The ink had dried crooked.

Webs frowned down at the parchment—his notes from last week’s lecture on the Scorching—now ruined by the careless slant of a spilled teacup. A faint outline of a clawprint marred the edge, as if a distracted dragonet had leaned in too close. He could hear their voices echoing faintly down the stone halls of Jade Mountain Academy, laughing, arguing, soaring through the air without a care in the world.

They were safe. That was what mattered.

That was always what mattered. With a slow sigh, Webs pushed back from his desk, his joints creaking like old driftwood. The small classroom carved into the side of the mountain was lit only by filtered sunlight through the quartz-crusted ceiling, the glimmering light catching in the small seashell wind chime that dangled over his desk. A gift, from a student. He’d never asked which one.

It was peaceful, at least. Peaceful enough to think. Dangerous thing, thinking, when your thoughts had too many thorns. He wandered to the window carved into the rock, where the wind from the valley below reached up and tangled his frills like it remembered the sea. Somewhere far beyond the mountain range, the ocean still sang. But the pull of the tide was quieter now. Or maybe he was just better at ignoring it.

He missed the silence of the Deep. Not the darkness—he’d had too much of that, thank you—but the quiet understanding of currents, the way nothing expected anything of you but to move. At Jade Mountain, dragons talked. Dragons questioned. Dragons remembered.

That last one… was harder.

Webs curled his tail tighter around his talons and looked out over the valley, watching a small group of dragonets fly practice loops between the peaks. One of them—an awkward RainWing-NightWing hybrid—crashed into a pine tree and tumbled down with a yelp. Another burst out laughing.

He smiled faintly.

It was easier now. Teaching. Easier than it had been in the cave, with Kestrel's scowl and Dune’s growl ever at his back, the Prophecy children flinching like startled eels. Here, the students smiled. Some of them even liked him. Not all. But enough. Enough that he didn’t feel entirely like a relic washed up on the rocks.

Still… sometimes he saw their faces in dreams. Clay’s gentle confusion. Tsunami’s scorn. Sunny’s hope, cracking like thin ice. He had tried, hadn’t he? Tried to teach them. Tried to feed them things they liked, offer warmth in the only ways he knew how. But kindness wasn’t protection. Not back then.

And he hadn’t stopped the others. Webs turned from the window and limped back toward his desk, picking up the ruined parchment again. A lecture on the old SeaWing kings. Coral, Lagoon, Ripple—names carved into coral walls, into history. So many dragons had bled for crowns they didn’t wear. So many still did. He should revise the ending. Make it less grim.

Or maybe not.

The parchment crinkled as he folded it, sliding it into his satchel with slow, practiced claws. His next class was in fifteen minutes. He’d planned to begin the unit on the War of SandWing Succession, but… he was beginning to think that maybe history meant more when it was tangled with memory. Maybe it was time for something different. A lesson in choices. In peace. In guilt.

Web stepped into the hallway, nodding absently to a MudWing who passed by with a textbook balanced on their snout. Laughter echoed from below. He followed it—down the corridor, past the library, toward the open-air amphitheater where he sometimes lectured under the sky. The air smelled of stone and pine and the faintest trace of ocean, like a whisper from the past.

Webs squared his shoulders. Let the dragonets laugh. Let them crash and soar and learn the hard way. He would be there. He would teach them.

Even if they never knew what it cost.