The air in the Aetherium Spire tasted of ozone and ambition.
Elara kept to the shadows, her back pressed against the cold, obsidian wall, as the chosen initiates of the Aethra Academy stood gleaming in their ceremonial whites. They were a constellation of hope and hubris, their faces turned towards the swirling sky beyond the floating island's edge. Today was the Binding. Today, dragons would choose their riders. Today, legends would be born.
She was not one of them. She was a ghost in the machine, a girl with a past as blank as the abyss that cradled their sky-borne home. A foundling, a nobody, tolerated only for the strange, dormant magic that hummed in her veins—a magic the Archmages themselves could not name, a flaw in their perfect tapestry.
"Look at them," a voice hissed near her ear. Kaelen. He moved with a predator's grace, his own white robes, trimmed with the gold of his elite lineage, seeming to repel the very dust of the common ground he stood on. His gaze swept over the initiates with cold assessment. "Lambs waiting for their lions. Or for the slaughter."
Elara said nothing. Silence was her first and best defense against Kaelen, the Academy's most gifted—and most ruthless—protege. His presence was a constant reminder of the chasm between them.
"Nervous, Ghost?" he prodded, a smirk playing on his lips. "Perhaps one of the lesser drakes will mistake your trembling for a mating call. A Scavenger's Wyrm would suit you."
She clenched her fists, the nails biting into her palms. "I'm not an initiate, Kaelen. I'm just here to watch."
"Everyone is here to be watched," he countered, his eyes, the colour of a stormy sky, finally settling on her. "Even the ghosts. Especially the ghosts. The Archmages are curious, you see. What happens when an unmarked variable is introduced to their grand equation?"
Before she could form a retort, a thunderous roar shook the very foundations of the Spire. The great gates of the arena groaned open. The Binding Ceremony had begun.
One by one, the magnificent dragons were led in. A Sun Drake, its scales like molten gold, warmed the air around it. A Storm Dancer, crackling with barely contained lightning, beat its powerful wings, stirring cyclones within the enclosed space. A massive Stonehide, looking less like a living creature and more like a moving mountain, made the floor tremble with each step.
The initiates stood straighter, their eyes wide with a mixture of terror and awe.
Elara watched, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. This was power. This was belonging. A bond with such a creature was a tether to the world, a purpose etched in scale and flame. It was everything she was denied.
The ceremony unfolded in a predictable, brutal rhythm. An initiate would step forward, channeling their magic, offering their will. Sometimes, a dragon would lower its head, a deep thrum of acceptance resonating in the air. More often than not, there was only rejection—a dismissive snort, a turned head, a silent walk back to the ranks of the failed, their faces crumbling into ash.
Then, it was Kaelen's turn.
He didn't just walk; he claimed the arena floor. He didn't offer his magic; he commanded the space with it. The air crackled around him, thick and heavy. He didn't even look at the magnificent Sun Drake being presented to him. Instead, his gaze swept the line of remaining dragons.
His eyes landed on the Tempest—a creature of pure, crackling energy, known for its volatile temper and impossible speed. It was a beast no rider had successfully bonded with in a century.
A murmur rippled through the crowd. The Archmages leaned forward in their tiered seats.
Kaelen simply raised a hand. A coil of wind, sharp enough to cut stone, shot from his fingertips and snapped against the Tempest's snout. Not an attack. A challenge.
The dragon roared, not in pain, but in recognition. It saw an equal in that arrogance. It lowered its head, and a bond of crackling, violent energy snapped into place, visible as a shimmer of power in the air between them. The arena erupted in cheers. Kaelen stood, unmoved, as if he had expected nothing less.
Elara felt a cold knot in her stomach. He was everything the Academy stood for. Power, certainty, control.
As Kaelen left the arena with his new mount, his eyes found Elara's in the shadows for a fleeting second. It wasn't triumph she saw there. It was a warning.
The ceremony dragged on. The line of initiates thinned. The sun began to dip below the floating islands, painting the sky in hues of blood and bronze. Elara felt the familiar ache of disappointment. What had she expected? A miracle? For a dragon to burst from the clouds and claim her, the nameless ghost?
She was about to slip away, to return to the silent solitude of the lower libraries where she belonged, when the air changed.
The warmth from the Sun Drake vanished. The crackle of the Tempest stilled. An unnatural cold swept through the Spire, a cold that stole the breath from their lungs. High above, the swirling clouds of the Aether darkened, turning from soft pink and gold to deep, bruised purple and black.
A shrill, alien cry pierced the silence, a sound of tearing metal and shattered glass. It was a sound that did not belong in their world.
Then, they came.
They poured from the cloud layer like drops of living night, their forms sleek and serpentine. Their scales were not bright and gleaming, but a deep, non-reflective black, like voids in the fabric of the sky. Where the Academy's dragons breathed fire or lightning, these creatures bled a sickly, phosphorescent green mist from their jaws. Their eyes burned with a cold, citrine fire.
Shade Wyrms.
Panic was a living entity, a beast that tore through the arena with claws of pure terror. The word, long spoken only in hushed, fearful legends, became a scream on a hundred lips. "Shade Wyrms! They're extinct! It can't be!"
But they were here. And they were attacking.
Chaos erupted. The noble dragons of the Academy roared in challenge and fury. Riders scrambled to mount them, magic flaring in desperate, uncoordinated bursts. A blast of acidic green mist hit a Stonehide, and the beast bellowed in agony as its stony flesh began to smoke and dissolve.
Elara stood frozen, not in the paralyzing fear of the others, but in a strange, terrifying recognition. The screams, the explosions, the panicked shouts of the riders—it all faded into a dull roar, a distant storm. Her entire being was focused on the lead Wyrm.
It was larger than the others, its form a masterpiece of lethal grace. Its wings, like tattered shadows, beat rhythmically, effortlessly holding it aloft in the center of the maelstrom. It did not shriek or rage. It was silent, a predator assessing its domain.
And its burning citrine eyes were fixed directly on her.
It ignored the spears of light hurled by the Mage-Guard. It ignored the challenge roars of the Sun Drake. It began to descend, its path cutting straight through the battle, unwavering, inevitable.
"Elara, move!" someone shrieked, shoving past her.
But she couldn't. She was rooted to the spot, a moth captivated by a fatal flame. The Wyrm landed before her, the impact cracking the obsidian floor. It was even more terrifying up close. Its scales were like fractured night, each one etched with faint, glowing green runes she somehow knew were ancient. The smell of it—ozone, cold stone, and something old, something deeply and fundamentally other—filled her senses.
The great head, larger than her entire body, lowered. The citrine eyes, slitted like a cat's, were level with her own. She could see her own pale, terrified reflection in them.
This was death. This was the end of her ghostly existence.
But then, a presence brushed against her mind.
It was not a sound, not a word. It was a feeling. Vast. Ancient. A consciousness as deep and cold as the abyssal sea between the floating islands. It was the scent of petrichor on volcanic rock, the sound of wind sculpting mountains over millennia, the taste of a star's birth.
It flooded her, not with violence, but with an impossible, terrifying intimacy. It silenced the world. It silenced her fear.
In the heart of that presence, a single concept formed. It was not a voice that spoke, but a truth that was simply imprinted onto her soul, a truth that shattered the foundation of everything she knew.
"At last."
The concept was followed by another, carrying the weight of epochs, a sense of a search so long it had become part of the very fabric of time. It was a recognition, a homecoming, a claiming.
"My rider."
The world snapped back into brutal, screaming focus. A Mage-Guard lunged, his blade aimed for the Wyrm's exposed neck. "Get away from it, you fool!"
The Wyrm's head snapped up, a warning hiss rumbling in its chest that promised annihilation.
But Elara was no longer looking at the guard. She was staring at the dragon, this creature of shadow and legend. Her heart was no longer pounding in fear, but in something else, something terrifying and exhilarating. Her hand, of its own volition, began to rise.
The ghost was gone. In its place stood a girl, her hand outstretched, not towards a future she understood, but towards a destiny written in shadow and fire. The first chapter of her story had not ended with a whimper, but with a roar that would echo through the floating realms. And it had only just begun.