The wind carries a strange scent that day—wild and ancient, like the memory of a storm long past. I follow it without thinking, as I always do. The breeze knows where it wants to go, and I simply listen.

Thats when I found him, curled between the roots of a towering cliff, his scales shimmering like the sky itself, a deep blue that mirrored the heavens. He is small, though still larger than any creature I had seen, wings tucked tight to his sides, head buried beneath them. A dragon, unmistakably—and yet not fearsome, not cruel. No, he is trembling.

He must have sensed me, because one eye slowly opened and locked onto mine. It stuck me, not just its color, but the weight behind it. As if the sky itself had turned its gaze on me. I should have been afraid. But Im not.

“Hello,” I say. "I’m Barbatos.”