Entombed

Chapter 1

One

Before the silence, before the fire and the screams, the dragons lived in great prides that spiraled through the mountains like living storms. They were communal creatures bound by ancient bonds older than stone.

The young slept piled upon one another in warm mounds of wings and soft bellies, purring in low, rhythmic hums that echoed through the caverns like song.

Dragons did not fear the darkness—they illuminated it. Their fire was not only a weapon, but a hearth, a beacon that lit their homes and warmed their eggs through the long winters.

In those days, every pride had a Matriarch, chosen not by strength, but by wisdom. It was said the Matriarchs could feel the emotions of every dragon under their care, a tether woven from flame and instinct, so that no hatchling was ever truly alone.

When dragons took flight at dawn, they did so in great sweeping arcs, wings overlapping like a tapestry across the sky. Their bodies cast shadows large enough to paint entire valleys in dusk, but their hearts were gentle toward their own.

The humans never saw this. They saw only the shimmer of scales from afar and imagined greed. They saw great wings blotting out the sun and imagined conquest. They watched flame dance across the horizon and imagined destruction.

And because the humans never saw the tenderness, they convinced themselves it did not exist. So when the Dragon War came, they only saw it as destroying monsters.

He remembered the screaming. Not dragon screams. Not the deep, thunderous roars of his kind. That was low and ancient. It was the breath of the kings of the mountains.

No.

The screams he remembered were the screams of the humans. Shrill and chaotic and frenzied with fear. But what followed was much worse.

It was the cries of the dragons dying.

He was young when it happened. Far too young to understand war and suffering, but old enough to vividly remember it all. The sky was black with smoke the day his kind fell.

He remembered his mother’s golden scales. Her regal, vast wingspan covered his small body as she stood with the other mothers to defend the young. She whispered in their ancient, draconic tongue to run if they fell. And when they did, she begged him to save himself. To be brave.

He ran. His small wings were barely strong enough to carry his body, but he forced them to. He ran until the ground no longer shook from battle, and he ran until the mountains flooded with the blood of the dragons.

He ran until silence was the only thing left. He hid, curled into a small crevice of fallen rock, letting out terrified cries for help in his tongue, hoping another would find him, but they never did.

The humans called it a victory. Their laughter echoed off the charred cliffs as they carved weapons and armor from their scales. They celebrated as they hung bones on their mantles as trophies.

He survived, but only just.

For years, he did not speak, did not cry, did not show his flames. But when the world forgot the language of the dragons, he did not.

Time forced the slaughter of the dragons into stories for the humans.

But for him? It hardened him. He grew into the exact thing the humans thought his kind was.

He grew into the exact thing they slaughtered the dragons for: a savage beast. The last of his kind, left with nothing but fire and fury in his heart.

He could not weep for what was lost, so instead, he vowed he would never lose again.

He began hoarding.

In a cave carved deep into the tallest, jagged mountain in the region, his treasures grew vast and mismatched. Gold coins. Goblets inlaid with precious gems. Pearls and shells. Senseless trinkets. Cracked instruments. Children’s dolls. Jewelry.

He did not know why he kept these things, only that once he found something, he could not let it go. He could not discard it. It was his.

The humans had taken everything from him, and so he took from them. It wasn’t about hoarding petty human wealth—he had no use for such trivial things.

To lose things meant he was weak, and he could not allow himself to be weak.

The last dragon lived alone for nearly a century.

He did not fly far from his cave. He only hunted when necessary. Only glided through the sky under the cover of thick clouds.

Sometimes, when the anger hit him, he would fly over the human villages late at night, eyes narrowed, watching them huddle near their fires because they feared the dark.

But he was the dark.

Still, he left them alone, though it was hard sometimes.

He did not speak the human tongue, nor did he understand it well. But he understood well enough to know what they were.

They killed not just the dragons, but each other. He watched them burn their own villages in civil war. He watched men hang thieves in the square. He watched mothers abandon their babes for being born with imperfect skin.

The humans killed for land. They killed for power. They killed for superstition. They killed for sport.

And still, they called the dragons monsters.

The last dragon no longer roared. Instead, he growled. It resonated deep in his chest when the rage swelled, but no one was left to hear it. No one left to understand the pain and the agony that lingered there.

No one left who would even care.

Many years into his solitude, at the turn of the century when the humans celebrated another rotation around the sun, he lay curled up in the furthest corner of his hoard, his massive tail wrapped around a broken harp, stray coins clinking as they rubbed against his hardened scales.

He thought about fire. Not the kind in his heart nor the kind in his throat.

He thought about the fire that was meant to warm. The soft kind. He remembered a time when he was, too, a young hatchling, sleeping in piles with the others like kittens. Their tails and wings would tangle together and they would coo and purr at the comfort it brought.

He remembered hearing his mother hum ancient songs in the dragon language as she turned eggs in the communal nest.

Dragons were not meant to be lonely creatures. They lived in large prides, filled with tens of families. He had siblings, not just from his own mother, but from the others, too.

It had been so long since he had felt the heat of another body beside his own. He almost forgot how it felt, for none of that heat remained, not even a single ember.

Now his heat was meant only to destroy. In wiping out the monsters, the humans made him into the very thing they feared.

He was no longer young, but neither was he old. His body was strong, his flame hot, his instincts apt. Yet in all those years of solitude, he had grown into something unrecognizable even to himself.

There were nights when he woke snarling from dreams of flame, confused and fearful of the silence in his cave. He would rise, prowling and hungry.

Not for food, but for sound. For life.

There was none. Only stone. Only treasure.

And rage.

Always rage.

The stars of the night bled over the ridge as he descended into the forest.

His wings beat the wind into silence—into submission. Each gust sent pine needles to the ground below. Birds scattered. Deer fled. Even the mountains seemed to hold their breath.

He had not hunted in two days. Not a hunt with prey—that was daily. But the hunt for things. It was time again for him to take from the humans as they took from him.

He landed deep in the forest, where things lie mostly untouched by the unclean human hands. There, overgrown and forgotten, was an ancient temple from a time long past.

From a time when the humans believed in gods.

The ruins were covered in moss and bird droppings. The once grand spires were blackened and dirty from neglect. Though it had been abandoned for a long time, he could still smell the humans. Their scent sat in the air like rot.

He approached the temple, the ground beneath him cracking under his weight. His sharp claws scraped against the old stones as he climbed the steps, his tail dragging like a flail behind him. He sniffed the air first, his nostrils flaring in disgust at the scent of man.

He could still see their footprints on the stone. He followed their path until they reached an ancient altar of worship. And there, a small glimmer rested on the smooth rock.

He sniffed again, his chest rumbling on the exhale.

Gold.

With his body too large to move any further into the temple, he extended his long, forked tongue to wrap around the golden trinket. He pulled it toward himself and out of the temple to examine it in the moonlight.

It was a statue the size of a human newborn, in the shape of a woman. Time had worn away the finer details, but the shape of her delicate hands remained.

He observed the hands for a long time, and a part of himself, deep in the recesses of his memories, ached for the humans to understand him.

And then, as quick as that thought came, he growled before grabbing his treasure with his ruthless claws and carrying it back to his cave. His hollowed-out cathedral of stone filled with treasures that meant nothing to him.

Just a pile of useless, meaningless things.

He harshly threw the statue into a pile of gold coins before laying beside it, curling his tail around the base.

His treasures were all he had to protect.

He was alone.

Always alone.