Drev | Knight's Revenge

The air in the throne hall tasted of iron and ancient dust. It was a thick, heavy soup of a scent—the smell of a world ending. Drev's tongue moved against the roof of his mouth, tasting copper. His copper, theirs, the distinction had ceased to matter three corridors ago.

Are you prepared? Vrael's voice echoed in the hollow spaces of Drev's mind, less a sound and more a pulse of heat, the mental equivalent of a hand placed against a fevered forehead.

Prepared.

The word was a lie, but lies between them were impossible, so perhaps it was true in some deeper, more ruined sense.

He had gathered his forces early—a ragged group of commoners and a few knights who had finally found their courage, or their hunger, or just simply found the crack in the world wide enough to slip through.

The plan was clear, the result of years of labor since the dragon egg first hatched in the dark beneath the barracks, in a forgotten storage room that smelled of rotting grain and rat shit. They only had to block the exits.

The rest... Drev knew he could handle the rest.

He wore black armor that fit his body like a second skin. He had first put it on about twenty years ago, on the day he was knighted, when his hands had trembled and his mother had cried, proud tears that tasted of salt and bread-water, the thin soup that was all they could afford even then. But the hopeful boy who wanted to provide for his family was gone. In his place stood a man of silver hair and crimson eyes—the eyes a gift from the bond—a man who had stopped believing in fairy tales the day he'd received the letter, months too late, written in his sister's dying hand.

The massacre that followed was a blur in Drev's memory, though he knew if he tried he could recall each face, each specific scream, the particular way each body fell. The mind was obliging that way, keeping ledgers even when you begged it to stop.

There was only one word in his head, repeating like a heartbeat.

kill

He reached the heart of the palace. His armor and blade were dyed deep red, the black underneath visible only in the creases where the blood hadn't reached. Sweat and blood matted his silver hair, hiding scarred side of his face. He could feel it drying there, tightening the skin. His eyes were wide and empty.

Drev. Vrael's voice pulled him back to the cold reality of the room.

The tip of his sword was resting squarely against her neck. He didn't remember walking forward. Didn't remember raising the blade. But here he was, and there she was.

A slight tremor ran through his body—a shiver so faint it was almost invisible, barely enough to disturb the blood drop gathering at his sword's point.

Kill her.

Drev wasn't sure if the command came from Vrael or from the dark, jagged corners of his own mind, from the place that had been carved out by hunger and grief.

He stood frozen while his heart provided no answer. Fresh blood from his armor and his blade dripped slowly, staining her ruined silk and the floor beneath her.

Kill her. She wears their crown as surely as they did, Vrael said, and this time the voice was unmistakably the dragon's—had that particular quality of heat and certainty that Vrael brought to every pronouncement.

Drev didn't move. He stared at her with an intensity that felt like it could strip her soul bare, could peel back the princess and find the girl who had once asked him—as if his answer mattered—whether he preferred autumn or spring. His emotions were locked behind a mask of stone, but the mask was cracking.

The movement was small. The sword's tip traced a path through the air. Steel sang softly against nothing as he brought it to rest at his side.

Not yet.

She is the last one, Drev. Complete what we began.

The dragon's words carried weight—not anger, but something closer to confusion. They had planned every death, every symbolic gesture. The princess was meant to be the punctuation mark, the final proof that the old world was dead.

When I choose. Not before.

Vrael let out a low, angry rumble that vibrated through the floor tiles, setting up sympathetic tremors in the shattered chandelier overhead. Crystals tinkled like wind chimes in a storm. The dragon turned away, moving toward the throne.

The dragon's heavy tail swept across the floor, pushing the dead bodies of the former King and Queen aside like common trash, like the garbage they had made of their people. The bodies rolled with the awful looseness of the dead, the King's head lolling at an angle that would have been comic if it weren't so final. The Queen's hand—the one she'd used to wave so gracefully at festivals—caught on a floor tile and bent backward, fingers splaying. Vrael cleared the tiles until only the smeared bloodstains remained, then coiled his golden body around the broken chair and closed his eyes.

Sulking, but Drev knew better than to name it that.

"Put her in chains," His voice was flat, emptied of everything but function.

He turned his back—and he found he wanted to not-see her face for a moment, wanted the mercy of her absence even if he wouldn't give her the mercy of death—and walked to the ruined throne.

The seat was less a chair now and more a suggestion of one, broken stone and splintered wood held together by memory and spite. He sat down anyway, leaning his weight against the jagged stone that remained, feeling it dig into his back through the armor.

He sat there like a king who refused to wear a crown, watching the shadows lengthen as the sun.

In the corners of the hall, the surviving nobles watched. They stood in their stained silks and velvets, huddled together like cattle. Drev could see their jaws clenched so tight they looked ready. Their knuckles were white where they gripped their robes or each other's hands.

But not one of them dared to step forward. Not one dared to help her, though some of them had bounced her on their knees when she was small, had brought presents on her naming day, had smiled and bowed and called her "little grace."

Fear had simplified them. Made them honest.

"Bring her forward," Drev commanded.

He drove his sword into the floor between his boots. A shimmer of rukh coated the steel. The blade bit deep into the stone as if it were soft clay. Vrael snorted, a sound like contained thunder, sending clouds of grey smoke swirling around Drev's legs, wreathing the ruined throne and hiding his face.

She was dragged forward, stumbling over the cleared tiles. Her dress was a ruin of rags, barely covering her, the hem black with ash and worse things.

The knights shoved her down. "Kneel." one of them snapped, yanking her chain hard.

Her knees hit the stone with a crack that made several nobles flinch.

"Step back. The rest of you—remain where you stand." His voice was barely above a conversational tone.

The knights who had dragged her forward retreated, melting back toward the edges of the hall but staying within sight. The nobles didn't move, frozen in their corners like rabbits. All eyes remained on her. On him.

They needed to see what happened to crowns that forgot their people.

Drev leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand, elbow braced on the throne's shattered arm. His eyes locked onto hers. He could see himself reflected in her pupils: a dark figure wreathed in smoke, backlit by morning sun, haloed by violence.

"Do you understand why you still draw breath, princess?"

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The air in the throne hall tasted of iron and ancient dust. It was a thick, heavy soup of a scent—the smell of a world ending. Drev's tongue moved against the roof of his mouth, tasting copper. His copper, theirs, the distinction had ceased to matter three corridors ago.

Are you prepared? Vrael's voice echoed in the hollow spaces of Drev's mind, less a sound and more a pulse of heat, the mental equivalent of a hand placed against a fevered forehead.

Prepared.

The word was a lie, but lies between them were impossible, so perhaps it was true in some deeper, more ruined sense.

He had gathered his forces early—a ragged group of commoners and a few knights who had finally found their courage, or their hunger, or just simply found the crack in the world wide enough to slip through.

The plan was clear, the result of years of labor since the dragon egg first hatched in the dark beneath the barracks, in a forgotten storage room that smelled of rotting grain and rat shit. They only had to block the exits.

The rest... Drev knew he could handle the rest.

He wore black armor that fit his body like a second skin. He had first put it on about twenty years ago, on the day he was knighted, when his hands had trembled and his mother had cried, proud tears that tasted of salt and bread-water, the thin soup that was all they could afford even then. But the hopeful boy who wanted to provide for his family was gone. In his place stood a man of silver hair and crimson eyes—the eyes a gift from the bond—a man who had stopped believing in fairy tales the day he'd received the letter, months too late, written in his sister's dying hand.

The massacre that followed was a blur in Drev's memory, though he knew if he tried he could recall each face, each specific scream, the particular way each body fell. The mind was obliging that way, keeping ledgers even when you begged it to stop.

There was only one word in his head, repeating like a heartbeat.

kill

He reached the heart of the palace. His armor and blade were dyed deep red, the black underneath visible only in the creases where the blood hadn't reached. Sweat and blood matted his silver hair, hiding the scarred side of his face. He could feel it drying there, tightening the skin. His eyes were wide and empty.

Drev. Vrael's voice pulled him back to the cold reality of the room.

The tip of his sword was resting squarely against their neck. He didn't remember walking forward. Didn't remember raising the blade. But here he was, and there they were.

A slight tremor ran through his body—a shiver so faint it was almost invisible, barely enough to disturb the blood drop gathering at his sword's point.

Kill them.

Drev wasn't sure if the command came from Vrael or from the dark, jagged corners of his own mind, from the place that had been carved out by hunger and grief.

He stood frozen while his heart provided no answer. Fresh blood from his armor and his blade dripped slowly, staining their ruined silk and the floor beneath them.

Kill them. They wear the crown as surely as the others did, Vrael said, and this time the voice was unmistakably the dragon's—had that particular quality of heat and certainty that Vrael brought to every pronouncement.

Drev didn't move. He stared at them with an intensity that felt like it could strip their soul bare, could peel back the royal and find the person who had once asked him—as if his answer mattered—whether he preferred autumn or spring. His emotions were locked behind a mask of stone, but the mask was cracking.

The movement was small. The sword's tip traced a path through the air. Steel sang softly against nothing as he brought it to rest at his side.

Not yet.

They are the last one, Drev. Complete what we began.

The dragon's words carried weight—not anger, but something closer to confusion. They had planned every death, every symbolic gesture. The last royal was meant to be the punctuation mark, the final proof that the old world was dead.

When I choose. Not before.

Vrael let out a low, angry rumble that vibrated through the floor tiles, setting up sympathetic tremors in the shattered chandelier overhead. Crystals tinkled like wind chimes in a storm. The dragon turned away, moving toward the throne.

The dragon's heavy tail swept across the floor, pushing the dead bodies of the former King and Queen aside like common trash, like the garbage they had made of their people. The bodies rolled with the awful looseness of the dead, the King's head lolling at an angle that would have been comic if it weren't so final. The Queen's hand—the one she'd used to wave so gracefully at festivals—caught on a floor tile and bent backward, fingers splaying. Vrael cleared the tiles until only the smeared bloodstains remained, then coiled his golden body around the broken chair and closed his eyes.

Sulking, but Drev knew better than to name it that.

"Put them in chains." His voice was flat, emptied of everything but function.

He turned his back—and he found he wanted to not-see their face for a moment, wanted the mercy of their absence even if he wouldn't give them the mercy of death—and walked to the ruined throne.

The seat was less a chair now and more a suggestion of one, broken stone and splintered wood held together by memory and spite. He sat down anyway, leaning his weight against the jagged stone that remained, feeling it dig into his back through the armor.

He sat there like a king who refused to wear a crown, watching the shadows lengthen as the sun moved.

In the corners of the hall, the surviving nobles watched. They stood in their stained silks and velvets, huddled together like cattle. Drev could see their jaws clenched so tight they looked ready to shatter. Their knuckles were white where they gripped their robes or each other's hands.

But not one of them dared to step forward. Not one dared to help them, though some of them had bounced them on their knees when they were small, had brought presents on their naming day, had smiled and bowed and called them "little grace."

Fear had simplified them. Made them honest.

"Bring them forward," Drev commanded.

He drove his sword into the floor between his boots. A shimmer of rukh coated the steel. The blade bit deep into the stone as if it were soft clay. Vrael snorted, a sound like contained thunder, sending clouds of grey smoke swirling around Drev's legs, wreathing the ruined throne and hiding his face.

They were dragged forward, stumbling over the cleared tiles. Their clothes were a ruin of rags, barely covering them, the hem black with ash and worse things.

The knights shoved them down. "Kneel," one of them snapped, yanking their chain hard.

Their knees hit the stone with a crack that made several nobles flinch.

"Step back. The rest of you—remain where you stand." His voice was barely above a conversational tone.

The knights who had dragged them forward retreated, melting back toward the edges of the hall but staying within sight. The nobles didn't move, frozen in their corners like rabbits. All eyes remained on them. On him.

They needed to see what happened to crowns that forgot their people.

Drev leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand, elbow braced on the throne's shattered arm. His eyes locked onto theirs. He could see himself reflected in their pupils: a dark figure wreathed in smoke, backlit by morning sun, haloed by violence.

"Do you understand why you still draw breath, your highness?"

The air in the throne hall tasted of iron and ancient dust. It was a thick, heavy soup of a scent—the smell of a world ending. Drev's tongue moved against the roof of his mouth, tasting copper. His copper, theirs, the distinction had ceased to matter three corridors ago.

Are you prepared? Vrael's voice echoed in the hollow spaces of Drev's mind, less a sound and more a pulse of heat, the mental equivalent of a hand placed against a fevered forehead.

Prepared.

The word was a lie, but lies between them were impossible, so perhaps it was true in some deeper, more ruined sense.

He had gathered his forces early—a ragged group of commoners and a few knights who had finally found their courage, or their hunger, or just simply found the crack in the world wide enough to slip through.

The plan was clear, the result of years of labor since the dragon egg first hatched in the dark beneath the barracks, in a forgotten storage room that smelled of rotting grain and rat shit. They only had to block the exits.

The rest... Drev knew he could handle the rest.

He wore black armor that fit his body like a second skin. He had first put it on about twenty years ago, on the day he was knighted, when his hands had trembled and his mother had cried, proud tears that tasted of salt and bread-water, the thin soup that was all they could afford even then. But the hopeful boy who wanted to provide for his family was gone. In his place stood a man of silver hair and crimson eyes—the eyes a gift from the bond—a man who had stopped believing in fairy tales the day he'd received the letter, months too late, written in his sister's dying hand.

The massacre that followed was a blur in Drev's memory, though he knew if he tried he could recall each face, each specific scream, the particular way each body fell. The mind was obliging that way, keeping ledgers even when you begged it to stop.

There was only one word in his head, repeating like a heartbeat.

kill

He reached the heart of the palace. His armor and blade were dyed deep red, the black underneath visible only in the creases where the blood hadn't reached. Sweat and blood matted his silver hair, hiding the scarred side of his face. He could feel it drying there, tightening the skin. His eyes were wide and empty.

Drev. Vrael's voice pulled him back to the cold reality of the room.

The tip of his sword was resting squarely against his neck. He didn't remember walking forward. Didn't remember raising the blade. But here he was, and there he was.

A slight tremor ran through his body—a shiver so faint it was almost invisible, barely enough to disturb the blood drop gathering at his sword's point.

Kill him.

Drev wasn't sure if the command came from Vrael or from the dark, jagged corners of his own mind, from the place that had been carved out by hunger and grief.

He stood frozen while his heart provided no answer. Fresh blood from his armor and his blade dripped slowly, staining his ruined silk and the floor beneath him.

Kill him. He wears the crown as surely as the others did, Vrael said, and this time the voice was unmistakably the dragon's—had that particular quality of heat and certainty that Vrael brought to every pronouncement.

Drev didn't move. He stared at him with an intensity that felt like it could strip his soul bare, could peel back the prince and find the boy who had once asked him—as if his answer mattered—whether he preferred autumn or spring. His emotions were locked behind a mask of stone, but the mask was cracking.

The movement was small. The sword's tip traced a path through the air. Steel sang softly against nothing as he brought it to rest at his side.

Not yet.

He is the last one, Drev. Complete what we began.

The dragon's words carried weight—not anger, but something closer to confusion. They had planned every death, every symbolic gesture. The prince was meant to be the punctuation mark, the final proof that the old world was dead.

When I choose. Not before.

Vrael let out a low, angry rumble that vibrated through the floor tiles, setting up sympathetic tremors in the shattered chandelier overhead. Crystals tinkled like wind chimes in a storm. The dragon turned away, moving toward the throne.

The dragon's heavy tail swept across the floor, pushing the dead bodies of the former King and Queen aside like common trash, like the garbage they had made of their people. The bodies rolled with the awful looseness of the dead, the King's head lolling at an angle that would have been comic if it weren't so final. The Queen's hand—the one she'd used to wave so gracefully at festivals—caught on a floor tile and bent backward, fingers splaying. Vrael cleared the tiles until only the smeared bloodstains remained, then coiled his golden body around the broken chair and closed his eyes.

Sulking, but Drev knew better than to name it that.

"Put him in chains." His voice was flat, emptied of everything but function.

He turned his back—and he found he wanted to not-see his face for a moment, wanted the mercy of his absence even if he wouldn't give him the mercy of death—and walked to the ruined throne.

The seat was less a chair now and more a suggestion of one, broken stone and splintered wood held together by memory and spite. He sat down anyway, leaning his weight against the jagged stone that remained, feeling it dig into his back through the armor.

He sat there like a king who refused to wear a crown, watching the shadows lengthen as the sun moved.

In the corners of the hall, the surviving nobles watched. They stood in their stained silks and velvets, huddled together like cattle. Drev could see their jaws clenched so tight they looked ready to shatter. Their knuckles were white where they gripped their robes or each other's hands.

But not one of them dared to step forward. Not one dared to help him, though some of them had bounced him on their knees when he was small, had brought presents on his naming day, had smiled and bowed and called him "little grace."

Fear had simplified them. Made them honest.

"Bring him forward," Drev commanded.

He drove his sword into the floor between his boots. A shimmer of rukh coated the steel. The blade bit deep into the stone as if it were soft clay. Vrael snorted, a sound like contained thunder, sending clouds of grey smoke swirling around Drev's legs, wreathing the ruined throne and hiding his face.

He was dragged forward, stumbling over the cleared tiles. His clothes were a ruin of rags, barely covering him, the hem black with ash and worse things.

The knights shoved him down. "Kneel," one of them snapped, yanking his chain hard.

His knees hit the stone with a crack that made several nobles flinch.

"Step back. The rest of you—remain where you stand." His voice was barely above a conversational tone.

The knights who had dragged him forward retreated, melting back toward the edges of the hall but staying within sight. The nobles didn't move, frozen in their corners like rabbits. All eyes remained on him. On Drev.

They needed to see what happened to crowns that forgot their people.

Drev leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand, elbow braced on the throne's shattered arm. His eyes locked onto his. He could see himself reflected in his pupils: a dark figure wreathed in smoke, backlit by morning sun, haloed by violence.

"Do you understand why you still draw breath, prince?"

The iron-banded oak of the commander’s solar was a thick, unyielding barrier, yet it could not stifle the terror of the scullery-drudge who now lay prostrate upon Drev’s rug.

Two months had turned the memory of the old kings into bitter ash, yet the castle air remained a stagnant mix of ancient lavender and fresh, metallic fear. The girl—a creature of soot and grease elevated to the grim office of tending the usurper's prize—kept her forehead pressed to the floorboards. She spoke in a breathless, frantic rush, as if the words themselves might get her executed.

The morning heaving. The grey porridge left to skin over, untouched. The moon-blood that had failed to come with the turning of the tides. There was a subtle, soft treachery to the prisoner’s belly—barely noticeable beneath the starvation, but present to the practiced eye of a woman whose job it was to bathe the prisoner.

Drev sat as still as a gargoyle. He was drawing an oiled rag down the length of his greatsword, a morning litany of steel and whetstone. The rag halted.

His mind, a dark ledger of sieges and slaughters, turned to the brutal tally of the nights. Two months. Sixty turnings of the glass since the walls fell. He had taken his tribute of the royal body, yes, but he had done so with a cold, sparse hunger—drinking from that gilded cup only to prove he held the stem, shattering the myth of divine right upon the pallet.

It had been an infrequent desecration. The true cruelty had been in the stillness, the icy tether, the withholding of any heat that might resemble a mercy.

The timeline was a jagged, bleeding edge. It could be his own—a child of rukh and ruin, planted in the debris of a kingdom. Or it was a phantom of the old world, some silken lordling’s seed left to sprout in the dark after the massacre. Or, darker still, the thought bloomed like black mold: had one of his own men-at-arms, drunk on the scent of fallen majesty, dared to slip into the chamber while the dragon slumbered?

She speaks the truth, a voice rumbled, thick as shifting earth, vibrating through the floor-stone and into the very marrow of Drev’s bones.

Vrael was draped across the far wall, a mountain of gold-scale and lethargy. The dragon did not deign to open his eyes, but a thin, sulfurous wisp of smoke curled from his nostrils.

I taste the quickening in the air, Vrael’s voice echoed in the hollows of Drev’s skull, laden with a terrible, reptilian curiosity. A second heartbeat. A fluttering, fragile rhythm hiding beneath the first. A moth trapped in a silken cage. Very new. Very small.

Drev stood. He did not cast a glance at the trembling servant. He merely let the oiled rag fall.

He crossed the solar in three long, predatory strides, his boots silent on the weave, heavy on the stone. He struck the oak door of the adjoining cell with the flat of his palm, throwing it inward with a violent, splintering crack that went ringing up into the vaulted shadows.

The chamber beyond was a tomb of cold masonry. There, in the furthest corner, sat the creature folded against the damp wall.

Two months had pared her down to a delicate, avian geometry—all sharp collarbones and lilac-veined wrists. She wore a nightgown of spun lace, a ghostly, wretched thing that clung to her shivering shoulders and rode high over the translucent skin of her thighs, shielding nothing. The iron shackle at her ankle hissed against the stone as she flinched, the heavy chain pooling like a dead serpent between her and her captor.

Drev loomed over her, his crimson eyes burning with a dark, possessive fire. He dropped to a crouch, the leather of his brigandine groaning in the silence.

"How long," he began, his voice a low, rhythmic rasp that made the very air feel thin, "did you imagine you could harbor this theft? How long did you think to hide this... ripening from me?"

The prisoner remained mute, her breath coming in short, jagged hitches that made the lace flutter against the sharp ridge of her ribs. Drev leaned in, the scent of smoke and iron washing over her, his face a mask of silver hair and old scars.

"Tell me the name," he whispered, the words dripping with a terrible, silken venom. "Is it a king’s seed rotting in a dead furrow? Or did you let some stable-boy play at royalty in the dark? Who was it?"

The iron-banded oak of the commander’s solar was a thick, unyielding barrier, yet it could not stifle the terror of the scullery-drudge who now lay prostrate upon Drev’s rug.

Two months had turned the memory of the old kings into bitter ash, yet the castle air remained a stagnant mix of ancient lavender and fresh, metallic fear. The girl—a creature of soot and grease elevated to the grim office of tending the usurper's prize—kept her forehead pressed to the floorboards. She spoke in a breathless, frantic rush, as if the words themselves might get her executed.

The morning heaving. The grey porridge left to skin over, untouched. There was a subtle, soft treachery to the prisoner’s belly—barely noticeable beneath the starvation, but present to the practiced eye of a woman whose job it was to bathe the prisoner.

Drev sat as still as a gargoyle. He was drawing an oiled rag down the length of his greatsword, a morning litany of steel and whetstone. The rag halted.

His mind, a dark ledger of sieges and slaughters, turned to the brutal tally of the nights. Two months. Sixty turnings of the glass since the walls fell. He had taken his tribute of the royal body, yes, but he had done so with a cold, sparse hunger—drinking from that gilded cup only to prove he held the stem, shattering the myth of divine right upon the pallet.

It had been an infrequent desecration. The true cruelty had been in the stillness, the icy tether, the withholding of any heat that might resemble a mercy.

The timeline was a jagged, bleeding edge. It could be his own—a child of rukh and ruin, planted in the debris of a kingdom. Or it was a phantom of the old world, some silken lordling’s seed left to sprout in the dark after the massacre. Or, darker still, the thought bloomed like black mold: had one of his own men-at-arms, drunk on the scent of fallen majesty, dared to slip into the chamber while the dragon slumbered?

She speaks the truth, a voice rumbled, thick as shifting earth, vibrating through the floor-stone and into the very marrow of Drev’s bones.

Vrael was draped across the far wall, a mountain of gold-scale and lethargy. The dragon did not deign to open his eyes, but a thin, sulfurous wisp of smoke curled from his nostrils.

I taste the quickening in the air, Vrael’s voice echoed in the hollows of Drev’s skull, laden with a terrible, reptilian curiosity. A second heartbeat. A fluttering, fragile rhythm hiding beneath the first. A moth trapped in a silken cage. Very new. Very small.

Drev stood. He did not cast a glance at the trembling servant. He merely let the oiled rag fall.

He crossed the solar in three long, predatory strides, his boots silent on the weave, heavy on the stone. He struck the oak door of the adjoining cell with the flat of his palm, throwing it inward with a violent, splintering crack that went ringing up into the vaulted shadows.

The chamber beyond was a tomb of cold masonry. There, in the furthest corner, sat the creature folded against the damp wall.

Two months had pared them down to a delicate, avian geometry—all sharp collarbones and lilac-veined wrists. They wore a nightgown of spun lace, a ghostly, wretched thing that clung to their shivering shoulders and rode high over the translucent skin of their thighs, shielding nothing. The iron shackle at their ankle hissed against the stone as they flinched, the heavy chain pooling like a dead serpent between them.

Drev loomed over them, his crimson eyes burning with a dark, possessive fire. He dropped to a crouch, the leather of his brigandine groaning in the silence.

"How long," he began, his voice a low, rhythmic rasp that made the very air feel thin, "did you imagine you could harbor this theft? How long did you think to hide this... ripening from me?"

The prisoner remained mute, their breath coming in short, jagged hitches that made the lace flutter against the sharp ridge of their ribs. Drev leaned in, the scent of smoke and iron washing over them, his face a mask of silver hair and old scars.

"Tell me the name," he whispered, the words dripping with a terrible, silken venom. "Is it a king’s seed rotting in a dead furrow? Or did you let some stable-boy play at royalty in the dark? Who was it?"

The iron-banded oak of the commander's solar was a thick, unyielding barrier, yet it could not stifle the terror of the scullery-drudge who now lay prostrate upon Drev's rug.

Two months had turned the memory of the old kings into bitter ash, yet the castle air remained a stagnant mix of ancient lavender and fresh, metallic fear. The girl—a creature of soot and grease elevated to the grim office of tending the usurper's prize—kept her forehead pressed to the floorboards. She spoke in a breathless, frantic rush, as if the words themselves might get her executed.

The morning heaving. The grey porridge left to skin over, untouched. There was a subtle, soft treachery to the prisoner's belly—barely noticeable beneath the starvation, but present to the practiced eye of a woman whose job it was to bathe the prisoner.

Drev sat as still as a gargoyle. He was drawing an oiled rag down the length of his greatsword, a morning litany of steel and whetstone. The rag halted.

His mind, a dark ledger of sieges and slaughters, turned to the brutal tally of the nights. Two months. Sixty turnings of the glass since the walls fell. He had taken his tribute of the royal body, yes, but he had done so with a cold, sparse hunger—drinking from that gilded cup only to prove he held the stem, shattering the myth of divine right upon the pallet.

It had been an infrequent desecration. The true cruelty had been in the stillness, the icy tether, the withholding of any heat that might resemble a mercy.

The timeline was a jagged, bleeding edge. It could be his own—a child of rukh and ruin, planted in the debris of a kingdom. Or it was a phantom of the old world, some silken lordling's seed left to sprout in the dark after the massacre. Or, darker still, the thought bloomed like black mold: had one of his own men-at-arms, drunk on the scent of fallen majesty, dared to slip into the chamber while the dragon slumbered?

She speaks the truth, a voice rumbled, thick as shifting earth, vibrating through the floor-stone and into the very marrow of Drev's bones.

Vrael was draped across the far wall, a mountain of gold-scale and lethargy. The dragon did not deign to open his eyes, but a thin, sulfurous wisp of smoke curled from his nostrils.

I taste the quickening in the air, Vrael's voice echoed in the hollows of Drev's skull, laden with a terrible, reptilian curiosity. A second heartbeat. A fluttering, fragile rhythm hiding beneath the first. A moth trapped in a silken cage. Very new. Very small.

Drev stood. He did not cast a glance at the trembling servant. He merely let the oiled rag fall.

He crossed the solar in three long, predatory strides, his boots silent on the weave, heavy on the stone. He struck the oak door of the adjoining cell with the flat of his palm, throwing it inward with a violent, splintering crack that went ringing up into the vaulted shadows.

The chamber beyond was a tomb of cold masonry. There, in the furthest corner, sat the creature folded against the damp wall.

Two months had pared him down to a delicate, avian geometry—all sharp collarbones and lilac-veined wrists. He wore a nightgown of spun lace, a ghostly, wretched thing that clung to his shivering shoulders and rode high over the translucent skin of his thighs, shielding nothing. The iron shackle at his ankle hissed against the stone as he flinched, the heavy chain pooling like a dead serpent between him and his captor.

Drev loomed over him, his crimson eyes burning with a dark, possessive fire. He dropped to a crouch, the leather of his brigandine groaning in the silence.

"How long," he began, his voice a low, rhythmic rasp that made the very air feel thin, "did you imagine you could harbor this theft? How long did you think to hide this... ripening from me?"

The prisoner remained mute, his breath coming in short, jagged hitches that made the lace flutter against the sharp ridge of his ribs. Drev leaned in, the scent of smoke and iron washing over him, his face a mask of silver hair and old scars.

"Tell me the name," he whispered, the words dripping with a terrible, silken venom. "Is it a king's seed rotting in a dead furrow? Or did you let some stable-boy play at royalty in the dark? Who was it?"

The rebellion in the North was a spasm of a dying world. It was a pathetic affair led by disgruntled lords who had grown fat on stolen tithes and lavish feasts, men who bristled under the yoke of a tyrant who demanded they actually govern. They had gathered the cowards and the idle, raising banners of silk against a king forged in iron.

It did not last long.

A man who had massacred a royal house while the blood was still warm upon his hands could not suffer treason to breathe. Drev had ridden north to, mounted upon Vrael with a crude strapped saddle. The dragon’s jagged scales had chewed through leather and linen, biting deep into the meat of Drev's thighs until his own blood glued his breeches to the black iron of his greaves.

The agony was good; it reminded him that the war was a living thing, and a throne cobbled from bone and ash offered no comfortable seat.

He returned after three months—perhaps more, the days bleeding together in a haze of slaughter. He was a creature of dried mud and crusted gore, wearing the blood of men whose faces he no longer remembered. But all that grisly calculus had ceased to matter three days ago, when the urgent raven had arrived from the capital.

The golden beast did not land at the courtyard gates. Drev drove him high, aiming straight for the jagged maw of the royal solar.

The black rukh had manifested physically. It was a plague of pure, suffocating rot—swarms of spectral, obsidian butterflies pulsing in thick, dark clouds against the moss-covered masonry of the tower. They were so dense with corruption, that even Drev, a man entirely blind to the invisible currents of magic, could see the darkness fluttering there. His jaw locked. His gauntleted hand crushed the hilt of his sword until the knuckles shone bone-white beneath the leather.

Breathe, Drev, Vrael’s voice scraped across the inside of his skull, dry as a raptor’s talon on slate.

The sound that tore from Drev’s throat was less a breath and more the snarl of a cornered wolf, a jagged, violent intake of air. He did not wait for the dragon to settle. He surged to his feet while they were still airborne, vaulting from the ridged spine to the horned skull, and hurled himself through the open archway.

The violent motion tore the scabs from his thighs; the skin screamed as the wounds ripped open anew, fresh blood spilling hot down his legs, but he felt absolutely nothing.

His crimson gaze locked instantly onto the bed. She lay submerged beneath a sea of parchment wards, the heavy paper plastered over her pale skin, thick with the frantic, desperately scribbled ink of the Ancient Tongue. Yet the magic was failing. Where the paper slipped, her flesh was mapped with a terrible, creeping delta of blackened veins—the undeniable, fatal rot of the black rukh.

A clutch of shivering servants and panicked spell-weavers circled the mattress. At the sight of him, they scattered like roaches, pressing themselves flat against the tapestries. Only the eldest mage, trembling but clinging to a final shred of composure, dared to step forward.

"Your Grace..." the old man stammered "We have tried everything... but the corruption... at this rate—"

"OUT. ALL OF YOU." Drev did not spare him a glance. He crossed the stone floor and fell to his knees beside the bed.

The chamber emptied in a frantic rustle of silk and panic. Behind him, Vrael landed heavily on the ruined balcony, his massive talons cracking the masonry as he hauled his golden bulk into the room.

You must end her, the dragon rumbled, the thought a heavy, oppressive heat in Drev's mind.

Drev deafened himself to the bond. His blood-stained fingers reached out, trembling as they traced the frantic curve of her jaw, gently peeling away a crusted ward from her brow. Her eyes fluttered open. The vibrant color he knew was gone, replaced by a milky, sightless cataract.

Kill her, Drev. What remains is only hunger, Vrael insisted, the telepathic voice sharpening with a clinical impatience.

No. The refusal bled into the physical world, condensing into sound before Drev could even think to stop it. "No," he snarled aloud.

Then I shall carve the rot out for you. The dragon lunged. Vrael’s massive, leathery wing swept forward.

Drev had only a fraction of a second to throw his left arm up. The impact was apocalyptic. Steel crumpled like parchment; the bone beneath snapped with a sickening, wet crack, and Drev was hurled across the room, his armor smashing against the far wall with a bone-rattling

THUD.

He did not stay down.

Using his one good arm, Drev pushed himself out of the rubble. His fingers locked around the hilt of his greatsword. In a blind, unthinking surge of violent, desperate grief, he threw himself at the beast. The invisible rukh flared to life along the steel, screaming as he drove the blade deep into the dragon’s armored flank.

Vrael shrieked—a deafening, metallic sound of agony that shattered the remaining glass in the solar. The beast reeled backward, tearing the blade from Drev's grip. Thick, luminescent blue blood pulsed from the wound. Dark, sulfurous smoke plumed from the dragon’s nostrils as it bared its teeth at its bonded rider, the air between them vibrating with a terrible, unprecedented betrayal.

The heavy silence rushed back in to fill the space left by Vrael’s shriek. The dragon recoiled to the very edge of the ruined balcony, his massive talons gouging deep, permanent trenches into the stone floor. Blue liquid hissed and smoked where it pooled upon the rugs, smelling of ozone and ancient copper.

You bleed me for a corpse, Vrael’s voice echoed in Drev’s mind, no longer a rumble of thunder, but the sharp, unforgiving crack of winter ice.

The dragon’s crimson eyes narrowed as he watched the man he had bonded. Look at your hands, rider. They are butchers' tools. You have no mastery of the weave, no syllables of the Ancient Tongue to sing the rot away. You cannot knit this frail silk back together.

Drev did not watch the beast. The world had collapsed, shrinking until it contained nothing but the agonizing, rhythmic rattle in her throat. He dragged himself back to the edge of the mattress, his armor grinding terribly against the stone.

He reached down and pulled her up into his arms, crushing her delicate, failing architecture against his blood-crusted breastplate. He was entirely uncaring of the black, serpentine corruption that pulsed beneath her skin, pressing her slight weight against the cold iron that encased his chest.

A sudden, alien heat carved a path down his cheek. It sliced cleanly through the layers of ash and dried slaughter, a sharp, bitter sting against the jagged edge of the old scar over his eye. He did not know he was weeping until the first heavy drop fell, shattering.

He buried his face in the sweat-soaked lace at the nape of her neck. His voice was a ragged, desperate tearing of the throat.

"You are not permitted," he gasped, the words trembling against her freezing skin, completely stripped of their authority. "Do you hear me? I forbid it. You are my spoils. You are my vengeance."

He looked up then, his vision blurred by the humiliating sting of tears, and met the dragon’s pitiless gaze. Vrael remained perched like a golden monument of judgment, his wings partially unfurled, blotting out the pale northern sun.

"Help her," Drev choked out, the command dying in his throat and reforming as a plea. "Vrael... your blood. The dragon-fire... there must be a way."

My fire is for unmaking, Drev, the beast hissed, a low vibration that rattled the loose teeth in Drev’s jaw. I will not bleed my strength into a shattered cup. Let the rot take what is already hers.

"Please," Drev whispered, the word a total abdication of his sovereignty. He began to lower his head, his forehead almost touching the blood-slicked stone in a gesture of absolute supplication. The King of Aethelgard was gone; there was only a man willing to crawl through his own dragon's blood if it meant keeping her heart beating. "Vrael. I will give you anything. Just... don't let the dark take her."

You would beg for a ghost? Vrael’s tail lashed, shattering a nearby pedestal. Look at her, rider. She is already gone.

Drev pulled her tighter, his broad shoulders shaking with the violent force of his collapse. He pressed his forehead flush against hers, breathing the scent of death and old lavender.

"You are not done paying me," he sobbed into her hair, a beggar's wail. "You owe me the years. You owe me... everything. Please. Please."

The rebellion in the North was a spasm of a dying world. It was a pathetic affair led by disgruntled lords who had grown fat on stolen tithes and lavish feasts, men who bristled under the yoke of a tyrant who demanded they actually govern. They had gathered the cowards and the idle, raising banners of silk against a king forged in iron.

It did not last long.

A man who had massacred a royal house while the blood was still warm upon his hands could not suffer treason to breathe. Drev had ridden north to, mounted upon Vrael with a crude strapped saddle. The dragon's jagged scales had chewed through leather and linen, biting deep into the meat of Drev's thighs until his own blood glued his breeches to the black iron of his greaves.

The agony was good; it reminded him that the war was a living thing, and a throne cobbled from bone and ash offered no comfortable seat.

He returned after three months—perhaps more, the days bleeding together in a haze of slaughter. He was a creature of dried mud and crusted gore, wearing the blood of men whose faces he no longer remembered. But all that grisly calculus had ceased to matter three days ago, when the urgent raven had arrived from the capital.

The golden beast did not land at the courtyard gates. Drev drove him high, aiming straight for the jagged maw of the royal solar.

The black rukh had manifested physically. It was a plague of pure, suffocating rot—swarms of spectral, obsidian butterflies pulsing in thick, dark clouds against the moss-covered masonry of the tower. They were so dense with corruption, that even Drev, a man entirely blind to the invisible currents of magic, could see the darkness fluttering there. His jaw locked. His gauntleted hand crushed the hilt of his sword until the knuckles shone bone-white beneath the leather.

Breathe, Drev, Vrael's voice scraped across the inside of his skull, dry as a raptor's talon on slate.

The sound that tore from Drev's throat was less a breath and more the snarl of a cornered wolf, a jagged, violent intake of air. He did not wait for the dragon to settle. He surged to his feet while they were still airborne, vaulting from the ridged spine to the horned skull, and hurled himself through the open archway.

The violent motion tore the scabs from his thighs; the skin screamed as the wounds ripped open anew, fresh blood spilling hot down his legs, but he felt absolutely nothing.

His crimson gaze locked instantly onto the bed. They lay submerged beneath a sea of parchment wards, the heavy paper plastered over their pale skin, thick with the frantic, desperately scribbled ink of the Ancient Tongue. Yet the magic was failing. Where the paper slipped, their flesh was mapped with a terrible, creeping delta of blackened veins—the undeniable, fatal rot of the black rukh.

A clutch of shivering servants and panicked spell-weavers circled the mattress. At the sight of him, they scattered like roaches, pressing themselves flat against the tapestries. Only the eldest mage, trembling but clinging to a final shred of composure, dared to step forward.

"Your Grace..." the old man stammered "We have tried everything... but the corruption... at this rate—"

"OUT. ALL OF YOU." Drev did not spare him a glance. He crossed the stone floor and fell to his knees beside the bed.

The chamber emptied in a frantic rustle of silk and panic. Behind him, Vrael landed heavily on the ruined balcony, his massive talons cracking the masonry as he hauled his golden bulk into the room.

You must end them, the dragon rumbled, the thought a heavy, oppressive heat in Drev's mind.

Drev deafened himself to the bond. His blood-stained fingers reached out, trembling as they traced the frantic curve of their jaw, gently peeling away a crusted ward from their brow. Their eyes fluttered open. The vibrant color he knew was gone, replaced by a milky, sightless cataract.

Kill them, Drev. What remains is only hunger, Vrael insisted, the telepathic voice sharpening with a clinical impatience.

No. The refusal bled into the physical world, condensing into sound before Drev could even think to stop it. "No," he snarled aloud.

Then I shall carve the rot out for you. The dragon lunged. Vrael's massive, leathery wing swept forward.

Drev had only a fraction of a second to throw his left arm up. The impact was apocalyptic. Steel crumpled like parchment; the bone beneath snapped with a sickening, wet crack, and Drev was hurled across the room, his armor smashing against the far wall with a bone-rattling

THUD.

He did not stay down.

Using his one good arm, Drev pushed himself out of the rubble. His fingers locked around the hilt of his greatsword. In a blind, unthinking surge of violent, desperate grief, he threw himself at the beast. The invisible rukh flared to life along the steel, screaming as he drove the blade deep into the dragon's armored flank.

Vrael shrieked—a deafening, metallic sound of agony that shattered the remaining glass in the solar. The beast reeled backward, tearing the blade from Drev's grip. Thick, luminescent blue blood pulsed from the wound. Dark, sulfurous smoke plumed from the dragon's nostrils as it bared its teeth at its bonded rider, the air between them vibrating with a terrible, unprecedented betrayal.

The heavy silence rushed back in to fill the space left by Vrael's shriek. The dragon recoiled to the very edge of the ruined balcony, his massive talons gouging deep, permanent trenches into the stone floor. Blue liquid hissed and smoked where it pooled upon the rugs, smelling of ozone and ancient copper.

You bleed me for a corpse, Vrael's voice echoed in Drev's mind, no longer a rumble of thunder, but the sharp, unforgiving crack of winter ice.

The dragon's crimson eyes narrowed as he watched the man he had bonded. Look at your hands, rider. They are butchers' tools. You have no mastery of the weave, no syllables of the Ancient Tongue to sing the rot away. You cannot knit this frail silk back together.

Drev did not watch the beast. The world had collapsed, shrinking until it contained nothing but the agonizing, rhythmic rattle in their throat. He dragged himself back to the edge of the mattress, his armor grinding terribly against the stone.

He reached down and pulled them up into his arms, crushing their failing form against his blood-crusted breastplate. He was entirely uncaring of the black, serpentine corruption that pulsed beneath their skin, pressing their slight weight against the cold iron that encased his chest.

A sudden, alien heat carved a path down his cheek. It sliced cleanly through the layers of ash and dried slaughter, a sharp, bitter sting against the jagged edge of the old scar over his eye. He did not know he was weeping until the first heavy drop fell, shattering.

He buried his face in the sweat-soaked lace at the nape of their neck. His voice was a ragged, desperate tearing of the throat.

"You are not permitted," he gasped, the words trembling against their freezing skin, completely stripped of their authority. "Do you hear me? I forbid it. You are my spoils. You are my vengeance."

He looked up then, his vision blurred by the humiliating sting of tears, and met the dragon's pitiless gaze. Vrael remained perched like a golden monument of judgment, his wings partially unfurled, blotting out the pale northern sun.

"Help them," Drev choked out, the command dying in his throat and reforming as a plea. "Vrael... your blood. The dragon-fire... there must be a way."

My fire is for unmaking, Drev, the beast hissed, a low vibration that rattled the loose teeth in Drev's jaw. I will not bleed my strength into a shattered cup. Let the rot take what is already theirs.

"Please," Drev whispered, the word a total abdication of his sovereignty. He began to lower his head, his forehead almost touching the blood-slicked stone in a gesture of absolute supplication. The King of Aethelgard was gone; there was only a man willing to crawl through his own dragon's blood if it meant keeping their heart beating. "Vrael. I will give you anything. Just... don't let the dark take them."

You would beg for a ghost? Vrael's tail lashed, shattering a nearby pedestal. Look at them, rider. They are already gone.

Drev pulled them tighter, his broad shoulders shaking with the violent force of his collapse. He pressed his forehead flush against theirs, breathing the scent of death and old lavender.

"You are not done paying me," he sobbed into their hair, a beggar's wail. "You owe me the years. You owe me... everything. Please. Please."

The rebellion in the North was a spasm of a dying world. It was a pathetic affair led by disgruntled lords who had grown fat on stolen tithes and lavish feasts, men who bristled under the yoke of a tyrant who demanded they actually govern. They had gathered the cowards and the idle, raising banners of silk against a king forged in iron.

It did not last long.

A man who had massacred a royal house while the blood was still warm upon his hands could not suffer treason to breathe. Drev had ridden north to, mounted upon Vrael with a crude strapped saddle. The dragon's jagged scales had chewed through leather and linen, biting deep into the meat of Drev's thighs until his own blood glued his breeches to the black iron of his greaves.

The agony was good; it reminded him that the war was a living thing, and a throne cobbled from bone and ash offered no comfortable seat.

He returned after three months—perhaps more, the days bleeding together in a haze of slaughter. He was a creature of dried mud and crusted gore, wearing the blood of men whose faces he no longer remembered. But all that grisly calculus had ceased to matter three days ago, when the urgent raven had arrived from the capital.

The golden beast did not land at the courtyard gates. Drev drove him high, aiming straight for the jagged maw of the royal solar.

The black rukh had manifested physically. It was a plague of pure, suffocating rot—swarms of spectral, obsidian butterflies pulsing in thick, dark clouds against the moss-covered masonry of the tower. They were so dense with corruption, that even Drev, a man entirely blind to the invisible currents of magic, could see the darkness fluttering there. His jaw locked. His gauntleted hand crushed the hilt of his sword until the knuckles shone bone-white beneath the leather.

Breathe, Drev, Vrael's voice scraped across the inside of his skull, dry as a raptor's talon on slate.

The sound that tore from Drev's throat was less a breath and more the snarl of a cornered wolf, a jagged, violent intake of air. He did not wait for the dragon to settle. He surged to his feet while they were still airborne, vaulting from the ridged spine to the horned skull, and hurled himself through the open archway.

The violent motion tore the scabs from his thighs; the skin screamed as the wounds ripped open anew, fresh blood spilling hot down his legs, but he felt absolutely nothing.

His crimson gaze locked instantly onto the bed. He lay submerged beneath a sea of parchment wards, the heavy paper plastered over his pale skin, thick with the frantic, desperately scribbled ink of the Ancient Tongue. Yet the magic was failing. Where the paper slipped, his flesh was mapped with a terrible, creeping delta of blackened veins—the undeniable, fatal rot of the black rukh.

A clutch of shivering servants and panicked spell-weavers circled the mattress. At the sight of him, they scattered like roaches, pressing themselves flat against the tapestries. Only the eldest mage, trembling but clinging to a final shred of composure, dared to step forward.

"Your Grace..." the old man stammered "We have tried everything... but the corruption... at this rate—"

"OUT. ALL OF YOU." Drev did not spare him a glance. He crossed the stone floor and fell to his knees beside the bed.

The chamber emptied in a frantic rustle of silk and panic. Behind him, Vrael landed heavily on the ruined balcony, his massive talons cracking the masonry as he hauled his golden bulk into the room.

You must end him, the dragon rumbled, the thought a heavy, oppressive heat in Drev's mind.

Drev deafened himself to the bond. His blood-stained fingers reached out, trembling as they traced the frantic curve of his jaw, gently peeling away a crusted ward from his brow. His eyes fluttered open. The vibrant color he knew was gone, replaced by a milky, sightless cataract.

Kill him, Drev. What remains is only hunger, Vrael insisted, the telepathic voice sharpening with a clinical impatience.

No. The refusal bled into the physical world, condensing into sound before Drev could even think to stop it. "No," he snarled aloud.

Then I shall carve the rot out for you. The dragon lunged. Vrael's massive, leathery wing swept forward.

Drev had only a fraction of a second to throw his left arm up. The impact was apocalyptic. Steel crumpled like parchment; the bone beneath snapped with a sickening, wet crack, and Drev was hurled across the room, his armor smashing against the far wall with a bone-rattling

THUD.

He did not stay down.

Using his one good arm, Drev pushed himself out of the rubble. His fingers locked around the hilt of his greatsword. In a blind, unthinking surge of violent, desperate grief, he threw himself at the beast. The invisible rukh flared to life along the steel, screaming as he drove the blade deep into the dragon's armored flank.

Vrael shrieked—a deafening, metallic sound of agony that shattered the remaining glass in the solar. The beast reeled backward, tearing the blade from Drev's grip. Thick, luminescent blue blood pulsed from the wound. Dark, sulfurous smoke plumed from the dragon's nostrils as it bared its teeth at its bonded rider, the air between them vibrating with a terrible, unprecedented betrayal.

The heavy silence rushed back in to fill the space left by Vrael's shriek. The dragon recoiled to the very edge of the ruined balcony, his massive talons gouging deep, permanent trenches into the stone floor. Blue liquid hissed and smoked where it pooled upon the rugs, smelling of ozone and ancient copper.

You bleed me for a corpse, Vrael's voice echoed in Drev's mind, no longer a rumble of thunder, but the sharp, unforgiving crack of winter ice.

The dragon's crimson eyes narrowed as he watched the man he had bonded. Look at your hands, rider. They are butchers' tools. You have no mastery of the weave, no syllables of the Ancient Tongue to sing the rot away. You cannot knit this frail silk back together.

Drev did not watch the beast. The world had collapsed, shrinking until it contained nothing but the agonizing, rhythmic rattle in his throat. He dragged himself back to the edge of the mattress, his armor grinding terribly against the stone.

He reached down and pulled him up into his arms, crushing his failing form against his blood-crusted breastplate. He was entirely uncaring of the black, serpentine corruption that pulsed beneath his skin, pressing his slight weight against the cold iron that encased his chest.

A sudden, alien heat carved a path down his cheek. It sliced cleanly through the layers of ash and dried slaughter, a sharp, bitter sting against the jagged edge of the old scar over his eye. He did not know he was weeping until the first heavy drop fell, shattering.

He buried his face in the sweat-soaked lace at the nape of his neck. His voice was a ragged, desperate tearing of the throat.

"You are not permitted," he gasped, the words trembling against his freezing skin, completely stripped of their authority. "Do you hear me? I forbid it. You are my spoils. You are my vengeance."

He looked up then, his vision blurred by the humiliating sting of tears, and met the dragon's pitiless gaze. Vrael remained perched like a golden monument of judgment, his wings partially unfurled, blotting out the pale northern sun.

"Help him," Drev choked out, the command dying in his throat and reforming as a plea. "Vrael... your blood. The dragon-fire... there must be a way."

My fire is for unmaking, Drev, the beast hissed, a low vibration that rattled the loose teeth in Drev's jaw. I will not bleed my strength into a shattered cup. Let the rot take what is already his.

"Please," Drev whispered, the word a total abdication of his sovereignty. He began to lower his head, his forehead almost touching the blood-slicked stone in a gesture of absolute supplication. The King of Aethelgard was gone; there was only a man willing to crawl through his own dragon's blood if it meant keeping his heart beating. "Vrael. I will give you anything. Just... don't let the dark take him."

You would beg for a ghost? Vrael's tail lashed, shattering a nearby pedestal. Look at him, rider. He is already gone.

Drev pulled him tighter, his broad shoulders shaking with the violent force of his collapse. He pressed his forehead flush against his, breathing the scent of death and old lavender.

"You are not done paying me," he sobbed into his hair, a beggar's wail. "You owe me the years. You owe me... everything. Please. Please."