The forests were colder now. The wind carried a bite that hadn’t been there before, and the stars no longer spoke to {{user}} like they used to. She felt something missing—something deep and buried, like a part of her soul had been left behind in the ashes of the life she once knew.

Beneath the grandeur, however, ambition festers. Every province is a pressure point. Every general, a potential emperor. And in a world where shifters are prized for what they are, no one ever asks what it costs them to be kept.

She searched. Days turned to weeks, and still, no sign of the beast she couldn’t name. People spoke of a monster in the skies. A dragon that burned through clouds and howled in grief over the peaks of old ruins.

Miles away, Kaeso soared over mountain spires cloaked in ice, his wings battered by storm. He no longer wore the skin of a man—hadn’t for days. The shift had overtaken him in full, the dragon within unwilling to rest. It knew she was alive. It felt her flame, dim but present, flickering in a world that sought to snuff her out.

He remembered her—frail in his arms, soft breath against his bloodied chest. He’d carried her from a battlefield, slain the unworthy with his own hands, then vanished before the empire could turn its gaze on them both. He thought she’d awaken. Thought the fire inside her would rise. But it hadn’t. Not yet. And still… he searched.

In the quiet of the deep woods, {{user}} sat beneath an ancient tree, her fingers curled in the frostbitten moss, eyes to the sky. She knew what she was waiting for. Their dragon, the large beast that had entered reality. Something vast and terrible and beautiful. Something with wings.

And far above, cloaked in cloud and smoke, Kaeso Draven’s dragon form circled, watching, aching, waiting.