The silence lingered.
Everything ached. My body felt like it had been pulled apart and stitched back together with frostbitten wire. Each heartbeat sent a dull throb through my limbs, slow and heavy like I was underwater. I blinked against the haze. My thoughts were thick—muddy.
There was something I was supposed to remember.
Something important.
I exhaled sharply and winced. My chest rose with the motion, and for a second, my hand moved to steady myself—and froze.
Soft.
Warm.
I frowned, fingers pressing slightly against the unexpected shape. My breath caught. Oh. Right.
Not a him anymore.
A chill slid down my spine, colder than the frost clinging to the stones around me. I pulled my hand away, jaw clenched. I had been with women before. I knew their curves, their softness, the way they moved. But this… being one? It twisted something in my stomach. Made my skin itch. Made everything feel—
Wrong.
No. Not everything.
My gaze shifted. The pup was still there.
It crouched several feet away, half-hidden behind a chunk of broken stone, its glassy eyes locked onto mine. It hadn't moved. Still silent. Still watching.
My memories came back in pieces. The blood. The frost. The Broodmother's body falling still beneath me. The weight of it all pressing in, fading only when I finally ate.
I swallowed, throat tight. I should say something. Anything.
"You're still here," I muttered. My voice cracked, rough like I hadn't used it in days.
The pup blinked. No growl. No retreat.
"You should've run," I added, softer this time. "Why didn't you?"
It shifted slightly—one paw scraping the stone—but didn't move closer.
My gaze fell to its matted fur. Blood clung to it in frozen patches. Ash stained its snout. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know what I was.
"What… are you?" I asked.
No answer. Of course not.
Still, it felt like it understood me. Like it had watched everything. Judged me.
And I didn't know if I passed.
I rubbed my temples, trying to breathe through the pounding in my head. "That second heartbeat," I muttered to myself. "Was that… magic?"
I remembered it—how it had synced with mine. How it burned beneath my skin, how it pulled me through that fight. It wasn't there now. Or maybe it was. Maybe I just couldn't feel it anymore. Not like before.
I shifted, resting my back against a nearby stone. It wasn't comfortable, but it helped. The pup still didn't move.
"You're not scared of me," I said.
Still no response. Only those eyes. That strange, quiet awareness.
I looked past it, to the Broodmother's corpse. Resting in ruined flesh and bone.
I remembered biting into her.
My stomach twisted.
Did I do that?
I looked down at my hands. No claws now. Just fingers. Pale. Stained with dried blood. My body had shifted back—my visage form. The elf-like shell that held me together. It felt fragile.
I closed my eyes for a moment. Breathed.
The pup made a sound—soft, uncertain.
When I looked, it had inched a little closer. Just a little.
"I don't know what you want from me," I whispered.
Pain.
It stayed where it was, shivering faintly.
"You're alone now, aren't you?" I asked.
That made it blink. It lowered its head slightly, as if understanding. Or agreeing.
I reached out—slowly. My arm trembled with the effort. The dull pain spiked again through my side, and I winced.
The pup flinched. Then, to my surprise, it stepped forward once.
Only once.
But it didn't run.
I gave a weak, tired smile and a laughed melodiously "You're bold. Foolish. But bold."
The warmth from earlier—the hunger, the frenzy—was gone. Only the ache remained. My vision began to spin. I leaned back again, my vision starting to blur.
"I need to sleep," I said, though I wasn't sure if I was speaking to the pup or myself.
The cold pressed against my skin, not biting now—comforting. Familiar.
My eyes drifted shut.
I didn't fight it.
Sleep came like frost. Slow. Icy. Absolute.
The frost whispered.
Snow stretched out endlessly around me, untouched and pale. The sky above was a dome of shifting gray, cracked with faint veins of blue light—like ice splitting under pressure. I didn't remember walking here. Didn't remember falling asleep.
But I wasn't alone.
She stood several paces ahead, her back to me. My height. My shape. But different. Still. Steady. Her hair was a river of white, cascading down her back. Her form shimmered, not with warmth, but power—quiet, simmering, coiled.
I knew her.
She turned.
Blue eyes with golden irises met mine. Familiar. Inhuman. Draconic.
Me. But not.
"You're..." I hesitated.
Her voice cut clean through the haze. "We know who I am."
The sky pulsed as she spoke, light flickering like cracks through the clouds.
"You're the part of me that—what? Lost control?" I asked.
"No," she said, her tone even. "I'm the part that never did."
I frowned. "I killed them."
"We survived them."
The wind didn't blow. The air didn't move. Just us. Still, beneath it all, I could feel it—something coiling deep in my chest. The memory of heat, of motion, of instinct so loud it drowned everything else out.
"That heartbeat," I murmured. "That wasn't just magic, it was you, wasn't it?"
"It was focus" she said. "Until you let it slip."
I looked away, throat tight. "I don't want this."
She stepped closer. "You never wanted anything. You just ran."
That stung.
"We were a sellsword," she continued. "No banner. No oaths. No home. We survived by choosing the fight in front of you. And now? You flinch."
"I didn't flinch."
"You hesitated," she said, eyes narrowing. "You saw yourself in a pup and forgot who we are."
I shook my head. "I remembered who I was."
"Who we are. You should know this: we need a purpose."
Her words hit like a thrown blade—blunt, not cruel.
"If you want to endure," she said, "you set a goal. You fix your eyes forward and walk through the fire."
I swallowed hard. "What kind of goal?"
"That's your choice. But make one." She gestured to the snow. "Because without it, this all crumbles."
I looked down at my hands. Pale. Thin. Human-like. But I remembered how they had torn, ripped, bloody. There was still something in me. Something buried.
When I looked back up, she was closer—face to face.
"We're not done changing," she said. "But we're not lost. Not yet."
I hesitated, then asked, "And if I choose wrong?"
"Then we learn. We grow. We endure. Like we always have."
Her voice dropped to a whisper—not soft, but sharp. "But never again without direction."
The frost cracked.
My limbs grew heavier.
"You're waking up," she said.
I nodded slowly.
"One step forward," she murmured, almost like a command. "Just one. That's all it takes."
And then—
Silence.
The cold returned.
And I opened my eyes.
The cold was still there when I woke—but the ache was gone.
I drew a breath and didn't wince. My muscles didn't throb. My bones didn't grind like splintered ice. I blinked slowly, expecting pain that never came. Only a strange stillness. A silence so deep it felt like the whole fortress was holding its breath.
I shifted upright, and shards of ice cracked and flaked off my skin. My shredded cloak clung to me in frozen tatters, stiff and useless. Around me, the corpses lay sealed beneath layers of frost. Their forms were glazed over—like the cold had taken them into itself.
How long had I been asleep?
I rose to my feet, legs steady beneath me, and looked around the ruined chamber. My breath fogged in the air. My fingers flexed without protest. No second heartbeat. No pull in my chest. No magic singing in my blood.
Just quiet.
The pup was gone. No trace. No pawprints. Not even a scent.
I stepped forward carefully, frost crunching underfoot. The chamber—once alive with growls and motion and death—now felt like a grave. I crossed toward the broken pillars, past the collapsed body of the Broodmother. She hadn't moved. Her body was sealed beneath a sheen of ice, her face half-turned toward the doors as if even in death, she still guarded what lay beyond.
Something shifted in me.
Not pain.
Not hunger.
Just… awareness.
I moved slowly through the corridor that curved behind the central chamber. It was wide enough for a creature twice my size to walk comfortably. The stone beneath my feet bore faint patterns, worn smooth by age and frost. Walls sloped into arches above me, joined by supports carved with intricate—if unfamiliar—lines. I couldn't read them, but I could feel the weight of them. Whoever built this place had hands the size of my torso and carved not for beauty but permanence.
Not human.
This place was meant to last.
I stepped through what might have been a hall once, passing frozen statues of creatures locked in poses I couldn't name. Some snarled. Some raised weapons. Some simply stared outward. All dusted in rime. All ancient.
This place was old in ways I couldn't understand.
I trailed my fingers along a low ridge of stone shaped like a bench, my thoughts circling back to the dream.
Choose a goal.
Fix your eyes forward.
But what goal?
Survive? I was already doing that.
Escape? I didn't even know where I was.
Return to who I was?
I stopped walking.
Who even was that?
A sellsword with no banner. No oaths. No name worth speaking aloud. I'd lived fight to fight, coin to coin. Never planning. Never dreaming.
And now?
I touched the wall beside me. Ice clung to it like a second skin. My reflection swam in the surface—white hair tangled, eyes dim, face hollowed from cold and hunger.
A woman?
An elf?
A dragon.
I didn't know how to be any of them.
I exhaled and kept walking, deeper into the ruins. The halls curved and split, some collapsed, others opening into wide chambers layered in frost. No signs of life. Just the echo of my footsteps and the weight of stone.
I felt alone. Not in the fearful way I had before, but in the way that made thinking dangerous.
One step forward.
But to where?
I turned another corner and entered what might have once been a council room. A massive round table of cracked stone filled the center, its edges carved with faded runes. High-backed chairs circled it, most toppled, some shattered. The scale of it all dwarfed me. These were not made for human forms. The chairs were too tall. The room too vast.
Giants? I didn't know. But I could feel the presence of something old in every line of stone, every pillar.
I stood in the center of the chamber and looked up at the broken ceiling where frost clung in jagged teeth.
Then—something pulsed in my chest.
Not pain.
Not fear.
Magic.
It beat once.
Deep. Strong. Like a drum beneath the surface of the world.
I staggered, breath catching. My vision blurred for a moment, and then sharpened.
The blue glow from the dream flickered behind my eyes.
And I wasn't alone.
The air shifted.
Something moved just beyond the shattered archway—subtle, but present. A whisper of motion, a thread of warmth where none should exist. I turned slowly, heart steady, shoulders squaring.
My eyes burned with that same cold light.
A figure stepped through the frost.
Lirian.
He walked carefully, hands raised in open display, his expression unreadable. His clothes were dusted with snow. At his side padded a creature low to the ground, pale-furred, leaner now, its amber eyes still locked on me.
The pup.
That same stare. Older now. But still watching but it wasn't a pup anymore.
My mouth opened slightly, a breath caught between surprise and realization.
How much time had passed while I was frozen? Days? Weeks? Longer?
Lirian took one step forward, stopping at the edge of the threshold.
Then, with a faint smirk, he tilted his head.
"So... the hatchling wakes. The world didn't stop while you slept. But it got colder."