minute. The cold was not natural. It had been advancing from the north for months, killing crops, freezing rivers solid, and driving animals south in panicked herds. Scholars called it the Fading, a slow extinguishing of the ambient magic that had kept the world in balance for millennia. The dragon lifted its head and looked at Kael with focused intent. It opened its mouth, and instead of fire, a single glowing ember the size of a walnut floated outward on its final breath. The ember hung in the air between them, pulsing with warm orange light. Kael reached out and caught it in her bare hand. It did not burn. It settled into her palm like a coal finding its hearth, and the dragon closed its eyes for the last time.