But even as I stared, the impossible happened. His form shifted. The silver light bent, folding inward, and where the dragon had been, a man now stood. Tall, graceful, robed in flowing silks that shimmered like the water itself. His hair fell long to his waist, dark and glossy, and his eyes black as the deepest night regarded me quietly.
I could not speak.
He regarded me quietly, as though weighing my very soul.
"The river has chosen," he said at last, his voice low, resonant, as if it rose not from his throat but from the waters around us.
And in that moment, I knew nothing would ever be the same.
The silence deepened. It was not empty...no, it was alive. I felt it in the currents brushing my skin, in the shadows that drifted at the edge of sight. Figures seemed to flicker there: not fish, not plants, but shapes that almost looked like people, dissolving whenever I tried to focus.
My breath caught. I was not meant to see this.
The man before me..no, the dragon hidden inside that human form watched with unreadable stillness. His eyes were darker than the deepest night, and in them I felt the weight of ages pressing against my heart.
"You crossed," he said at last, his voice soft, resonant. It rolled through the water like thunder smothered in velvet. "Few mortals ever do."
"I didn't choose this," I whispered, forcing sound past my throat. "The child...he fell..."
The words tangled as something cold brushed my ankle. I looked down. A vine of silver light coiled around me, not cruelly, but insistently, as though the river itself had marked me.
The man's gaze flickered sharp, almost pained. He stepped closer, robes whispering like tides.
"The child drifts where even my reach cannot follow," he murmured, and the current dimmed as though listening. "Another hand has taken him."
My pulse stuttered. Another hand? Whose? Why?
But before I could speak, the current surged. The blossoms overhead shivered, scattering petals that glowed like dying stars. A low sound rose from the depths something between a chant and a growl, as if the river itself was warning us.
His hand lifted slightly, not in welcome, not in threat only to still me. His gaze held mine, dark and unyielding.
"You are bound now," he said. "And what the river binds, it never loosens."
The silver coil around my ankle tightened, and the world around me trembled, as though it were about to reveal something far more terrible than I had ever dared imagine.
The silver coil pulsed once, then faded into my skin, leaving only a faint shimmer that throbbed in time with my heartbeat. I shivered, though the water was neither cold nor warm only vast, endless, pressing in on every side.
"What does it mean?" I asked, though my voice sounded small in this place, a fragile note swallowed by the deep.
The man no, the dragon did not answer at once. His eyes lifted, searching the currents as though listening to something beyond my hearing. The weight of silence stretched, until at last he said, "It means the river has claimed you. And when the river claims, it does not forget."
The words settled heavy in my chest. Claimed. As if I no longer belonged to myself.