Chapter 2
TWO
SOREIA
Night falls before I can make it out of the settlement.
I find shelter in another ruined building—this one stable enough that I can barricade the door and wedge myself into a defensible corner. My body aches. The Anchor aches worse. The blood has dried on my face, crusty and uncomfortable, but I don’t have enough water to waste on cleaning it.
Sleep comes in fits and starts, disrupted by dreams that show the same thing over and over: claws, failing magic, silence.
But this time is different.
Fire.
Except it’s there. Between me and ending.
I wake with my heart pounding and my magic reaching toward a name I haven’t spoken yet.
The dying man’s words echo in my head: Find him. Do whatever you have to.
Three days east. The Ash Wastes.
I don’t know what Kaster Nexis will do when I find him. The reputation suggests he’ll kill me for trespassing in his territory, or ignore me until the monsters catch up, or not care enough to acknowledge my existence.
I’ve survived this long by following my bloodline’s instincts. By trusting the warning before the wolves arrive.
Maybe this time I’m following a different kind of signal.
The road east is worse than the settlement.
Wagons burned or overturned. Signs of desperate flight—dropped possessions, discarded weapons, the deep grooves of wheels pushed too fast over rough terrain.
Some of the dead are recent. Others have been here long enough that the ash has nearly buried them.
I walk past them all.
The power in my veins stays quiet, conserving itself. The encounter with the scout cost me more than I want to calculate.
But the dreams—
The dreams keep showing me that fire. That presence. That vast violent thing standing between me and oblivion.
By midday, I’ve left the worst of the destruction behind.
The road climbs into barren hills, scrubland giving way to rocky terrain that holds the memory of ancient violence.
Scorch marks stain the earth. Bones jut from the soil at odd angles—old bones, sun-bleached, picked clean by time rather than scavengers.
Dragon-fought territory.
I’m getting close.
The scouts find me again at sunset.
Different pack this time—six of them, fanning out across the ridgeline with obvious intent. They’ve learned from the first encounter. They’re not testing me anymore.
They’re closing in for the kill.
I could use my magic. Burn more years to make one or two of them stick. But six is too many. I’d die before I finished them all, and they know it.
So I run.
The terrain works against me—loose rock, steep inclines, no cover worth the name. The scouts flow across the ground like water, gaining with every stride. I can hear them behind me, that clicking communication passing between them, coordinating the hunt.
One cuts left, angling to intercept. Another vanishes over a ridge, probably circling to cut off escape.
I’m not going to make it.
My foot catches on a stone and I stumble, nearly going down. The lead scout is close enough that I hear its breathing—fast, eager, hungry.
Then the world ignites.
Dragonfire.
Not natural fire—white-hot and absolute, tearing across the ridgeline in a wave that turns scouts to ash before they can scream. The force slams into me, driving me to my knees. The air itself seems to combust.
I throw my arms over my head and wait for the burning.
It doesn’t come.
When I look up, there’s a man standing on the ridge above me. Tall, broad, built for violence rather than display. Scars mark visible skin—old scars, the kind that come from centuries of combat. His eyes track the few surviving scouts.
The scouts scatter.
He doesn’t chase them. He watches them run with an expression I can’t quite read—not satisfaction, not boredom. Clinical evaluation.
Then those eyes drop to me.
Fire bleeds from him in waves. Dragon blaze, barely contained. The inferno in his blood reaching toward the surface even at rest.
My bloodline stirs. That same recognition I experienced when I read his name.
Kaster Nexis.
He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t offer a hand. Stares at me like I’m a problem he hasn’t decided how to solve.
“I was looking for you.” The words come out rougher than I intended. Blood still crusts my face from earlier. My hands shake.
His expression doesn’t change. “Why?”
One word. Without inflection. Final. The kind of voice that expects answers and doesn’t waste breath on pleasantries.
“Because you kill monsters.” I push myself to my feet. My legs tremble, but they hold. “Because they’re hunting me. Because—”
I stop.
Because my magic knows you. Because my dreams changed when I heard your name. Because you’re standing between me and death, and I don’t know why.
I can’t say any of that. He’ll think I’m insane.
“Because I can make them stay down.” I meet his gaze. “Permanently.”
For a long moment, nothing happens. He stares at me with those level eyes, weighing, calculating, deciding.
Then he turns and walks away.
“Wait—”
I stare at his retreating back. Every survival instinct I possess screams that following a solitary dragon into unknown territory is suicide. He’s not offering protection. He’s not offering an alliance. He’s offering... tolerance. Maybe.
The scouts will regroup. More will come. The gods or whoever controls them won’t stop until I’m dead, and I can’t kill enough of them alone.
I follow.
He moves fast, even on foot. Long strides that eat up the distance, never checking to see if I’m behind him. The terrain doesn’t slow him—he navigates the rocky ground like he’s walked it a thousand times before.
He probably has.
I keep pace through sheer stubbornness. My body screams for rest. The Anchor flickers weakly, not quite replenished from the earlier use. Blood has dried on my face, pulling at my skin.
None of it matters. If I stop, I die.
The sky bleeds orange and red as the sun sinks lower.
The temperature drops with it, but fire rolls back to me from where he walks ahead—that constant dragon blaze that marks his kind.
It presses against my skin, fills the cooling air.
It should be uncomfortable. Instead, it’s the only thing in this world that doesn’t feel like ending.
We walk for hours in silence. He doesn’t ask my name. Doesn’t ask what I can do or why the monsters want me dead.
Near midnight, he stops.
We’ve reached a natural depression in the rock—a shallow cave formed by an overhang, barely large enough for two people. He moves into it without explanation, positioning himself near the entrance with his back against stone.
I hesitate at the threshold.
He closes his eyes.
I stare at him for a long moment. Exhaustion pulls at every muscle. My magic feels hollow, scraping against the inside of my bones. The smart thing would be to rest while I can, trust that his senses will catch approaching threats.
Trust.
I sink down against the opposite wall, as far from him as the small space allows.
In the silence, my bloodline hums.
A shift is coming. I feel it in the dreams that won’t let me rest, in the magic that recognized his name before I knew why.
I close my eyes.
Tomorrow, I’ll figure out how to survive beside a predator who might kill me as easily as save me.
Tonight, I breathe.
The claws don’t find me in my dreams. For the first time in weeks, I sleep without seeing my own death.
Instead, there’s fire. Violence. A vast dark presence that doesn’t care whether I live, except—
Except I’m still alive.
And that has to mean more than coincidence.