The stars fell wrong.The stars fell wrong.
Streaks of light cut across the Frost-season sky, too bright, too fast, cutting against the wind. Torven had been watching the ridge for three hours, cold enough that his breath froze on his scarf, quiet enough to hear snow settling in the pines.
Not anymore. The sky tore open.
Light poured through—white-gold, searing, bright as creation—and sound followed. Something beyond wind or thunder: a cry that split bone.
Torven ran.
The watch house stirred behind him: voices, firelight, the clatter of weapons snatched. His hand found his knife. Iron, not Bone.
Varn emerged from the watch house with his crossbow, torchlight hardening his face.
"What—"
"North. Something fell."
Varn stared at the sky, the light fading, dimming to ember-glow beyond the treeline. And yet sound continued: scraping, dragging, something massive moving through snow.
"Rouse the hunters." Varn's voice pierced the cold. "Wyrms fell. Full party. Bone bolts. Move."
Renn stumbled forward, crossbow clutched wrong in both hands. Fourteen, maybe. His freckled face still soft with youth, no scars yet to prove him. His fingers shook as he tried to load a bolt—iron, not Bone, fumbling with the mechanism.
Varn's hand cracked out, struck Renn's ear.
"Not this time." Varn's voice dropped, firm. "Rear guard. Stay at the back."
Renn's face crumpled. "I can—"
"Next season. When you're ready."
Renn's mouth closed. Torven watched him a moment, then gripped his shoulder and steered him away.
"Eight hunters," Varn called. "Bone bolts. Move."
Eight hunters: all the settlement could spare against wounded dragons. Torven ran with them, crossbow heavy across his back, breath rasping. Whatever had fallen made no effort to hide.
The blood trail started half a mile out: dark streaks in white snow, steaming in the cold, converging.
Torven knelt, touched the nearest stain. Still warm. His fingers came away red-black.
"Dragon blood." Varn's voice tightened. "Fresh."
Sixteen winters since the last dragon kill. And here: steaming in the snow.
They followed the trails north. Pine boughs snapped like kindling, gouges torn in frozen earth. Blood splashed across bark, pooled in footprints, the iron reek thickening with every step.
The trees opened ahead into a clearing where the blood trails converged.
Varn raised his fist. Everyone stopped.
Open ground ahead, no cover, the trails converging at center.
Quiet, tactical: "Spread wide. Three paces. Don't bunch. It charges, you scatter. Make it choose."
They fanned into position. Torven took the left flank, crossbow ready. Varn positioned rear-center.
Breathing: deep, labored, rattling. The sound of something dying. No—two of them. The hair on Torven's neck lifted. The breathing came from two directions, overlapping.
His hands shook as he loaded the crossbow. The Bone bolt was ancient, pale, precious. Probably older than he was. Lighter than iron, smooth where iron was rough; dragon bone didn't corrode. It slid into the groove with a whisper instead of a click.
If he missed—
As they crept forward, the clearing sharpened in the frost-light: open space, snow unmarked except for the blood trails ending in shadow. Massive shapes where the moon didn't reach. No details, just size. Bigger than bears, bigger than anything he'd hunted.
One of the shapes shifted. Moonlight caught on something: a surface too smooth to be fur, too reflective to be hide.
Scales.
"There."
Two dragons lay bleeding out in the snow, massive shapes half-hidden in shadow.
They were close enough to smell: blood mixed with something sharp and clean, like heated metal.
Varn's hand dropped.
Torven raised his crossbow.
Fire erupted from the clearing.
"Scatter!"
White-gold flame—sudden, blinding—tore through darkness. Torven threw himself sideways. Heat seared past his face, close enough to singe hair. Someone screamed. The smell hit: charred leather, scorched earth.
Torven pressed into snow, heart slamming against ribs. Around him, breathing, scattered wide. Varn's command echoed.
The fire cut off. Darkness rushed back. His vision swam with afterimages dancing across black.
Breathing still there, but ragged now, weaker.
A second burst flared, smaller and sporadic, dying out.
Movement in his peripheral vision: Renn.
Torven's breath stopped. The boy had edged forward. Disobeyed Varn's direct order, crept through darkness toward the clearing when he should've stayed back. Now crouched behind a fallen log, crossbow raised, rigid with prey-stillness.
Too close.
If Varn saw him—
The fire sputtered once, twice.
The shapes in the clearing heaved, still moving, still alive despite everything.
Renn stood transfixed. Torven's stomach dropped.
When the third burst came, fire sprayed wide, weaker but wild, straight toward Renn.
Torven lunged before thought caught up.
He hit Renn from the side, drove them both down. Fire roared overhead—close, so close the heat seared past his face. His cloak caught. Flames on his arms. Through leather, through wool, straight to skin. Burning.
He rolled, smothered the flames in snow. The pain caught up, bright and sharp, the smell of his own flesh burning.
Renn scrambled back, gasping. "You—"
"Stay down!" Torven's voice came out strangled.
The fire stopped.
Just wind and the crackling of burning brush.
Varn stood behind a boulder twenty paces back, crossbow ready, scanning the clearing. The captain's eyes flew wide, then narrowed as Renn scrambled to his feet, unhurt but shaking.
"You—" Varn's voice strangled. "You followed. I ordered—"
"Captain." Grey-beard's voice cut through. "The clearing."
Light. It was faint but growing, gold-white, rising from the center like heat shimmer. Everyone turned.
Torven forced himself to his knees, cradling burned arms against his chest. The skin pulled tight, blisters rising, each movement white-hot.
The clearing ahead lay silent.
Varn pushed off the boulder. "Check it." Voice rough. "Carefully."
Torven's arms burned, raw and blistered, but that was a problem for after.
He limped forward, crossbow ready despite the pain. Ferne followed, then two others. Varn remained in position, covering their approach.
The clearing opened before them.
Dark pools steamed, plumes rising into freezing air. Heat hit Torven's face, blood-hot, wet. Metal coated his tongue. The moisture clung to his skin, his beard. Copper and iron, thick enough to coat his throat. Sweat prickled under his cloak despite the frost. The air hung humid and wrong, blood evaporating around them in slow clouds.
Gouges scored the frozen earth where something massive had dragged itself, scorched patches marked where dragon fire had erupted. The blood trails led to the clearing's center, then just... stopped.
No dragons.
The air lay still and heavy. The breathing had stopped.
His boots squelched through red-black slush, following the trails to where they ended.
"Nothing." Ferne scanned the treeline. "No tracks leading out. No wing marks. No bodies." She stared at the blood. "They were here—all this blood proves it—and now they're gone."
The others searched the treeline, found only empty snow.
"Dragons don't just vanish," someone muttered. "Not with this much blood."
The hunters shifted, eyes on the treeline, on their boots, anywhere but the center.
Then—light.
Faint at the clearing's center: soft gold, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Torven stepped toward it. Warmth rose from the ground like a banked fire. Impossible when breath froze in the air. The glow brightened as he approached.
He stopped at the edge of a perfect circle.
Melted snow. Steam rising from wet ground. And at the center—
An infant.
Naked in the snow, skin pink where it should be blue and dead. Light pulsed from him—chest, fingertips—pushing back the cold. Blood surrounded the circle in dark pools, but none crossed the boundary. Something kept it away.
Torven eased down. Wet earth yielded under his knees where there should be frozen ground. He reached out despite the pain lancing up his arm. His hand passed through the light. Heat against his palm: real, present, almost soothing against the burns.
The baby breathed slow and steady, eyes closed. Silent.
The warmth wrapped around him. His burned arms stopped screaming, not healed but quieted. The baby's eyes opened, amber-gold, looked at him, and closed.
Behind him, boots crunching in snow. The hunters gathering at the circle's edge. No one spoke. Just stared at the impossible thing: a baby glowing in melted snow where dragons had been.
The light ebbed, retreating from fingertips toward his chest with each breath. The warmth remained.
Varn stood at the boundary, face ash-pale. "Ash and bone." He kept his distance, crossbow half-raised. He hadn't come closer. None of them had, except Torven.
"A baby." Varn's voice cut through the silence. "Where the dragons were."
The infant's face was peaceful. The warmth remained.
"Leave it."
Torven's voice came quiet. "Bring it back. Let the Council decide."
"We hunt dragons." Varn still hadn't turned. "Not strays."
"No dragons to hunt."
"Then we report. Council decides." His hand gestured toward the trees, toward home. "Not us."
"It'll die." Ferne's voice stayed low. "Minutes in this cold."
"Good." Varn turned away.
Ferne's face stilled. Warmth spread from the baby through the circle.
"You didn't say 'good' when the fire came."
The words came out rougher than he'd intended. Pain made everything sharp.
Varn turned back. Slowly. "What?"
Behind him, the baby lay in fading light. "Renn stood in the open. You called scatter from twenty paces back."
The hunters drew back. Some stepped away. Others didn't.
Varn's spine straightened. "Command position. Protocol."
"While a boy burned."
"The boy disobeyed—I ordered him back—"
"He's fourteen. You're the captain." The baby, small and fragile, still breathing, the light almost gone now. "I pulled him out. You watched."
Ferne's eyes widened. The other hunters shuffled, wouldn't meet his eyes.
Varn's hand tightened on his crossbow. "For a baby? You'd trade dragons for a baby?"
"Better than nothing."
Varn's eyes swept the other hunters. Stopped on Ferne. On Grey-beard. On the others shifting, looking away.
"Defying orders." Varn's voice stayed level. "In front of the party."
"It's a child."
Words died. Only the baby's breath, soft and steady, as the light faded to nothing.
Varn's eyes never left Torven's face. When he spoke, each word came out like breaking ice. "Your choice. Your burden."
"Everyone hears what happened. All of it."
He looked at the other hunters when he said it.
"We leave. Now."
Torven knelt. His cloak, singed and smoke-stained, would have to do. He wrapped the infant carefully, using his fingertips to avoid letting the raw burns touch fabric. Calloused hands clumsy against soft skin.
He gathered the bundle against his chest, tucking it close, using his arms as little as possible, just enough to keep the baby from slipping. The baby settled there, light, fragile, like banked coals through the fabric. The warmth seeped into his burns, not healing them but quieting the scream.
For Moira.
He straightened, unsteady but upright. Around him: curious faces, wary stances, eyes flicking away.
Ferne stepped closer. Held out a water skin. "It's a long walk."
Torven transferred the baby's weight to one forearm, biting back the pain, and reached for it with his free hand. The leather strap bit into raw flesh. Their eyes met. She opened her mouth—closed it. Nodded once instead.
Grey-beard adjusted his pack, pulled out a worn blanket. He stepped forward, tucked it carefully around the baby without making Torven adjust his grip. Fingers lingered on the fabric for a heartbeat, almost saying something. Then he pulled back, wouldn't meet Torven's eyes, stepped away, putting distance between them.
Ferne stayed where she was. Water skin already given. She leaned forward half a step, then back. But she didn't come closer. Didn't say anything.
Varn's jaw tightened. "Move out." His voice cut sharp. "Nothing more here. Now."
No one moved immediately.
The cold pressed in. Hunters looking at boots, at the trees, anywhere but at Varn or Torven.
Grey-beard stood longest. His eyes moved from the baby to Torven's burned arms to Varn's retreating back. His mouth opened, almost saying something.
Then closed.
He turned. Fell in behind Varn.
The others followed. One by one. Slow. Renn among them, eyes down.
Ferne followed last.
Varn led them away. Still captain. The hunters fell in behind, farther back than before, quiet.
Torven stood at the clearing's edge, the bundle against his chest. Behind him: blood blackening in snow, scorch marks from dragon fire, the melted circle where he'd found this child. The bodies gone. Just questions no one could answer.
His arms throbbed, would scar, but the baby was warm. Alive.
Above, the stars had stopped falling, and Torven carried his proof home.