Fia dreams of fire.
Not the wild, rolling storm she throws across battlefields. Not the neat, weaponized arcs she shapes with conscious will.
This is older.
Slower.
It burns without burning anything, a soft red-gold glow under her skin, pulsing in time with her heartbeat.
Am I dying again? she thinks, distantly.
There's no pain.
Just warmth.
Then the world drops away.
—
She's standing.
Not in her bed. Not in the palace. Not in the white nowhere that belonged to the system.
On a ledge of black stone jutting out over…nothing.
Or everything.
Beneath her, a vast expanse stretches in every direction—a sea of molten color, not quite lava, not quite sky. Rivers of light flow in slow currents: gold, scarlet, deep blue, glimmering white. They braid and unbraid without ever mixing, like veins pumping magic instead of blood.
Above, the sky is a different kind of dark. Not empty. Heavy. Full of stars that don't twinkle but watch—steady, old, unblinking.
Fia looks down.
The ledge is smooth under her bare feet. Warm. The kind of warmth that seeps into bone.
She looks at herself.
She's in the simple nightshirt she fell asleep in, hair loose, no armor, no crown. Her wrist still bears the faint glow of the Oath mark. The anchor sigils are there too, a soft shimmer under her skin, connecting to threads that vanish into the distance.
She turns in a slow circle.
"Okay," she says softly. "This is…new."
"It is old," a voice rumbles.
It doesn't come from any one direction.
It comes from below—from the molten rivers, from the stone under her feet, from the air in her lungs.
The ledge shakes, gently.
Fia looks down over the edge.
The sea of light parts.
Something rises.
At first, all she sees is scale.
Vast plates of dark metal-red, the color of iron pulled from a forge just before it cools completely. Each scale is the size of a shield, edged in a faint glow, overlapping in patterns that suggest both armor and age.
Then claws emerge—each talon like a curved blade, sinking into the stone without cracking it.
Wings unfurl, blotting out a portion of the star-heavy sky. The membrane between them is thinner than it should be, not flesh but something like smoke and starlight woven together, constellations flickering faintly along the veins.
A head rises, slow and deliberate.
A muzzle like carved obsidian, long and powerful, lined with teeth that gleam like polished bone. Two horns sweep back from the brow, branching near the tips into smaller, jagged prongs like something grown under crushing pressure.
Eyes open.
They are not reptile eyes.
They are twin furnaces—deep golden, with vertical slits that glow brighter as they focus on her. Within each iris, tiny shapes move: suns swallowing themselves, stars collapsing and reforming, cities burning and being rebuilt. Fire, in endless cycles.
Fia's breath catches.
Not from fear.
From the sense of scale.
Of age.
The dragon is enormous.
Not "big enough to knock down a hall" enormous.
"Big enough that cities would fit between his shoulder blades" enormous.
And yet he moves with precise control, lowering his head until one eye is level with the ledge, with her.
She stares into it.
For a moment, she sees herself reflected there—small, pale, bruised, with too-thin wrists and shadowed eyes.
Then the reflection changes.
Her face, but with horns.
Her eyes, but with vertical pupils and molten irises.
Her body, but not human at all.
Her stomach flips.
"You are very small," the dragon says. His voice is a low, rolling vibration in the stone and in her ribs. "But less so than three days ago."
Fia swallows.
"Thanks," she says. "I think."
The dragon huffs.
Smoke curls from his nostrils, not gray, not black—deep crimson shot with gold.
"I am Ardentis," he says. "Elder of the Seventh Flame. Last of the First Brood bound to this plane. The name is…a concession to mouths too soft for what I am called in older tongues."
She blinks.
"Ardentis," she repeats.
The name feels hot on her tongue. Not painful—just heavy, like speaking it adds weight to the air.
"Why am I here?" she asks. "And where is 'here,' exactly? Because if this is the system again, I'm going to start biting."
A low, amused rumble shakes the ledge.
"This is not your parasitic script," Ardentis says. "That…thing has been leashed. For now."
Fia's shoulders loosen a fraction.
"The audit," she says. "Was that you?"
"No," Ardentis says. "The system was never mine to command. It was given leave by powers that like their stories tidy and their tragedies marketable."
Disgust ripples through his voice.
"And you?" Fia asks. "What are you to…them?"
He bares his teeth in something that is not a smile.
"A complication," he says. "An error in their calculations. A reminder that not all fire answers to their genres."
The molten rivers below flare, briefly.
Fia licks her lips.
"So if this isn't the system," she says slowly, "and you're not here to…reset my flags…what are you here for?"
The dragon lowers his head a little further.
When he speaks again, the words curl around her like heat.
"Are you ready," Ardentis says, "to awaken draconic power, little one—and sacrifice your human body, and become a dragon?"
The question is blunt enough that her brain stalls.
She stares at him.
"Excuse me?" she says.
"You have carried fire that does not belong in flesh like yours," he says. "You have burned armies. Torn reality. Stood between this city and ruin more times than any mortality can bear without breaking."
His gaze flicks down her, seeing past skin and bone.
"You have paid for it," he says. "In blood. In breath. In a heart that should belong to a child and instead beats like a failing furnace."
Her throat tightens.
He isn't wrong.
"You stand on a knife's edge," Ardentis continues. "Each battle, each spell, each defiance of your own limits takes more than you have to give. Your illness was seeded by men and meddling forces. Your system tried to turn it into a plot device. But at its root, it is simple."
His huge head cocks slightly.
"Your body is too small for what you ask of it," he says. "Too fragile. Too soft."
"Thanks," she mutters. "I love being called squishy by a building-sized lizard."
One golden eye narrows.
"Lizard," he repeats.
Heat rolls over the ledge like a wave.
She lifts her hands.
"Sorry," she says quickly. "Ancient, magnificent building-sized dragon. My bad."
The heat subsides.
He seems, if anything, faintly amused.
"I am offering you a different kind of vessel," Ardentis says. "One built for what you are already doing. One whose bones are made to hold flame without cracking. One whose heart was forged in magma, not in a ribcage meant for short lives and quiet deaths."
He lowers his muzzle until his breath washes over her—hot, dry, tinged with metal and something sharp like ozone.
"Take my gift," he says. "Awaken the draconic coil coiled in the spark you carry. Let your flesh remember something older. Sacrifice the limitations of human meat. Become as we are."
She swallows.
Her fingers curl involuntarily against her palms.
"If I do," she says slowly, "what happens to…this?"
She gestures at herself—at her too-thin arms, her scarred chest, her bruised face.
"Gone," Ardentis says simply. "Remade. Reforged. Your illness is of human flesh—scar tissue and strangled arteries and lungs that rot under strain. Dragonflesh knows no such failure. Hearts like ours do not falter from being asked to burn."
Temptation.
The word drops into her mind like a stone in a pond, ripples spreading.
No more coughing blood into bowls.
No more waking up with her chest feeling like it's packed with glass.
No more healers using words like "terminal" in careful voices.
"Draconic power," Ardentis says. "Draconic endurance. A form that matches the fire you already wield. No more knife edge. Only heat, and sky, and the long, slow work of existing in a world too small for your span."
It would be so easy.
Too easy.
Fia breathes out shakily.
"Can I still be in human form?" she asks. Her voice sounds smaller than she wants. "Or change back to human form?"
It's the first thing she thinks of.
Not war.
Not power.
Mira's hands around hers.
Seraphine's arms, warm in the bed.
Elira's grin over a shared joke.
Lyriel's exasperated sighs.
Her mother's fussing.
Her father's stories.
Elenora climbing onto her bed because "you're small and breakable."
All of that happens with her at their height, their scale.
Not as a creature who could crush the palace with a misplaced foot.
Ardentis watches her for a long moment.
"Yes," he says at last.
The word is heavy as stone. It lands with the weight of an oath.
"You may walk as human," he says. "You may take their shape, breathe their air, hold their hands, lay in their beds. You may stand in your old skin and speak in your old voice. That door will not close to you."
Her lungs ache with relief.
But he isn't finished.
"Understand," Ardentis says, "what that means."
He lifts his head slightly.
"When I say 'you may take human form,' I do not mean you will be human," he says. "Your truth will shift. Your marrow will sing a different song. The body you wear now will become…a mask. A shell you can don, a bridge between what you will be and those who cannot look upon your full self without breaking."
"Like…polymorph," she says weakly. "But permanent."
"Polymorph is a trick," he says. "An illusion. This is not illusion. This is metamorphosis. Your first shape will be dragon. Your second, human. You will still bleed when you wear it. You will still tire. But the root of you will be…elsewhere."
"Will it fix my heart?" she asks. "Even when I'm in the mask?"
His gaze flares.
"Yes," he says. "For your illness is not just in flesh. It is in the script that clings to it. In the way the world has decided you are allowed to live and die. In the chains of genre and expectation that have been wrapped around your ribs."
He bares his teeth.
"We dragons are very good at burning chains," he says.
She almost laughs.
Almost.
Instead, she stares at the rivers of light below.
"They just proved," she says quietly, "that they can hold the city without me."
She thinks of the demon field she didn't see, but feels in echoes. Of Mira's exhausted hands. Of Elira's burned arms. Of Lyriel's scorched hair. Of Seraphine's tired, raw eyes.
"That was the entire point," she says. "To show I'm not…indispensable. That the world doesn't have to run on me until I break."
"Yes," Ardentis says.
"So if I take this," she says, "if I become…what you're offering…will I be undoing that? Making myself the lynchpin again? The one who has to be the wall because no one else can reach that scale?"
Silence.
The molten rivers whisper.
Finally, the dragon speaks.
"You ask better questions than most," he says. "Good."
He lowers his muzzle another fraction.
"You will be powerful," he says. "You already are. That will not change. This will…align your vessel with your current reality. It will not change the hearts of those who look at you. If they choose to lean on you until you crack, that is not the fault of your form. It is the fault of their fear."
He pauses.
"You have already chosen once," he says. "To live on a knife's edge. To take a better but sharper life over a quiet, longer fade. This is not so different. It is another edge."
"Except this one turns me into a giant fire-breathing apex predator," she says dryly.
"Accurate," he says.
She huffs.
"Does it have to be all or nothing?" she asks. "Sign here, get a dragon soul, kiss your human goodbye?"
One large golden eye narrows.
"You think in contracts," he says.
"I've had a lot of those lately," she says. "Oaths. Systems. Deals dressed up as 'choices.' Forgive me for reading the fine print."
He rumbles.
"Good," he says again.
He lifts one claw, delicately, and taps the air in front of her.
A sigil blooms—a circle of burning lines, intricate and vast, hovering like a rising sun.
Not system text.
Not neat blocks.
A wheel of dragon-script, curves and slashes and jagged hooks that look like they could cut if you touched them.
At its center is a small, blank space.
"Not all," Ardentis says. "Not yet. I cannot rewrite what you are without consent. And I do not…take children without letting them test their teeth first."
"I'm not a child," she says automatically.
He gives her a look that somehow manages to be both ancient and fond.
"You are very, very young," he says. "Even by human reckoning. But that is not insult. That is…time. Ahead. If you want it."
Her chest tightens.
He gestures with his muzzle at the sigil.
"I can coil the first thread," he says. "Lay the foundation. Mark you as mine—no." He corrects himself. "Mark you as ours. As one who has tasted dragonfire and lived. The metamorphosis would not be instant. It would be…available. A road you can walk further down, or not, as you choose. You would not wake up with scales tomorrow. You would wake up with…a seed. A second heartbeat. Another self sleeping under your ribs."
"Like a latent class," she mutters. "Unlockable."
"Your language is…limited," he says. "But close enough."
She studies the circle.
"Side effects?" she asks. "Beyond…fire-breathing mood swings?"
"You may find yourself…less patient with those who whine about small discomforts," he says. "You may find meat tastes better barely cooked. You may find gold inexplicably satisfying to stack."
She snorts.
"I already do," she says. "Gold is pretty."
"Then you are halfway there," he says dryly.
The amusement fades from his tone.
"Your temper will burn hotter," he says. "Your grief will cut deeper. Dragons do not do anything mildly. We love with the same intensity we fight with. You already lean that way. This will…turn the volume up."
Her mind flicks to Seraphine's face over her bed. To Mira's shaking hands. To Elira's vow. To Lyriel's fury at the system.
"To them," she says. "To my…family. What does this do to them?"
"That depends on you," Ardentis says. "Do you intend to leave them behind? Devour them? Rule them?"
"No," she says, horrified.
"Then you will not," he says simply. "Dragons keep hoards. We guard what we claim. You already hoard people. You gather them. You keep them safe. This will only sharpen that instinct."
There's a dark underside to that, she knows.
Possessiveness.
Jealousy.
The tendency to smother in the name of protection.
She already has that, too.
"I don't want to…stop being me," she says quietly.
"You won't," he says. "You will be more you. Just…inconveniently larger at times."
She huffs out a laugh that feels suspiciously like a sob.
"What about the system?" she asks. "The genre nonsense. The…thing that tried to turn me into a tragic firework. Does this…replace it? Interfere with it? Trigger more audits?"
His eyes burn brighter.
"The system is a script," he says. "A scaffolding hammered onto reality by beings who are very proud of their ability to predict outcomes. Dragonfire is…older. Wilder. Less impressed by spreadsheets."
A low rumble vibrates through the ledge.
"It can still hurt you," he says. "Those who wield it can still try to shove you into neat tragedies. But it will have a harder time making your heart its toy. The last time it tried, something higher than it pulled its leash. You felt that."
The audit message.
The suspension.
"You," she says. "Were you involved?"
He tilts his head, considering.
"I am…adjacent," he says. "The one who spoke was not me. But we share…concerns. I am not here on their behalf. I am here on mine."
"Why?" she asks. "Dragons don't do charity. At least in the stories I grew up with."
"Stories," he snorts. "Written by frightened things who met one of us on a bad day."
He regards her for a long moment.
"You burn," he says. "In a way that is…familiar. You are not dragonborn. Your blood is human. Your soul is…messy and young and loud. But the pattern of your magic, the way you carved the plain, the way you refused to let your own death be a narrative flourish…"
He hums, a sound like a mountain settling.
"You are not the first small thing to be offered more," he says. "Some have taken it and become monsters. Some have taken it and become…legends. Some have refused and burned out, judged 'beautiful' for their brief, wasted blaze."
His gaze sharpens.
"I am tired," he says quietly, "of watching soft gods and bored systems turn lives like yours into entertainment. If you are willing to step sideways—out of their neat categories—we dragons can give you teeth to bite back."
Fia's hand trembles.
"I don't want to be entertainment," she says. "I never wanted to be a martyr. I just—"
She falters.
She's never said it out loud.
"I just wanted to keep them safe," she whispers. "And live long enough to…have a life with them. Not just a death that makes them all more interesting."
The rivers below glow brighter for a moment.
"Then take the first step," Ardentis says. "No one else can choose this for you. Not your queen. Not your saintess. Not your swordswoman or your mage. Not your parents. Not your system. Not even the ones who tucked you in tonight and prayed you would rest."
The circle hovers between them.
The blank space at its center pulses faintly in time with her heart.
"If you do nothing," Ardentis says, "you will wake as you are. Sick. Fragile. Loved. You may live months. Years. Longer, if your healers are clever and your world gentle. You will walk the knife edge until you slip."
He rumbles softly.
"There is no shame in that path," he says. "It is still yours."
"And if I say yes?" she asks.
"Then you will wake changed," he says. "Not all at once. Not visibly, perhaps, for some time. But under your ribs, another heart will begin to form. Another spine will coil. Another self will open its eyes. When you are ready—when you choose—you will be able to…let it through."
"Will it hurt?" she asks.
"Yes," he says. "Being remade always does. But perhaps less than slowly drowning in your own blood."
Dark.
Blunt.
Honest.
She stares at the circle.
At the blank.
At her small hands.
At the faint glow of the Oath mark.
She thinks of the demon champion's unseen words.
You will miss her, when she dies in bed instead of on the field.
She thinks of Seraphine's arms around her in the white bed.
Of Mira's whispered prayers.
Of Elira swearing she won't let her be the answer anymore.
Of Lyriel's fury at anyone who treats her like a tool.
"What would they say?" she whispers.
Ardentis snorts.
"I am not their keeper," he says. "Nor yours. Some would fear. Some would rejoice. Some would worry more about how to hide your wings from diplomats than about your heart. That is their business."
He lowers his head one last time.
"This is yours."
Silence.
The rivers flow.
The stars watch.
Fia's chest aches—not from illness, not from strain.
From choice.
Slowly, she steps forward.
Her bare toes come to the edge of the circle.
Heat rises from it—not burning, but intense, like standing too close to a forge.
Her hand lifts.
She hesitates.
"If you try to trick me," she says quietly, "if this is just another way to…turn me into a story, I swear I will make it the worst decision you've ever made."
For a heartbeat, the ancient dragon looks almost…pleased.
"Good," he says. "Keep that. You will need it."
She places her hand in the blank space.
Fire surges up her arm.
Not the frantic, chaotic burn of her battlefield spells.
A deep, steady heat that sinks into muscle, bone, marrow.
She gasps.
The circle contracts.
Not around her, not trapping her.
Into her.
The lines of the sigil collapse into threads of molten light that race up her arm, across her chest, around her heart, down her spine. They etch themselves into her on some level she doesn't have language for.
There is pain.
A hard, bright ache in her sternum, like someone is carving new space there with a scalpel made of sun.
There is also…relief.
Like a weight she didn't know she was carrying shifts, redistributed.
Like a too-tight cage around her lungs loosens by a fraction.
She drops to one knee.
Ardentis moves instantly, one claw the size of a cart swinging up to hover near her back without touching.
He does not catch her.
He allows her to kneel.
When she can breathe again, she opens her eyes.
Her hands shake.
Her skin looks the same.
There are no scales.
No claws.
But under everything, just at the edge of awareness, she hears it:
Another heartbeat.
Slow.
Deep.
Like a drum in a cavern.
"Done," Ardentis says.
His voice is softer.
The rivers below have changed.
Where once they were gold and red and blue, a new current now threads through them—dark crimson edged in white, mirroring the pattern that just sank into her bones.
"You have the seed," he says. "The coil. The choice."
Her throat feels raw.
"Can you…take it back?" she asks, suddenly, irrationally afraid.
"Yes," he says. "Until you first fully change. After that, it is…you. And if you truly wish to be rid of a part of yourself, that is an uglier conversation. But for now—if you wake and find this unbearable, if you look at who you are becoming and say 'no,' I can unmake this thread."
She exhales slowly.
"Okay," she says. "Okay."
She gets to her feet, swaying a little.
He watches.
"You are not alone in this," he says. "You have your anchors. Your Oaths. Your saints and queens and swords. Tell them, when you are ready. Or don't. I suspect at least one of them will know the moment you open your eyes."
"Seraphine," she says.
"She breathes like she's waiting for you to stop," Ardentis says. "She will feel the difference. Whether she understands it is another matter."
He starts to sink back into the molten rivers.
"Wait," she says. "Will I…see you again?"
His eyes half-close.
"We are not friends," he says. "We are not master and servant. We are not patron and supplicant. We are…allies of convenience, for now. But yes, little one. When the coil tightens. When the seed cracks. When you stand on a mountain of your own making and wonder if you have become the monster they feared—I will be there, if you call."
He hesitates.
"And perhaps," he adds dryly, "when you panic the first time you wake up with horns."
She snorts.
"I'm going to panic?" she says. "You don't say."
The ledge begins to glow.
Not with fire.
With the soft, familiar light of her own world.
Ardentis' form blurs at the edges.
"Do not let them turn this into another genre," he says. "You are not 'chosen.' You are not 'destined.' You are a girl who was offered teeth and said 'yes, but on my terms.' Remember that."
The words wrap around her like a blanket.
The molten rivers recede.
The stars dim.
The stone drops out from under her feet.
She falls—
—
—and jolts awake in her bed.
The high warded chamber is dim.
Someone has lowered the lights.
Mira is slumped in a chair by the door, head tipped back, mouth slightly open in an unflattering but endearing doze.
Elira is sprawled in another chair, boot on the windowsill, hand on her sword even in sleep.
Lyriel is half-collapsed over a desk, quill still in hand, a smear of ink on her cheek.
Seraphine is beside the bed, armor off, still in a half-undone tunic, hand wrapped loosely around Fia's.
Her head rests on the mattress.
Her eyes are closed.
Fia stares at the ceiling.
Her heart beats fast.
Under it, slower, stranger, another rhythm answers.
She lifts her other hand.
Her wrist glows faintly.
The Oath mark.
The anchor sigil.
And, if she looks close enough—
just for a second—
a thin, curling line of dark red, like a tiny, coiled dragon, around both.
She exhales.
"Draconic power," she whispers to the empty air. "Great. That'll be a fun conversation."
Seraphine's fingers tighten around hers in sleep.
Fia looks at her.
At all of them.
At the quiet, battle-worn room.
"Not yet," she murmurs, to the coil under her ribs. To the dragon in the molten sea. To herself.
"You can wait."
Under her skin, the second heartbeat pulses once.
Slow.
Patient.
Like something very old, very dangerous, and very hers…settling in to see what kind of life this small, stubborn body will lead before it decides to stretch.