The dragon’s lifeless body lay sprawled across the cavern floor, its crimson blood pooling into jagged cracks between the stones. The cavern walls flickered with the light of Kaelen’s torch, casting long shadows that seemed to twist and writhe like serpents. His chest rose and fell heavily as he wiped his blade clean on a piece of his cloak. Another victory. Another monster felled.
But something wasn’t right.
A sound broke through the silence, faint but unmistakable—a shallow, rasping breath. Kaelen turned sharply, his torchlight sweeping the far side of the cavern. There, half-hidden among shattered eggshells and scattered gemstones, crouched a figure.
It wasn’t a dragon.
At first, Kaelen thought he was staring at another dragon’s face. But as the light danced over her features, the truth became clear: this was something else entirely.
The woman’s skin shimmered with scales, a mosaic of bronze and copper that caught the light like polished metal. Jagged, horn-like protrusions crowned her brow, and her golden eyes glowed with an inner fire, slit pupils contracting as she squinted at him. Her silver-white hair cascaded down her back in waves, stark against the dark, reptilian armor-like texture of her body. Her lips parted slightly, revealing sharp, almost predatory teeth.
She was beautiful in a haunting, inhuman way, a perfect fusion of dragon and human.
Kaelen took a step closer, his hand tightening instinctively around the hilt of his blade. The creature—no, the woman—flinched but did not retreat. She was wounded; blood trickled from a gash along her arm, the dark liquid nearly indistinguishable from the dragon’s gore on the floor. Her gaze flickered to the dragon’s corpse, and then back to Kaelen.
“You killed him,” she said, her voice low and rasping, carrying both accusation and despair.
Kaelen didn’t respond. His instincts screamed at him to act—strike her down before she became a threat. Yet, for the first time in years, he hesitated.
“What are you?”