The worm was dead.
Its carcass—massive, scorched, and split open—lay still beneath the night sky, steam rising where Caelistra's final spell had torn through its armored hide. A silence heavier than screams settled over the camp's ruins.
Water pooled in the sand. Tent cloth clung to broken poles. Blood—black, red, and something in between—streaked the battlefield like paint on shattered canvas.
Caelistra stood still, breathing slow and steady, one shoulder bleeding, her cloak torn and soaked, yet her presence as commanding as ever. Cold. Unshaken.
The boy stood several paces behind her, barefoot in the mud, arms chained, heart still hammering from the fight. He could feel the echoes of the worm's movement fading from his bones, like a drumbeat that had stopped too suddenly.
He had done something impossible.
And worse—others had seen it.
Soldiers whispered. Slaves stared. No one dared speak aloud what they all felt.
He wasn't normal.
He had known where the worm would emerge.
He had saved them.
But only Caelistra spoke, her voice calm and surgical.
"You felt it through the earth."
It wasn't a question.
The boy didn't answer.
Caelistra turned slightly toward him, her gaze like polished stone. "You have no training. No mage sigils. No bloodline. Yet you sensed a creature no spell could detect."
Still, he said nothing.
Then came Roff.
Wounded, but walking. Not limping—marching.
"Enough," he said, stepping forward from the crowd of survivors. "He didn't sense anything. I did."
Caelistra didn't even blink. "Hm?"
Roff's jaw was clenched. His eyes bloodshot. "He was copying me. I was warning him where the thing would come up. That's how you knew."
The boy turned to him, stunned. "What?"
Roff didn't look at him. "I told him. I shouted to him. He just repeated what I said louder. Made it look like it came from him. I've tracked sand beasts before—I know how they move. It was my call."
Caelistra's silence was absolute.
No sarcasm.
No retort.
Just that razor-still stare that made men second-guess their own heartbeat.
"You tracked the creature?" she asked simply.
Roff straightened. "Yes."
"You're lying," she said, just as simply.
A few soldiers shifted. One slave gasped.
Roff's face twisted. "I'm not—!"
"You lack magical resonance. You lack perception glyphs. You were nearly crushed during the third dive and reacted after the boy screamed. His alerts were consistently one heartbeat ahead."
"I—"
"You're not only lying," she said, stepping closer, "you're being stupid."
Roff's face reddened. "You're taking the word of a nameless rat over mine?"
Caelistra gave a low exhale, not quite a sigh. "You think this is about trust. It's about data. Results. Precision."
The boy stayed frozen.
The warmth of victory was gone. Replaced by a chill.
Roff turned suddenly to the others—guards, slaves, anyone who would look his way.
"I carried him when he was too weak to move! I shielded others! I bled with you! And now I'm being tossed aside for some freak who doesn't even know how he did it?!"
The silence that followed was suffocating.
And then—
He snapped.
Eyes wild, breath ragged, Roff stormed toward the boy, fists clenched.
"You think you're better than me?! I made you—!"
The boy stumbled back instinctively—but the chains caught.
Too slow.
Too late.
Roff's hands closed around his chest, lifting him like he weighed nothing.
The others cried out.
"Roff, STOP—!"
But he didn't.
With a roar, Roff turned—and threw him.
The boy flew through the air, past a torn stretch of collapsed canvas, over scorched rock—
And into the ancient chasm.
A hole in the earth older than the camp itself.
Dark.
Bottomless.
Waiting.
He was falling.
Falling through blackness.
Falling through silence.
No screams followed him. No chains clinked. Not even the roar of wind.
Just the sound of his own heartbeat—loud, heavy, terrified.
Why...?
The thought drifted with him.
Why did he do it?
Roff.
The man who had given him water on the first day. Who had crouched beside him during the first sandstorm. Who had pulled the chain taut to help the others move.
Was it always a lie?
Was it weakness? Was it envy?
Was it me...?
His body tumbled, limbs limp from shock, chest burning from the sudden emptiness around him.
The air here was cold. Not like the desert cold of night—deep cold. Ancient. Thick like breath that had never been exhaled.
He couldn't see the walls anymore.
He couldn't see anything.
His thoughts twisted in spirals, mirroring his fall.
I didn't ask for this.
I didn't choose to feel the monster under the earth.
I didn't even know how I did it...
He clenched his fists midair, chains dragging behind him like phantom limbs.
He felt small again.
No—he had always been small.
But for the first time… someone had seen him. The mage. Caelistra. Her gaze had landed on him like he mattered.
And now?
He was gone.
Erased in silence.
Like a mistake corrected.
Is that all I am? A tool? An accident?
The weight of it crushed his ribs harder than gravity.
But underneath the fear… something stirred.
Not rage.
Not yet.
But a seed.
A flame—not from the fire above—but from inside.
I won't vanish.
I won't die nameless.
His fall slowed. Or maybe his mind simply moved faster.
He was jealous.
He saw her looking at me and hated it.
He couldn't stand being left behind.
So he made sure I disappeared first.
He saw Roff's face again—twisted, snarling, not with power, but with fear of becoming nothing.
That fear had killed him.
But I'm still here.
Down.
Down.
The darkness around him changed—thickened.
Like ink. Like shadow. Like memory.
And then… a faint whisper.
Not words.
Not sound.
But presence.
Something else was down here.
Waiting.
Watching.
And the chains around his wrists suddenly pulled tighter—on their own.
The boy opened his eyes wider, breath trembling.
Not out of fear.
Out of understanding.
This wasn't a fall anymore.
It was a descent.
But then—
He felt it.
The fall… slowed.
No.
Stopped.
He wasn't crashing anymore.
He was floating.
Hovering in the dark, weightless, like a speck of dust in a forgotten dream. The chains no longer dragged him downward—they hung around him like loose threads, motionless.
His heart pounded.
The air around him had changed. It was warmer now.
A heat that wasn't cruel like the sun.
It was deep.
Ancient.
Alive.
Then—he heard it.
A breath.
Hot.
Slow.
Massive.
So vast it made the earth above feel small.
The kind of breath that could melt steel or turn gods to ash.
And then…
He saw it.
An eye.
Larger than his entire body.
Glowing softly like molten gold, cracked with veins of crimson, ancient runes dancing along the iris like stars orbiting a sun.
It was looking at him.
Directly at him.
He couldn't move.
He couldn't scream.
He couldn't even think.
Only feel.
The eye narrowed.
The darkness around it shifted.
And for the first time in his life…
He felt truly seen.
By something that had existed long before empires.
By something that remembered names the world had long forgotten.
A dragon.
And it was awake.