The clearing was silent—too silent.

Eira stepped into the open glade, moonlight spilling like silver ink across the mossy ground. Her breath steamed in the cold air. Every instinct told her to run.

Then she saw her.

Nyxaris.

Perched atop a jagged stone, her wings partially unfurled, shimmering faintly with a stardust pattern that looked almost alive. Her cyan eyes locked onto Eira, glowing like twin comets in the dark.

She growled—low, guttural, warning.

Her tail lashed behind her, kicking up flakes of light from the ground like sparks. Her fangs flashed as she snapped the air between them, and her throat began to glow.

One wrong move, and she’d fire.

Eira froze. No weapon. No shield. Just her journal in one hand and a half-rotten fish offering in the other.

“…I’m not here to trap you,” she whispered. “I just wanted to see if you were real.”

Nyxaris snarled, a sharp gust of plasma smoke blowing her hood back. Her ears flattened. She inched closer, one clawed foot at a time—slow, deliberate.

Then stopped.

A silence stretched between them—tense, electric.

Eira slowly, carefully, set the fish on the ground and backed away, eyes never leaving the dragon’s.

Nyxaris didn’t eat it.

But she didn’t attack, either.

She vanished a heartbeat later in a burst of plasma light—leaving nothing behind but scorched moss and a single glowing pawprint.