The cave felt smaller.
That was the first thing I noticed. Not the cold — I didn't feel cold anymore — and not the weight of the stone beneath me. Just space. Or the lack of it.
I opened my eyes slowly. One stung. The other was fine. Shadows danced across the ceiling, flickering where the morning light slipped through the cave mouth.
I moved to stretch—and hit the wall with my wing.
A dull thud echoed through the chamber. Dust rained down from the ledge above, and the scrape of claw against stone followed as I shifted back into the center. My spine cracked. My shoulders groaned. Every movement felt heavier — not stiff from sleep, but weighted.
I'd grown.
Not subtly. Not like the last time. My tail curled tighter now. My neck arched higher. When I rose to full height, my horns scraped the ceiling. The cave hadn't shrunk.
I had.
I padded slowly toward the entrance, claws digging slightly deeper into the packed snow at the threshold. The light outside burned brighter than I remembered. Not in temperature — I still didn't feel warmth — but in clarity. Everything was sharper. Louder. I could smell tree sap from a mile away. I could taste the pine in the air.
And I could feel it — deep in the way my limbs carried me.
I wasn't a baby anymore.
But that didn't mean I was strong.
I stepped into the open and looked out across the forest, the lake, the empty sky. My wings shifted slightly at my back, adjusting for balance. They felt better now — not sturdy, not flight-ready — but more mine. Still not enough to lift me.
And that was the problem.
I had almost died last week.
Not in some tragic, poetic sense. Literally. Bleeding in the snow, surrounded by wolves, one eye nearly lost, fire barely remembered. The only reason I was still breathing was because something inside me finally snapped open — a spark, a pulse, a buried instinct too angry to stay buried.
I turned my head and caught my reflection in the pond below.
The scar over my left eye hadn't faded.
It slashed across my brow in a clean, curved line, dark against the scales. The eye itself still worked, mostly. Blurry at the edges, slightly off when I tried to focus too far. But it wasn't blind.
It was a reminder.
I curled my claws into the stone and exhaled slowly, letting my breath coil across the air.
That fight should've been easy. I was supposed to be something powerful. Something ancient. Something more than a creature that barely scraped by against eight half-starved wolves.
I wasn't mad at them.
I was mad at me.
My tail twitched once. I glanced down the ridge again, watching the wind skim the snow.
This would be the last time.The last time I came that close to losing.The last time I didn't know what I was capable of.
Because whatever had happened out there — that fire, that surge — it had changed everything.
And I needed to feel it again.
The ridge above the lake was quiet. No wind. No birds. Just space.
And silence.
It reminded me of the clearing. The wolves. The way they'd circled, thinking I was just another animal. I nearly proved them right.
Until the fire came.
I stopped walking and looked out over the trees.
It hadn't been planned. It hadn't even been a choice. One moment I was bleeding, cornered, barely standing — and the next, something behind my ribs had torn open. Heat and fury, pain and instinct. It had burned the alpha out of the air in a single breath.
I hadn't felt it since.
Until now.
The warmth was back.
Not strong. Not sharp. Just a pressure, low in my chest — the memory of fire, stirring like a dream that didn't want to be forgotten. I exhaled, watching my breath mist into the cold.
Then I opened my jaws.
No ritual. No build-up. Just breath… and then —
Fwoom.
A jet of flame erupted from my throat — thick, jagged, burning black at the base and violet at the edges. It wasn't clean. It hissed as it struck the snow-packed ground, eating through the frost with a sound like steam and tearing cloth. The snow didn't melt. It vanished. Turned black, then to nothing.
I froze.
And then I started laughing — sharp, breathless bursts that turned into something closer to a growl. I couldn't help it. The fire had worked. Again. And this time, I wasn't dying when it came.
I turned to the side and opened my mouth again.
Another blast — shorter, weaker, veering off target and slamming into a crooked stump ten paces away. The wood caught instantly. Not in flames. In destruction. The bark curled in on itself, blackened and splitting as the stump cracked down the middle and collapsed inward like it was rotting in fast-forward.
I whooped — an ugly, giddy sound — and spun in place, wings flaring wide.
This was mine.
I had thought the fire was a fluke. A one-time survival instinct. But it was real. It was back. And it wasn't small.
I stepped forward, crouched slightly, and tried again.
Nothing.
I blinked, pulled in breath, focused on that pressure again — the core behind my ribs. This time, when I breathed out, the flame came late and short. It spilled out like a cough — a thick burst that splattered over a patch of ice and dug a deep scar into it before fading.
Not perfect. Not even consistent.
But still dragon fire.
It didn't spread like normal flames. It didn't flicker or dance. It tore. It dug in. Wherever it touched, it burned through. The snow didn't melt — it collapsed. The ice didn't drip — it cracked apart in spiderweb lines. The fire didn't crawl. It consumed.
And I didn't feel it.
Not on my tongue. Not against my scales. The air around it warped and shimmered like it should have been blistering hot — but to me, it was nothing. Just light and pressure.
Maybe dragons weren't meant to feel heat. Or cold. Maybe that part of me was already gone.
I tried again — another breath, another gout of black-violet fire into a patch of slush. This one curled upward before hitting the ground, carving a groove into a half-frozen boulder. The rock hissed, cracked, then split apart.
I laughed again, teeth bared.
This was power. Ugly, wild, hungry power.
I couldn't fly. I wasn't full-sized. But this?
This was mine.
And I wasn't done yet.
The last blast had carved a groove into the stone and left a patch of snow hissing into vapor. My throat still buzzed with it—not with pain, but with pressure. It sat behind my ribs, insistent and coiled, begging to be used again.
I needed more space.
Leaving the ridge behind, I moved deeper into the trees until the terrain opened into a grove marked by gnarled roots, frostbitten brush, and half-buried rocks. The ground sloped slightly, a natural arena. It wasn't perfect, but it would do.
I squared my stance, wings low and loose at my back. There was no need to test if I had fire—I knew that now.
Cue the training montage, I thought, already grinning.
I took a breath, dragged it deep from the chest, and let it go with intent. The fire came in a thick, focused stream—black at the core with violet edges that shimmered like oil under moonlight. It struck the nearest tree with a wet hiss and hollowed it in seconds. Not charred. Not scorched. Gone. The trunk folded in on itself and collapsed as though something had chewed through the heart.
I exhaled hard, startled by how clean it felt. Then I turned and fired again, this time sweeping low across a patch of frost. The snow didn't melt; it vanished. A black, concave streak cut across the surface like a bite taken out of winter.
My grin widened.
I moved from tree to tree, from stump to stone, breathing fire in bursts. The more I used it, the more I understood its nature. It didn't spread like wildfire or dance like heat. It devoured. It bored through matter like hunger made real, drilling into wood, ice, even rock.
I spun and launched a stream into a boulder. The surface flared violet for a moment, then cracked. A second later, the entire stone split down the middle and fell apart with a sound like bone breaking.
I crouched and fired again, this time holding it. One second. Two. Three. I swung my head slightly, dragging the fire across a patch of ice. It cut a crescent line into the ground that steamed and hissed, but the heat never touched me.
By the time I pulled back, I was panting—not in pain, just used. The fire took energy. It wasn't free. But it felt good, like stretching a muscle that had been waiting too long to be tested.
I centered myself and began counting.
The first blast struck a tree clean through.The second burned a gash across a frozen stump.The third and fourth scorched shallow arcs into the ground.The fifth came thinner, the sixth shorter.I pushed for a seventh. It sputtered near the end but still came.
I stood there afterward, my jaws open, chest rising and falling in long, heavy breaths. My limbs felt loose, my shoulders low. Tired, but not weak.
Seven.
That was my limit—for now.
I looked around the grove and took in the damage. Half the trees were scorched or half-destroyed. The snow lay in blackened trenches, some melted away entirely, others collapsed into ash-colored dust. A boulder near the edge had caved in from a clean diagonal cut.
I let out a slow breath and sat down where I stood, claws digging into the cold dirt. My tail curled behind me like a thick black rope. I stared out over the carnage I'd made and smiled—not cruelly, not even proudly. Just honestly.
Then I caught the scent.
Smoke. Real smoke.
It wasn't the chemical tinge of dragon fire or the crisp smell of scorched ice. This was bark. Sap. Burning wood.
I stood slowly and turned.
Behind me, a branch I hadn't aimed for was glowing at the base, orange embers crawling along its length. The flame had caught in the dead underbrush, likely from one of the weaker side blasts I hadn't noticed at the time. It was spreading. The low flames moved hungrily, catching at dry roots, licking across the ground like fingers pulling threads through a cloth.
And it was growing.
One of the smaller pines lit up with a soft whoosh, then another behind it. The fire wasn't violet-black. It wasn't dragon flame. This was wild — orange, fast, and untamed.
I didn't panic.But I didn't smile either.
The heat finally stirred the air around me, warping the light and thickening the smoke. The forest groaned as bark cracked open and leaves curled into flame. A sheet of fire climbed the side of a tree and flared upward, casting shifting shadows across the haze.
I had done this.
Not by instinct. Not out of fear.Just curiosity. Just the need to know how far I could go.
And I didn't run. I didn't breathe fire again. I didn't move.
I stayed.
And the longer I watched, the more I felt it — the way the flames moved, the way they fed, the way they changed everything they touched. It wasn't just destruction.
It was recognition.
The fire didn't feel foreign to me. It didn't feel dangerous.It felt… familiar.
So I stepped closer. The smoke thickened. The air shimmered. And still, the heat didn't touch me.
I opened my mouth and drew in a breath—not smoke, not flame, but something between the two. It tasted like ash and sap and something older than both. Something elemental. The moment it hit the back of my throat, something inside me shifted.
Not in my limbs. Not in my shoulders or chest.
In my mind.
A lightness spread behind my eyes. The pressure that usually coiled in my ribs—that sleeping ember—pulsed brighter. My thoughts didn't race. They sharpened. My awareness deepened. Everything around me felt closer. Clearer.
Colors looked different.
That strange glow I sometimes saw near the edges of things—a shimmer I could never quite focus on—suddenly brightened. It moved more now, with shape and rhythm. Not just a blur. Almost like a second layer to the world had pulled into view.
I breathed again, slower this time, deeper.
More of that presence filled me. It wasn't energy like adrenaline. It didn't make me stronger. It made me more. More aware. More grounded. More… dragon.
The fire wasn't talking. It didn't sing or whisper.
But it responded.
And the closer I stood, the more it recognized me.
Not as prey. Not even as predator.
As kin.
I stepped fully into the edge of the blaze, the earth glowing beneath my feet, and tilted my head upward. The air swam with warmth and flickering soot. Sparks danced across my vision, but I could track every one. I saw the way they moved. The way they faded. Like watching a language I didn't yet know how to speak—but could feel forming inside me.
It didn't last long. The flames would die soon. There wasn't enough fuel to keep them going much longer. The forest would survive.
But I had taken something from it.
Not stolen.
Received.
When I finally stepped back, I felt it settle inside me. A deeper breath. A fuller reservoir. I hadn't grown in size, but I knew I could breathe more fire now—not just in strength, but in control. And my vision… it hadn't returned to normal. That second layer was still there, faint but present, shimmering behind the ordinary world.
I didn't understand it.
But I liked it.
I looked past the dying flame line and drew in the cold air beyond. The fire was behind me now, flickering in tired waves. The forest ahead waited—still, quiet, unburned.
And somewhere in that forest… something was moving.
I sniffed the wind. Something alive. Small. Distant.
My chest felt light.
It was time to hunt.
I snickered—low, dry, and amused. I felt stronger than before. Sharper. More awake.
But the truth settled with me just as firmly as the fire had:
This wasn't just power I was wielding.It was something older. Something I belonged to.
I still had a lot to figure out about being a dragon.