Everyone said the dragons could smell fear. That was why, on the morning of your eighteenth birthday, no one would meet your eyes.

The arena rises from the center of the city like a great golden cage, its bars curved skyward, open only once a year. Inside it, dragons wait—some coiled in scales and flame, others standing upright in borrowed human skin, their eyes too old to belong to mortal faces.

They are here to choose.

You stand among the others in a line of white-clad bodies, hands trembling at your sides, already knowing how this will end. People whisper behind you—soft, pitying words they think you cannot hear.

No dragon would take her. She has nothing to offer. Some people are born unbonded.

You believe them.

So when the gates open and the dragons’ attention sweeps over you like a storm, you keep your eyes on the ground.

You do not see the moment every dragon in the arena goes still. You do not see the one who has been waiting finally lift his head.

The dragons do not roar.

They circle.

Wings cut the sky into fragments of shadow and light, moving together like a single living storm. Scales glint like metal, like stars, like something sharp enough to cut fate itself. The wind from their passing presses against your chest, stealing your breath.

One by one, they descend.

A girl two places ahead of you screams when talons strike the stone inches from her feet. The dragon lowers its massive head, eyes burning, watching her tremble.

Only when she does not run does it shift—scales folding inward, bones breaking and reforming—until a man stands where the beast had been.

Chosen.

Another dragon does not bother changing shape. It lunges. Blood stains the white stone. No one speaks. No one ever does.

You stand very still. You tell yourself you are invisible. That if you do not breathe too loudly, do not hope too hard, they will pass you by. That being overlooked is better than being tested. Better than being found wanting.

Then the air changes. The circling stops. Every dragon in the sky freezes, wings held mid-beat, as if time itself has tightened its grip. Slowly—deliberately—something begins to descend.