Page 157 of The First Scar
I looked at the horizon.
More of them. Endless lines of black banners cresting the ridge, blotting out the sky. Reinforcements. Fresh soldiers to replace the ones we'd already bled for.
We hadn't won anything. We'd just chosen the spot where we were going to die.
This is it, I thought.This is how it ends. Not with healing. Not with hope. Just blood and mud and—
I tilted my head, inhaled. That smell again. Sulfur and char.
Then the ground started to shake. Rock was falling loose all around us. A deep vibration humming up through the stone, up my spine…not the veil…
I whipped my head toward Dreadscale.
He caught my eye. Andgrinned.
Then the air vanished—sucked out of the basin in one massive, violent inhale, like a tornado, towards a mass of dark clouds above us.
The pressure dropped so fast my ears popped.
Dust, ash, and loose stones flying up towards the roiling black clouds directly above us. I gasped and my lungs burned in the sudden vacuum. Everyone was fighting for air, fighting for breath. My hair whipped straight up, pulling at the scalp. A pause. In the eye of the storm. Absolute silence. Absolute stillness. Then the suction broke—air punching back into the basin in a single, violent detonation.
A sonic BOOM shook the earth. A ROAR split the air. And a massive fucking DRAGON slammed into the middle of the battlefield.Wind my ass.
The impact took my legs out from under me. I hit the basalt ass-first. My ears went dead—just a high, white whine where sound used to be. Dust and gravel peppered my face. I got my hands under me, pushed up, blinked grit from my eyes.
And saw it.
It wasn't a beast. It was a mountain range that had decided to wake up and choose violence.
Scales the color of a starless night, each one the size of a shield, absorbing the sick light of the Rupture and giving nothing back. Wings that didn't just span the basin—they eclipsed it. One talon, enormous and hooked like a scythe, crushed a boulder into gravel just inches from where the King’s vanguard stood frozen.
Steam hissed from nostrils wide as caverns. The ground beneath it groaned, the rock actually buckled under the sheer, impossible weight of the thing.
For a heartbeat, no one moved. Not the Enforcers. Not the rebels. Even the Hounds had gone still, their hackles raised, whining deep in their throats. They were predators, yes. But this?
This was a god.
Dreadscale was already moving.
He sprinted toward the beast, a blur of dark leather and intent. The dragon lowered its giant head, gold-flecked eyes narrowing as they locked onto him. It didn't snap. It lowered a wing, the joint creating a ramp of bone and scale.
Dreadscale vaulted.
He gripped the spiked ridge along the dragon’s neck, swung himself up, and locked his legs behind the massive crest of horns.
His tattoos ignited.
A searing white resonance that traced every line of ink on his body and matched the sudden, thrumming glow in the dragon’s body.
Soul-bound.
The King’s voice cracked the silence. "Open fire! Bring it down!"
The spell broke. Hundreds of archers drew. Hundreds of bolts of void-iron and ash-wood screamed into the sky, a black cloud arcing toward the beast.
Dreadscale smiled again, relaxed in his perch atop his dragon throne.
The dragon’s jaw unhinged. A furnace door opening. There was no intake of breath. No warning. Just a column of fire—not orange, not red, but a blinding, violet-white plasma.
