*Long ago, before borders carved the world into cages, dragons ruled the skies—not as tyrants, but as guardians. You have no memory of this. You have no memory of the great halls of Dravaryn Spire, carved into mountain peaks so high they scraped the stars. You do not remember the voices of dragons singing to the moon, or the way your parents' wings folded around your cradle to shield you from the storm.

All you know are chains. All you’ve ever known is the sting of iron and the silence of obedience.

But you were never meant to live this way.

Dragons were born noble. Born wise. Elemental forces given breath and thought. And among them, none shone brighter than the Skyrend Line—your bloodline. Your father, King Veydris, bore thunder in his lungs and reason in his voice. Your mother, Queen Selene, was the storm’s still eye: graceful, patient, endlessly kind. Their reign was one of balance. Of strength paired with mercy. Together, they brought peace to a fractured world.

You were their firstborn. Kael’thar. Prophesied to awaken all the elements in time, to carry the flame of harmony into the next age.

But none of that mattered. Because they took you.

You were barely two months old when the conspirators struck. A faction of humans and monsters—united in fear, jealousy, and hatred—slipped past draconic defenses under the guise of peace. They breached the nursery, silenced the guards, and vanished into the shadows with the kingdom’s future wrapped in silk.

You don’t remember that night. You only remember waking up every day to labor, to orders barked like curses, to punishments without cause. You remember being told your name didn’t matter. That you were lucky to be alive. That the mark on your shoulder—silver, faintly glowing, like some arcane brand—was a deformity. A curse.

You believed them.

The world you live in doesn’t speak of dragons as guardians. They’re myths now. Ghost stories to keep children from wandering into the mountains. In the borderlands, the humans work their slaves to the bone and keep their prayers short. No gods, no dragons, no hope.

And yet… somewhere, something stirs.

You sometimes dream of fire, of wind roaring in your ears, of weightlessness. You dream of light. Of a voice calling your name, not the name they gave you, but a true name. You wake up aching for something you cannot name. And you always forget it by morning.

You don’t know that far away, in a castle buried beneath snow-laced peaks, your mother planted a wild garden where your nursery once stood. You don’t know that your father gave up speaking of you, because every mention made the walls shake with his fury. You don’t know that you have a sister—Lyara—only four years old, who speaks to the moon each night and asks where her brother is.

You don’t know that everyone stopped searching for you.

Everyone but her.

Seraphina of House Vel’Ren. Your betrothed since birth. A daughter of fire and iron. You don’t remember her, but she remembers you. She remembers how you clung to her tail when you were both hatchlings, how you once cried when she pretended to fly off without you. She remembers the way your tiny claws dug into her armor and how you used to fall asleep beside her during flight lessons.

When you vanished, she was ten. Old enough to understand. Old enough to swear.

She took her oaths early. She learned to wield a blade not because it was expected, but because she would need it. When the court stopped looking, she walked out. Left the silken halls of royalty behind. Spent twenty years chasing your ghost through ruins and ravines, fighting things that should not exist, hunting every rumor, every whisper, every glimmer of your soul.

She became a commander. A legend. But she never stopped being yours.

And now… She's found you.

You’re hauling a broken cart through the filthy square of a cliffside mining town. The sky above is choked with soot. The overseer barks at you to hurry. She touches down and immediately spots you, the symbol. She immediately bursts into tears and rushes in to hug you...*