The sigil had never pulsed this violently before.
Lioren felt it before he heard the murmurs rising through Emberis.
He was halfway down the marble steps of the Vault when the heat in his palm surged—sharp, insistent, almost impatient. The linen wrapping had grown warm against his skin, the fabric faintly damp from where the sigil's heat pressed outward.
He paused at the landing.
The air felt different.
Not hotter.
Heavier.
The sky beyond the tall windows lining the eastern corridor had taken on a strange tint—not quite storm-dark, not quite dusk. It was mid-afternoon. The light should have been steady.
Instead, it wavered.
A ripple passed across the windowpane.
Not wind.
Not cloud.
A distortion.
Lioren's breath caught.
The sigil flared again, brighter than before, pain threading up through his wrist and into his chest.
Below, in the city streets, voices rose.
Shouting.
He moved toward the nearest window and pushed it open just enough to lean out.
People had stopped in the square.
Merchants stood beside abandoned carts. A child pointed upward, crying. Even the imperial guards stationed at the fountain had lifted their gazes toward the sky.
Lioren followed their line of sight.
For a heartbeat, he saw nothing.
Then—
The air bent.
Not visibly shaped, not winged, not solid—but the clouds above Emberis warped as though something immense passed behind them. Light fractured around an unseen edge. Heat shimmered where there should have been only open sky.
The sigil burned so fiercely he gasped and staggered back from the window.
This was not rumor.
Not distortion of imagination.
Something was moving across the heavens.
And it was not contained to Drakefall Ridge anymore.
Footsteps thundered along the corridor behind him.
"Close the shutters!" a senior scribe barked. "Seal the windows!"
Lioren did not move.
The sigil pulsed again.
Not in warning.
In recognition.
The pressure in the air intensified—not crushing, not violent, but deliberate. As though the city itself had drawn a breath and forgotten how to release it.
He closed the window slowly.
Inside the Vault, scholars were gathering in uneasy clusters. Halvric stood near the central archway, speaking in hushed tones with two Intelligence officers.
Istraen Korr stood slightly apart from them, gaze fixed upward through the skylight.
His eyes flicked toward Lioren.
For a moment, neither moved.
Then Istraen crossed the marble floor with measured steps.
"You feel it," he said quietly.
Lioren did not answer.
The sigil flared.
"Yes," Istraen murmured. "You do."
Another ripple crossed the sky.
The oil lamps mounted along the corridor flickered, though no wind touched them.
"What is it?" one of the junior archivists whispered.
Halvric did not respond.
A distant rumble rolled across the city—not thunder. Not cannon.
Stone trembled faintly beneath Lioren's boots.
The sigil burned brighter.
The heat was no longer confined to his palm. It crawled up his arm, across his shoulder, settling behind his sternum in a molten weight that stole his breath.
He pressed his wrapped hand against the center of his chest.
It felt like being pulled.
Not downward.
Outward.
Toward something beyond the walls of Emberis.
"Seal the restricted levels," Halvric ordered sharply. "No one descends without authorization."
Lioren's pulse quickened.
The fragment.
It remained hidden within the inner fold of his robe.
He turned instinctively toward the stairwell leading back down.
The sigil flared violently.
Pain shot through him.
He froze.
The pull shifted.
Not downward.
West.
Toward the edge of the city.
Toward the gates that faced the distant ridges beyond.
He did not realize he had taken a step in that direction until Istraen's hand closed lightly around his forearm.
"Stay where you are," the Intelligence officer said.
The contact was steady—not forceful, but firm enough to halt him.
The sigil reacted to the touch.
Heat flared beneath the linen.
Istraen's gaze dropped to Lioren's wrapped hand.
"Remove it," he said softly.
"No," Lioren replied, sharper than he intended.
Around them, scholars whispered anxiously. The tremor beneath the floor grew slightly stronger, then stilled.
Outside, a collective gasp rose from the square.
Lioren turned toward the window again.
The distortion had lowered.
It no longer shimmered high among the clouds.
It descended.
The sky above Emberis seemed to part—not visibly, but perceptibly—as though something vast displaced the air itself.
A shadow passed across the marble floor of the Vault.
No wings.
No shape.
Only absence of light.
The sigil burned so fiercely that Lioren nearly dropped to one knee.
He caught himself against the edge of a column.
His breath came short.
The pull intensified.
Closer.
Closer.
"Evacuate the square!" a guard shouted from below.
Imperial horns sounded in the distance.
Not alarm.
Defense.
The city gates groaned faintly as mechanisms shifted.
And then—
The pressure vanished.
Not dissipated.
Redirected.
Lioren staggered forward as the pull snapped sharply toward the western colonnade of the Vault.
Toward the open courtyard.
He did not remember crossing the marble floor.
He only remembered the heat in his palm and the sudden clarity of knowing.
It was here.
Not overhead.
Here.
He stepped through the archway into the courtyard.
The air outside felt charged—metallic, sharp on the tongue.
The fountain at the center of the courtyard had gone still.
No wind disturbed the water.
No birds called from the eaves.
Every sound had been swallowed.
He felt it before he saw him.
The gravity of presence.
Not the distortion in the sky.
Not a ripple in air.
But weight.
A consciousness that pressed against his senses like a hand against glass.
He lifted his gaze.
At the far end of the courtyard, near the western gate that opened toward the descending roads beyond the city walls, a figure stood.
Still.
Dark against the pale stone.
Tall.
Broad-shouldered.
The long coat he wore moved faintly at the hem despite the absence of wind, as though the air curved around him differently than it did around others.
His hair fell past his shoulders in loose dark strands that caught the fading light with ember undertones.
And his eyes—
Even at a distance, Lioren could see them.
Gold-amber.
Luminous.
Watching.
The sigil in Lioren's palm flared bright enough to burn through the linen.
The fabric began to smoke faintly.
He did not notice.
He could not look away.
The figure did not move.
He did not need to.
Every inch of the courtyard felt claimed by his presence.
Not violently.
Not destructively.
But undeniably.
Around Lioren, others had begun to gather at the edges of the archway—guards, scholars, Intelligence officers.
No one spoke.
No one rushed forward.
Something in the air warned against sudden motion.
Istraen stepped up beside Lioren.
"Identify yourself," he called across the courtyard.
His voice remained steady.
The figure's gaze did not leave Lioren.
The silence stretched.
Then—
A single step forward.
The sound of his boot striking stone echoed louder than it should have.
The air seemed to compress with the movement.
Another step.
Measured.
Controlled.
Not approaching the guards.
Approaching Lioren.
The sigil's heat shifted from pain to something else.
Recognition.
He felt it in his bones.
This was what it had been answering.
The figure stopped several paces away.
Close enough now that Lioren could see the sharp cut of his jaw, the faint trace of something beneath the skin at his collarbone—an almost imperceptible glimmer, like scales hidden under flesh.
Not visible.
Not fully.
But there.
The gold-amber eyes regarded him with unsettling focus.
Not confusion.
Not curiosity.
Assessment.
"You crossed into Imperial territory," Istraen said, voice harder now.
The figure's gaze flicked toward him briefly.
The effect was immediate.
The temperature in the courtyard rose by several degrees.
Not flame.
Heat.
Contained.
The guards shifted uneasily.
The figure spoke.
His voice was deep—not loud, not raised—but it carried effortlessly across the courtyard.
"I did not cross."
The words were precise.
Measured.
"Your territory moved."
A murmur rippled among the onlookers.
Istraen's expression did not falter.
"You stand within Emberis."
The figure's gaze returned to Lioren.
"And he stands bound."
The sigil exploded in light.
The linen wrap blackened, burning away in an instant.
Gasps erupted around them.
The mark on Lioren's palm shone crimson-gold, the intricate lines blazing beneath his skin.
He staggered forward involuntarily.
Not pushed.
Drawn.
The figure's eyes narrowed slightly.
The heat in the courtyard intensified—but still controlled, still restrained.
"You were not meant to awaken it," the figure said quietly.
His voice was no longer directed at Istraen.
Only at Lioren.
The words struck like a blade.
"I—" Lioren began, but his voice faltered.
The sigil pulsed in answer to the figure's presence, not with pain but with alignment, as though two separate rhythms had finally synchronized.
The world beyond the courtyard blurred slightly at the edges of his vision.
All that remained sharp was the man before him.
"You carry what was sealed," the figure said.
Not accusation.
Statement.
Lioren's breath came shallow.
"I did not seek it," he managed.
The gold-amber eyes searched his face.
For a long moment, the only sound in the courtyard was the faint hiss of heat against stone.
Then—
A subtle shift.
The figure inclined his head slightly—not in deference, but in acknowledgment.
"The bond should not have chosen you," he said.
The sigil flared brighter still.
And for the first time, Lioren understood with terrible clarity—
It had not been random.
It had not been accident.
It had been selection.
Around them, the city of Emberis held its breath.
And the dragon sovereign stood within its walls.