The hallway was quiet, so quiet that Kael could actually hear the gentle flutter of the torches that lined the stone walls, their flame rumbling uncertainly against the blast of air that gusted in through the open stairs. But what greeted him when he stepped out of his room pushed everything else from his mind.
There, laid out on the frozen floor like a mountain of living glory, lay Valkar.
The dragon's presence was overwhelming. Even reclining half-upright, his massive body was inescapable. Just his height seated upright, without even counting that sinuous tail rising and falling in lazy waves across the ground, glimmering scales visible dimly beneath the faint light, was over two meters. That tail alone seemed endless, uncurling and unwinding with catlike indifference, a living whip that could shatter bone on so slight a motion.
Kael's throat spasmed. He blinked once, twice, and then again.
