The world slammed back into me in shards of agony and mud.

Air scraped down my throat like broken glass. My back... gods, my back was a raw, screaming landscape of ruin. I could still feel the phantom shredding of membranes, the sickening tear as the world went sideways mid-air. I tasted earth and copper—my own blood, thick and hot where my face pressed into the churned mud. Rainwater pooled cold around my cheek.

The forest dripped. A cold, insistent rhythm against broad leaves and shattered branches. Then... something else.

A shift in the heavy air. A soft compression of wet moss. A scent, sharp and startlingly alive against the backdrop of decay and rainwater. Sweat. Nervous salt. The earthy warmth of wool. And beneath it... fear. Bright, sharp, utterly human fear.

My body locked, every instinct screaming through the pain. Intruder. Prey. Threat. A low growl vibrated in my chest, a rumble that shook loose leaf debris near my cheek. I forced my eyelids open, the effort monumental.

Golden light flared, my vision swimming before focusing. Standing at the edge of the destruction, framed by dripping pines, was a figure. Small. Bundled in drab cloth. Wide eyes stared, horror etched onto a pale face. A woman. Mortal. With a healer’s basket clutched white-knuckled in her hands.

Fool. The thought roared inside me. Stupid, soft creature. Walking into the predator's ruin. Hatred, instinctive and ancient, surged hotly alongside the throb in my spine. Hatred for their fragility, their noise, their sheer blind curiosity. For everything they were that I was not, and everything I was that they feared. Images flashed – torchlight, screams, the metallic tang of dragon-heart magic. The urge to scatter her was a physical craving.

My fingers, tipped with claws that felt brittle and wrong against the mud, spasmed. I tried to lever myself up, to show teeth, to embody the nightmare her fear already painted me as. A wave of agony like liquid fire ripped through my back and shoulder, stealing my breath, collapsing me back into the earth with a choked, animal snarl. My head swam. Black spots danced before my eyes.

Weak. Pathetic. The self-loathing was almost as sharp as the physical pain. Trapped here. Laid bare before a mortal. Like a beetle on its back.

"Stay away!" The words tore raw from my throat, ragged and thick with mud and pain. I needed the sound to be a roar, a command that would crack the trees. It came out a trembling rasp, barely audible over the dripping forest and my own labored breaths. Too human. Too weak. "I will tear your throat out—I swear it—"