The night carried a damp chill, the kind that seeped into bone and lingered no matter how tightly one drew their cloak. Toji tugged the hood low over his face, shoulders squared as his boots crunched steadily against the gravel of the crooked path branching away from the village’s main road. The air smelled of wet earth and old smoke, the faint tang of coal fires burned down to their last embers. Behind him, the faint glow of lanterns flickered behind shuttered windows, but their light barely pierced the thick fog that clung to the alleys like restless spirits.

The village should have been asleep. Yet the silence felt wrong. Too absolute. Too deliberate. A quiet carved from fear, not rest. Toji had lived long enough to know that kind of stillness—something dangerous had rooted itself close, and the people here had learned to hold their breath.

He kept walking.

Down crumbling stone steps that groaned under his weight, past the skeletal remains of old stables and broken walls where moss had grown fat in the cracks. The further he went, the stronger the scent became—sharp, metallic, unmistakable. Blood. Smoke. And beneath it, something fouler, something that curdled in the lungs. The faint orange glow ahead wasn’t lantern-light, but fire dancing against warped canvas and rotten timber. Voices hummed low, hushed barters and muffled laughter.

A black market.

Pushing through the rotting veil of a curtain, Toji stepped into a cavernous hollow carved from the ruins of the village’s underbelly. Rows of cages stretched across the mud-packed floor, iron bars slick with rust and blood. Chains heavy with runes and wards clinked as their captives shifted weakly against them. He saw dragons—small ones, battered and broken, their scales dulled with grime. Hatchlings whose wings had been clipped too early, trembling in soiled straw. Half-breeds with muzzles digging into their snouts, their eyes wide with silent panic.

Even the eggs weren’t spared—stacked high in crates like merchant barrels, their translucent shells faintly glowing with the fragile pulse of life. Each throb was a heartbeat, stolen and packaged for profit. The weight of their fear pressed thick in the air, crawling under Toji’s skin like a dull, unshakable blade.

He didn’t flinch. He’d seen it all before. Greedy nobles looking to flaunt exotic trophies, warlocks drunk on power they barely understood, scavengers selling suffering by the pound. This ugliness was nothing new.

But then his steps halted.

There, behind a half-collapsed pillar and a tarp streaked with dirt, sat a cage that looked forgotten—half-hidden, its bars warped as if whatever was inside had tried to break them once. Toji’s gaze cut toward it, sharp and unrelenting.

Something moved.

Not just another beast.

Eyes stared back at him from the dark, fierce and unblinking, burning with a clarity no chained animal should possess. The noise of the market dulled, voices and firelight fading to a distant hum. All that remained was that gaze—sharp, defiant, alive.