Dawn had barely broken over the transformed ruins of Paris when the news struck the draconic palace like a thunderbolt. In the black marble corridors, servants stopped dead in their tracks, parchments slipping from their trembling hands. Guards exchanged worried glances, their scales quivering with palpable tension.
An entire barracks. Vaporized.
Not just destroyed - that, they would have understood. Slave revolts, escape attempts, accidental collapses, all of that was part of the brutal daily routine of their empire. But this time, it was different. Terrifyingly different.
No cry had torn through the night. No sound of struggle, no crash of stone or metal. Just silence. A silence so perfect it became deafening. And in the morning, where the barracks housing sixty-three human slaves had stood, there remained only emptiness. Not even foundations. As if the place had never existed.
