He didn't remember falling asleep.
There was no clean break between pain and dreaming. The fever simply thickened until the world around him became too heavy to hold.
Jason became aware of standing.
Not in the forest.
Not in the rain.
The ground beneath his feet was hard and smooth, but not stone. It felt endless. No texture. No edges. Just a flat expanse stretching into black.
He turned slowly.
There were no trees.
No walls.
No sky.
Above him was darkness, but not empty darkness. It moved.
Clouds, he thought at first. Massive shapes drifting across an unseen horizon.
Then one of them shifted differently.
Not drifting.
Coiling.
Jason swallowed. The sound of it seemed too loud in the stillness.
His body felt lighter here. The ache in his ribs was gone. The fever heat did not burn his skin. But the warmth inside his chest remained. That slow second rhythm.
Thud.
The sound did not echo.
It was swallowed.
He took a cautious step forward.
The ground did not change.
No footprints. No sound.
He looked up again.
The clouds were not clouds.
They were scale upon scale, overlapping, curving along something vast enough that he could not see its end. The shape disappeared into the dark in every direction.
His breath shortened.
He tried to measure it.
Failed.
There was no frame of reference. No mountain, no tower, nothing to compare it to. It was simply there. Larger than anything his mind could hold.
A ripple moved across the darkness above.
The second heartbeat in his chest answered.
Thud.
The ground beneath him vibrated faintly.
He didn't feel small.
That was the strange part.
He should have.
Instead, he felt… noticed.
The darkness shifted again.
A ridge of something cut through it, descending slowly.
Jason's legs wanted to step back.
They didn't.
He couldn't tell if he was frozen or simply unwilling to move.
The shape lowered further.
An outline began to form.
A head.
Massive.
Angular.
Horns curved backward, disappearing into shadow. Scales layered thick along its length, each one large enough to crush him flat if it fell.
He couldn't see the whole of it.
Only part.
Only enough.
The head stopped above him.
Not close enough to touch.
Close enough to crush.
The air around him grew heavy.
His ears rang softly.
A single eye opened.
Vertical pupil.
Golden iris ringed with something that glowed without light.
It did not blink.
It looked at him.
Jason's breath left him in a slow, unsteady exhale.
He wanted to kneel.
The urge rose without thought, like instinct older than memory.
He fought it.
His knees trembled but did not bend.
The eye narrowed slightly.
The second heartbeat in his chest deepened.
Thud.
The sound rolled outward.
The darkness seemed to ripple in response.
He opened his mouth, not knowing what he meant to say.
Nothing came.
The creature did not speak.
It did not roar.
But something pressed against him.
Not sound.
Pressure.
A vibration that moved through bone and marrow, through thought itself.
It felt like standing too close to thunder before it breaks.
Jason flinched as the pressure intensified.
His vision blurred at the edges.
Images flickered at the edge of awareness.
Fire.
Wings unfurling against a burning sky.
Chains biting into scaled flesh.
A battlefield below, too small to matter.
He gasped.
The images snapped away.
The eye remained.
Watching.
Judging.
Or maybe not judging at all.
He couldn't tell.
The pressure shifted.
Not outward.
Inward.
Something brushed against his mind.
Not words.
Not yet.
Just presence.
He felt something test him.
Like teeth pressing lightly against bone to measure strength.
He should have been afraid.
He was.
But beneath the fear there was something else.
Recognition.
The warmth in his chest flared.
The second heartbeat synchronized with a distant, deeper pulse somewhere in the darkness above.
Thud.
Thud.
For a brief moment, they were the same.
The eye narrowed.
The pressure increased sharply.
Jason cried out.
The sound did not echo.
The ground beneath him cracked.
Thin lines spread outward from his feet, glowing faintly with heat.
The darkness above shifted violently.
The massive shape recoiled slightly.
Not in pain.
In surprise.
The pressure against his mind surged again, stronger this time.
Fragments slammed into him.
Prey.
Flame.
Sky.
Blood.
The words were not spoken.
They were impressions. Concepts too large to fit inside a single thought.
He clutched his head, staggering.
"I don't understand," he forced out.
The eye lowered closer.
So close now that he could see faint scars across the scales surrounding it. Lines that looked almost like… bindings.
Chains.
The image flickered again.
Metal biting into flesh.
A roar without sound.
The pressure inside his skull peaked.
Then, suddenly—
It stopped.
The eye remained.
The darkness stilled.
Jason dropped to one knee without meaning to this time. Not from submission. From the sudden absence of force.
His breathing came ragged and uneven.
The warmth in his chest pulsed once more.
Slower now.
The creature did not move.
The silence stretched.
Then, deep in his bones, he felt it.
Not a roar.
Not even a vibration.
Something softer.
Almost restrained.
The faintest brush of intent.
The impression of a single broken fragment pushing through the vastness.
"…not…"
The soundless word struck him harder than any blow.
His head snapped up.
The eye held him in place.
The fragment lingered.
Incomplete.
Unfinished.
Jason tried to reach toward it, not with his hands but with whatever part of him had felt it.
"Not what?" he whispered.
The darkness shifted again.
Not violently this time.
Slow.
Measured.
The eye began to close.
Panic spiked in his chest unexpectedly.
"Wait," he said.
He didn't know why.
He didn't know what he was asking for.
The eye narrowed to a slit.
The second heartbeat faltered.
Thud.
Silence.
The ground beneath him gave way.
Cracks spread outward rapidly.
Heat flared up through his legs.
He fell.
The darkness rushed upward to swallow him whole.
He opened his mouth to scream and woke choking on air.
The forest snapped back into place.
Cold morning light filtered weakly through the branches. The rain had stopped. Everything felt too quiet.
Jason lay on his side, breath tearing in and out of his chest. For a few seconds he couldn't tell where the dream ended and the world began. The weight of that eye still pressed against his thoughts.
He reached for the warmth instinctively.
His arms closed around nothing.
He froze.
The ground beneath him was empty. Damp leaves. Mud. No dark mass. No rounded shape.
He pushed himself up too fast and nearly fell again.
"No…" he whispered.
He searched the ground around him, brushing aside leaves with shaking hands. There was no mark. No indentation. Nothing to show it had ever been there.
As if he had imagined it.
But when he pressed his palm to his chest
Thud.
Slow.
Deep.
Not imagined.
His breath caught.
It hadn't disappeared.
It had moved.
Inside.
He staggered to his feet, pulse racing. The forest felt sharper now. Every drip of water too loud. Every shifting leaf too clear.
"…not," he murmured.
The broken fragment lingered in his mind.
A branch snapped.
Close.
Jason's head turned slowly toward the sound.
Between the trees ahead, something moved.
Low.
Silent.
Then he saw them.
Two yellow eyes, unblinking, fixed on him from the underbrush.
They did not look away.
And they did not hesitate.