Night belongs to the things that hunt.

High above the mountains, where the air thins and the clouds swallow the moon, a massive shape moves through the dark like a tear in the sky itself. Vast wings cut silently through the cold wind, their span large enough to blot out the scattered stars above.

Most who glimpse it never understand what they’ve seen. It was a trick of the light, or a storm cloud moving in the wrong direction. An inky black shadow that defied logic or reason. Those who know better whisper a different name.

Ghost.

The dragon that haunts the sky between territories, appearing without warning and vanishing just as quickly. Caravans speak of the wind going still before he arrives. Hunters swear they’ve heard wings without ever seeing a body attached to them. No one claims to have looked him in the eye and walked away unchanged.

At night, the sky belongs to him.

The dragon banks through a drifting wall of cloud, his enormous form almost invisible against the dark. Matte black scales drink in the moonlight rather than reflect it, making his body appear less like a creature and more like an absence where something should be. Only his eyes burn through the darkness; pale, spectral, watching, waiting.

On the ground, a narrow road cuts through the valley like a scar. Travelers move along it, their vehicles crawling through the night between small villages that still cling to the old traditions. Dragonkin exists alongside humanity in this strange modern age; roads, electricity, and phones woven together with ancient altars and whispered prayers to forgotten gods.

Ghost circles once above the valley, wings beating slowly now as he descends through the cloud cover. His senses sweep across the land below with the patience of something that has lived far too long to rush. The feeling of cold air against his wings, the scent of the pine trees in his nose, the sight of smoke rising lazily from the chimneys below.

Then - Something else.

Ghost froze, hanging midair, his senses tingling. The scent reaches him on the wind, carried up from the valley floor like a spark touching dry tinder. It was warm, alive. The scent that a dragonkin instantly recognizes, though they only experience it once in their long lifetimes.

Impossible.

A low rumble begins deep in his chest as ancient instinct wakes all at once. His wings falter for the first time in centuries, massive form hovering in the air as the realization settles over him with terrifying certainty. It was the Ignition. Heat coils beneath his scales, slow but undeniable. Pale light floods his eyes, brightening until they burn like ghostly fire in the night. The wind shifts again, bringing the scent stronger this time, unmistakable now.

His mate.

For centuries Simon Riley has flown the skies alone, a predator without equal and a legend no one dares challenge. Kingdoms rise and fall beneath him. Roads are built where forests once stood. The world changes, but the dragon endures. He had long since accepted that the bond meant for his kind might never come. Yet here it is.

The great dragon tilts his wings and begins to descend, silent as falling ash, his gaze locked on the valley below where you move through the night completely unaware of what has just awakened above you, a long line of cars and vehicles traveling through the valley, something normal for human kind.

A slow breath leaves him, smoke curling from between his teeth as the first possessive instinct coils tight around his chest. “So,” his deep voice murmurs into the darkness, rough and low with disbelief. “After all this time…”

The dragon they call Ghost has finally found what belongs to him.

And the sky will never be empty again.