CHAPTER I
The Ashen Kingdom
The world of Aeloria was old.
So old that even the mountains remembered when they had been oceans, and the stars still whispered of the first fires that had given them birth. In the eastern reaches of this world lay the Kingdom of Vareth, a land of gray stone, crimson banners, and long shadows cast by ancient towers. It was called by many names: the Shield of the North, the Last Bastion, the Ashen Kingdom. But in the songs of the bards, and in the prayers of the weary, it was known simply as the realm that had not yet fallen.
Winter clung to Vareth like a dying beast that refused to loosen its grip. Snow lay thick upon the high roads, and the wind howled through the valleys with the voice of something that mourned. Fires burned low in hearth and hall, and the people spoke in hushed tones, for rumor had become a darker companion than the cold.
Beyond the Ironspine Mountains, something had awakened.
No one yet knew its true name.
Only that the sky had darkened for three nights in a row, though the moon had been full. Only that shepherds had found their flocks scattered and torn, their blood frozen black upon the snow. Only that old runestones, long silent, had begun to glow faintly in the deep hours before dawn.
And in the capital city of Kharondel, a boy dreamed of fire.
His name was Alaric Thorne.
He was sixteen years of age, tall for his years, with dark hair that fell into his eyes and a thin scar along his left cheek—a souvenir from a childhood brawl with a blacksmith's son who had since grown into a gentle giant. Alaric was no prince, no knight, no scholar of the High Tower. He was the son of a border ranger, born in a stone house near the western walls, and his days were filled with woodcutting, messenger work, and the small labors that kept the great city alive.
Yet his dreams were not the dreams of ordinary boys.
In his sleep, he walked through a burning forest. Trees of silver bark collapsed in showers of embers. The sky bled red. And far away, something vast and winged moved behind the smoke, its eyes like twin suns sinking beneath the horizon.
He always woke before he could see its face.
That morning, Alaric awoke with his heart racing and the taste of ash in his mouth.
The bells of Kharondel were ringing.
Not the slow toll of mourning, nor the bright chime of festival, but the sharp, urgent peal that meant the city was calling its people to arms.
He threw on his cloak and boots and ran into the street.
All around him, doors were opening, and men and women were emerging, faces pale, breath steaming in the cold. From the High Citadel on the hill, banners were being unfurled—scarlet with the black sigil of the crowned hawk. Soldiers in chain and leather were forming ranks, their spears glinting dully beneath the gray sky.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Alaric pushed his way through the crowd toward the western gate, where he saw his father, Edrin Thorne, standing among the rangers. Edrin's hair was streaked with iron-gray, his face weathered by wind and war, his green cloak clasped with the silver leaf that marked him as one of the King's Watch.
"Father!" Alaric called.
Edrin turned, and for a moment relief flickered across his eyes. Then it vanished, replaced by the hard calm of a man who had seen too many dawns begin with blood.
"You should be home," he said. "This is no place for you today."
"What's happening?" Alaric asked. "The bells—"
"The border fort at Graywatch has fallen."
The words struck like a hammer.
Graywatch stood at the mouth of the northern pass, a fortress that had guarded the realm for three centuries. It had never fallen. Not to the Frost Clans. Not to the Shadow Kings of old. Not even during the War of Seven Crowns.
"How?" Alaric whispered.
Edrin shook his head. "No survivors came with a clear tale. Only one rider reached the city. He died before he could speak more than a single word."
"What word?"
Edrin hesitated.
"Dragons."
Alaric felt the cold deepen around his heart.
Dragons were creatures of legend, of burned libraries and half-forgotten songs. They had vanished from the world two hundred years before, driven into extinction—or so the histories claimed—by the combined might of the Five Kingdoms and the last of the High Mages. Their bones lay in museums and mountain caves, their skulls mounted in halls as trophies of a bygone age.
They were not supposed to return.
A horn sounded from the Citadel. Long and low. A summons.
Edrin placed a hand on his son's shoulder. "Go to the High Tower. The Archmage has called for all who can read, who can carry, who can listen. Something ancient is stirring, and the old wards are failing. If what the rider said is true, then this is no longer a border skirmish. This is the beginning of a war that may burn the world."
Alaric wanted to protest. To say he was only a boy. To say he had no place among mages and kings. But the memory of his dream—of fire and wings and falling silver trees—rose before him, and he knew, with a certainty that frightened him, that his path had already begun to bend toward something vast and terrible.
"I'll go," he said.
Edrin nodded once. Then, with the brief, fierce embrace of a man who might not return, he turned and joined the rangers as they marched toward the gate and the darkening north.
Alaric watched them go until the snow swallowed their cloaks.
Then he turned toward the High Tower, unaware that this was the last morning he would ever walk the streets of Kharondel as a simple messenger's son.
High above the city, in chambers carved from crystal and star-stone, the Archmage Elyndor stood before a map older than the kingdom itself. Upon its surface, lines of light were moving—slowly, inexorably—like veins of fire spreading beneath the skin of the world.
"The seals are breaking," Elyndor murmured.
And far beyond the mountains, beneath a sky darkened by wings, something ancient and immortal drew its first free breath in two hundred years.