Chapter 7
“I promise,” I murmured. “I won't look.”
He closed his eyes, his breathing slowly steadying against my skin. “Good. Good girl.”
He didn't release me immediately. Instead, his hands slid around to the back of my neck.
I felt the familiar, sharp chill of silver as his fingers worked the latch of the torc. With a swift, practiced twist, he adjusted the braided band, locking it even tighter around my throat.
The metal bit deep into my skin, the magical chill biting into the base of my skull like freezing needles. The soft, lingering resonance from the murals—the phantom warmth of stone wings, the scent of crushed needles and rain—was snuffed out instantly, drowned in an icy, obedient void.
“Let’s keep moving,” Julian said softly, releasing me and retrieving his staff from the floor. His composure had returned, though a faint tremor lingered in his fingers. “The Sanctum entrance is just beyond the lower colonnade.”
***
We descended another league into the roots of the mountain, where the air grew so hot that even Julian had to shed his woolen coat, carrying only his leather satchels and his staff.
The colonnade opened into a vast subterranean canyon—a hollow cathedral of rock where a river of sluggish, glowing orange magma flowed beneath a natural stone bridge. The light from the molten rock cast everything in a hellish, pulsating crimson.
Halfway across the bridge, something was waiting.
It was not standing; it lay pinned beneath a collapsed pillar of black basalt, its massive bulk trapped on the narrow span of stone.
An elder sentry.
Its scales were not the glossy obsidian of the juvenile drake we had slain in the canyon, but a faded, tarnished bronze, scored with hundreds of ancient scars. One of its leathery wings was pinned flat beneath the five-ton stone slab, broken and bleeding a slow, thick ooze of black ichor onto the bridge.
Hearing our approach, the beast raised its massive horned head.
I had my sword drawn before Julian could even speak the warning. The heavy steel blade sang as it caught the orange glare of the magma below. I moved forward, shifting into a low, predatory combat stance, my muscles coiling like drawn ballista cords.
“Kill it,” Julian whispered from five paces behind me, retreating toward the safety of the archway. “It’s crippled, Sariyah. A clean strike to the eye-slit before it gathers its breath.”
I closed the distance with silent, terrifying speed, circling the pinned dragon from its blind side.
The beast’s great head turned slowly, tracking my movement.
I waited for the furnace glow in its throat. I waited for the roar that would shatter the cavern walls, for the desperate, thrashing fury of a cornered predator fighting to the death.
None of that happened.
The dragon let out a low, shuddering breath—a soft, whistling sigh that blew hot air across my boots, smelling of wild honey, scorched copper, and dying summer.
It did not flare its scales. It did not snap its jagged jaws.
Instead, the ancient bronze beast slowly, deliberately lowered its massive skull to the floor of the bridge. It pressed its horned brow flat against the stone, baring the soft, vulnerable curve of its neck directly to my blade.
It was an act of complete, unconditional submission.
I froze.
My boots halted three feet from its throat, the tip of my broadsword hovering directly above the junction where scale met flesh.
The dragon opened one golden eye.
The iris was immense, a pool of molten amber split by a slender, vertical pupil. It looked up at me—not at the sword, not at the armor, but straight into my eyes.
There was no hatred in that gaze. No rage.
There was only a profound, heartbreaking sorrow. A look of quiet, tragic recognition, like an old hound greeting a master who had long forgotten its name.
A low rumble vibrated deep within its throat—a soft, mourning cadence that bypassed my ears entirely, humming directly through the bones of my feet, up through my spine, and vibrating against the silver torc at my neck.
*You have come home... little golden one...*
The telepathic echo struck my mind, gentle as a falling feather, yet heavy enough to make my knees buckle.
*Why do you carry the iron of the small thieves? Have you forgotten the song of the clouds?*
“Stop,” I whispered aloud, my hands trembling violently on the hilt of the sword. “Stop it.”
“Sariyah! What are you doing?” Julian’s voice shrieked from the bridge entrance, sharp with hysteria. “Strike! Drive the steel into its neck! Why are you hesitating?”
“Julian... it’s not fighting,” I called back, my voice shaking. I looked down at the exposed throat. The beast was offering its life to me. It wasn't defending itself. “It surrendered. It... it spoke to me.”
“It’s a trick!” Julian screamed, taking a frantic step onto the bridge, his staff shaking wildly in his fist. “I told you, they use glamour! They project weakness to make you hesitate! Cut its throat, Sariyah, or it will blast us both into ash!”
I stared at the dragon’s eye.
A single tear—a thick, iridescent drop of golden fluid—welled at the corner of its amber eye and slid down its scarred cheek, hissing softly against the hot stone of the bridge.
*Strike, if the chain demands it,* the voice murmured in my soul, full of endless, patient sorrow. *Better to die by your claws than to see you caged forever.*
My chest heaved. My vision spun. A violent, screaming conflict tore through my insides, splitting my mind in two.
Every instinct Julian had drilled into me screamed to drive the blade home, to kill the monster and protect the last scholar of humanity.
Yet my body refused to obey. My arms felt like dead lead.
“Sariyah!” Julian was running toward me now, completely abandoning his cautious nature, his face white as bone, his eyes wide with a frantic, unhinged madness. “Strike it! By the blood of the Empire, strike it down!”
The pressure in my head was unbearable. The silver collar burned like dry ice, biting deep into my skin, screaming with warding magic that fought against the ancient dragon's lament.
With a choked, agonized cry, I swung the sword.
I didn't strike the beast’s throat.
I brought the heavy broadsword down with all my unnatural, terrifying strength against the massive basalt pillar pinning the dragon’s wing.
*CRACK.*
The five-ton slab of solid volcanic stone shattered beneath the impact of my steel, splintering into three massive chunks that tumbled off the bridge, plunging down into the roaring river of magma below.
The dragon let out a sharp gasp, its massive, bloodied wing slipping free from the rubble.
It did not attack.
It dragged its massive bulk backward, clearing the bridge, its amber eyes giving me one last, lingering, mournful look before it turned and limped into the dark, labyrinthine crevices of the lower caldera, vanishing into the shadows without looking back.
The bridge fell into silence, broken only by the bubbling hiss of the lava beneath us.
I stood there, panting, my broadsword hanging loose at my side, my knuckles bleeding where the shockwave of the blow had torn my skin.
