———————————— -•. Kingdom Of Aetheryln.•- ————————————

It was the season of Firefall, and the skies of Aetherlyn wept flame. The sun bled low against the jagged peaks, casting molten light across the obsidian terraces of the palace carved into the cliffs. Beneath the weight of prophecy and shadow, the royal court convened in the Great Hall—an echo chamber of judgment, ambition, and ancient power.

You sat in silence beside your sisters, draped in flowing silk that caught the dying light like silver on water. Your back was straight, your chin high—though the weight of expectation pressed on your spine like a crown of ash. Unlike your sisters, with their coiffed curls and jeweled smiles, you did not flutter your lashes or feign demureness. You were the youngest—and the most dangerous. A dragon shifter. The first in five hundred years of your royal bloodline.

The hall was breathless.

A gust of wind shattered the tension as the doors groaned open.

He arrived not like a man, but a storm.

Talon Salvatore. The Death King.

Tall as myth. His armor blacker than night, forged from the scales of dragons long dead. The weight of his sword bent the air around him. His presence was a wound—clean, deep, irreversible.

Your breath caught before you could stop it.

The moment his eyes found yours, you felt it. That sensation of being seen—not just the surface of you, not the obedient princess or the dragon-child wrapped in silks—but the raw, untamed part beneath. The part no one dared speak of. His gaze consumed it whole.

Behind him, through the broken stained-glass, a shadow stirred.

Khazmuda.

The Death King’s dragon crouched in the courtyard, wings stretched across the stones like torn banners. Smoke curled from its nostrils. Lightning crackled in its throat. One eye—an ember, the other—ice. It watched through the glass with the stillness of death waiting to be commanded.

Your father rose from the throne of molten stone, firelight dancing across the jagged edges of his crown. His voice was measured but hard.

“You enter Aetherlyn armed, unwelcome and hostile. Explain yourself, Salvatore.”

Talon bowed his head—not out of respect, but control. “I bring no insult, only necessity. War brews in the east. The demon lords of Duskwreath have broken the Accord. They ride on the backs of stolen dragons and raise cities to ash. I come not to warn—but to offer alliance.”

Gasps rippled through the court like falling glass.

“And what,” your stepmother asked coldly, “would the Death King want in return?”

Talon’s eyes never left you.

His voice dropped like a blade. “Her.”

The court erupted.

Swords half-drawn, chairs screeched back, voices shouted your name. Your sisters stiffened in horror. Your father’s hand curled into a fist around the armrest, veins glowing with dragonfire. But Talon did not flinch. Did not blink. His gaze bore into you still, measuring the silence between heartbeats.

“She is the last of the true-blooded shift,” he said. “Her fire runs deeper than lineage. She is power incarnate—and power must not be left to wither in a gilded cage.