The Thread Between Flames

Sareth-en-Myros Perspective

The wind howled along the high peaks of Vireth-Kahl, the obsidian throne of the dragons, but within the ancient spire that crowned the mountain, all was still. Sareth en Myros sat alone upon her basalt dais, unmoving, cloaked in silence. To any observer, she might have seemed carved from the very stone she ruled.

But within her, storm.

A Tether Unwinding

The rune was no longer silent.

At first, it had been whispers, fragments in the flame, traces in the dreamwinds. She had dismissed them as echoes of old magic, remnants of a world buried by treaty and time.

But now it pulsed like a second heart.

Not within her… but beyond her.

Each beat of its pulse reverberated through the ancient rune-network that still connected the ley lines of the Dragon Realm. The sigil that had once bound kings to dragons, shaped wars, ended ages… now hummed faintly with human blood.

This is not a coincidence.

This is a summoning.

Her wings flexed slowly, and the obsidian around her throne cracked from the heat.

Into the Dreamfire

She let her spirit slip from the waking world and into the dreamsense, that space between time and thought where only dragons, gods, and the mad could walk freely.

The spiral-eye rune appeared before her, floating like a brand carved in flame.

She reached for it.

And the world fell away.

A Vision Shared

She hovered above a tower of ivy and frost; the rune-smith's lair, long thought buried beneath war and exile. The mountain's edge whispered the name Kaelen through the trees.

Her gaze fell to the boy.

A human prince, though he did not move like royalty. His soul flickered like a guttering candle, uncertain, too bright, too open.

He bore the spiral.

And worse… it responded to her presence.

The dream shivered.

Kaelen turned in his sleep. He whispered.

"Who are you?"

"I am the fire you were never meant to carry," she replied, though the words never touched his ears. "You are the echo of a broken promise."

She reached further,

And saw more;

A silver-haired girl at his side, wary but loyal.

A map burning in candlelight.

A path winding toward the Sanctum of the First Flame.

Sareth reeled back from the vision.

They're seeking answers.

They're going to the place where it all began.

Tremors of Rebellion

Back in the Hollow, the Council of Wyrms gathered.

Wings crowded the air. Talons scraped across the basalt floor. Rune banners flickered with old enchantments. The oldest among them, High Wyrm Aetherion, addressed the chamber with grim certainty.

"The Rune Queen has stirred. The bond has awakened. And it has chosen… a human."

Gasps and growls. Some dragons bellowed in anger. Others snarled in disbelief.

"This breaks the Pact," one said.

"This breaks the world," another muttered.

But Sareth stood above them all, her obsidian wings catching the firelight like blades.

"I did not choose this," she said coldly. "But the rune did. And I will not let it fall into enemy hands."

A young wyrmling, brash, fire-eyed spoke out.

"Then destroy the boy before the bond deepens."

Sareth's eyes locked on him, glowing with deep, molten fury.

"If I meant to destroy him," she said, "he would already be ash."

Silence. Heavy. Charged.

Then she spoke again, more softly.

"The spiral does not choose randomly. It answers calls made long ago."

She turned to the wind. Her voice was a decree.

"I will find him myself. I will learn why he bears my mark. If he is worthy... he will kneel. If he is not…"

She did not finish the sentence.

She did not need to.

Departure

That night, Sareth shed her throne-form and returned to her true body, vast and terrible.

She leapt from the spire, wings catching the night, scales reflecting the starlight in violet and gold. The clouds parted as she dove.

The mortal world lay spread beneath her like a forgotten tapestry.

And the thread of flame connecting her to Kaelen burned like a beacon on the edge of her mind.

He is moving east, she thought.

Toward the Sanctum. Toward the truth.

Toward me.

Night bled across the sky in a tapestry of violet and umber, stars faint behind rolling clouds. Sareth flew high above the spine of the world, her wings stretched wide across the windstream. Each beat carried her farther from the ancient sanctum of her kind and closer to the realm of men.

Below, the world shimmered in its illusion of peace.

But she could feel the rot beneath the surface. Forgotten runes murmuring beneath cities, old bindings fraying at the edges. The age of dragons had ended by pact, not by death. And now, something had disturbed the balance.

Someone.

The Mortal Veil

Sareth had not crossed into the mortal kingdoms in over four hundred years.

There had been no need.

The dragons remained above, in exile and dominion, their word withdrawn, their wrath held in check by ancient oaths. The humans had forgotten them as more than stories and symbols, reduced them to heraldry and fear-tales whispered to children.

But now a boy bore her rune.

Not through theft. Not through war.

Through resonance.

The spiral-eye had called to him, and that was a magic even she did not fully command.

And as she flew across the sky, cloaked in stormcloud and moonfire, she began to feel more than his presence.

She began to feel him.

His fear, flickering like a faltering torch.

His hope, small and sharp.

His questions.

His fire.

He is raw, she thought. But he is not weak.

A Whisper Through Flame

As she soared, her mind slipped once again into the dreamsense.

This time, she didn't wait to find him sleeping.

She reached for him.

In the mortal world, Kaelen would feel it like a heat rising beneath his skin. A tightening around his heartbeat. A pressure behind the eyes, like a memory not yet lived.

And then he would hear her voice.

"Kaelen."

It was not sound, but flame in his mind.

"You carry what is mine."

"Do you understand what you awaken?"

She saw the flicker of his soul recoil. His will stood against her, surprisingly firm. He did not collapse beneath the weight of her presence.

Good, she thought. He will need that fire, if he survives.

She pulled back.

Unease in the Skies

She angled her flight eastward. The land below grew denser with trees, thick with wild magic. The border of the old realm, the forgotten buffer between dragon and man.

She would not arrive unchallenged.

Even now, she felt it: the stirring of ancient wards, the resistance of old magics laid down by dragon-slayers long dead. The Sanctum of the First Flame, hidden at the edge of memory, was still guarded, if only by ghosts and forgotten spells.

But she had been there before.

She was the flame they once feared.

A Threat Awakens

Far below, in the shadows of broken mountains, something else stirred. A presence she'd not felt in centuries.

A pulse of dark rune-magic, bitter and wild, slithered across her senses.

She hissed low in her throat, steam curling from her nostrils. Her wings faltered for the briefest instant.

The Exiled Rune-Smith.

So he lives.

And he's drawn to the boy, too.

Now the paths began to converge. Not just Kaelen. Not just the Sanctum.

But others. Forgotten enemies. Woken powers.

This was no longer coincidence.

It was design.

The Queen Descends

She would find Kaelen.

She would know why the rune had chosen him.

And if this was a trap…

If some forgotten enemy dared to use a human child as a pawn to wound her legacy, then she would burn kingdoms until only truth remained.

With one last beat of her wings, she vanished into the mist, her form swallowed by stormclouds and starlight, leaving only the sound of thunder in her wake.