The world changed after the Trial.
For three days, Aric and Serenya traveled through a land carved by flame and time. The path to the Dragon Courts was not a simple road—it was a pilgrimage. Every step carried weight, each mile marked by the bones of dragons who had failed before.
The path was called the Road of Ashes.
Mountains rose like jagged teeth on either side, their peaks crowned in smoke. Rivers of molten fire cut across the land, glowing veins of the world's heart exposed to the open air. The heat never lessened. Ash clung to Aric's skin, worked into his hair, and burned in his lungs until breathing felt like swallowing cinders.
Yet Serenya walked as if born of the flame itself.
"Are you sure we're even meant to survive this?" Aric muttered, dragging his boots through the black dust. "It feels more like punishment than passage."
Serenya's lips curved faintly. "The Road is punishment. It was built to remind us that nothing worth holding is won without sacrifice. Dragons believe hardship tempers strength. If you survive the path, the Court considers you worthy to enter its halls."
Aric glanced at her. The firelight painted her scales—half-hidden beneath her skin—like living embers. She was radiant, untouchable, as though the flames bent to her.
"And if I collapse?" he asked, only half in jest.
She turned, her golden eyes sharp and unwavering. "Then I carry you."
Silence fell between them after that, broken only by the distant rumble of shifting stone. But in that silence, Aric felt something stir. A bond not just of fire, but of trust.
They passed through ruins where ancient dragons had once lived, their palaces scorched into charred husks. Statues stood half-buried in ash—monuments of forgotten kings, wings spread wide in eternal defiance. Each ruin seemed to whisper of glory and downfall, as though warning them of the Court's double-edged crown.
At night, when they rested on blackened stone beneath a sky bruised with smoke, Aric would lie awake, watching Serenya. She seemed both fragile and indomitable, as if carrying the burden of a thousand years of fire.
Once, as she tended a small flame to ward off the encroaching darkness, she spoke without looking at him.
"You think the Court will welcome us?"
Aric snorted. "No. I think they'll try to kill me the moment we walk in."
Serenya's silence was long. Then, softly, almost too quietly to hear: "You're not wrong."
The third morning, the Road of Ashes rose into a colossal ridge. Beyond it stretched a sight that stole Aric's breath.
The Dragon Courts.
Built within the hollow of an ancient volcano, the city gleamed with obsidian towers and bridges carved from the bones of leviathans. Fires burned endlessly in colossal braziers, casting shadows of winged figures across the scarlet sky. The air thrummed with power—old, endless, suffocating.
Serenya's expression hardened as she looked down at her home. "We've arrived."
Aric swallowed hard. The Trials had been brutal, but what waited beyond those obsidian gates felt far more dangerous. Not flame. Not monsters. But dragons who wore human faces, and whose smiles hid daggers.
The Dragon Courts were not a sanctuary.
They were a crucible.