Dragons did not observe the world the way mortals did.
They did not look down.
They looked through.
Above the highest clouds, beyond weather and navigation, there existed a layer of the sky that no human chart recorded. Pressure there did not behave like air. It carried memory—of storms long passed, of wings that had torn through it, of treaties written not in ink but in survival.
That was where the dragons remained.
They were not asleep.
They were listening.
A vast shape shifted within the upper currents, scales catching no light, only bending it. When the eldest dragon stirred, the sky adjusted subtly, redistributing stress it had carried for decades without realizing it.
"The flow is inconsistent," the eldest said.
Its voice did not travel as sound. It impressed itself directly upon the surrounding pressure, a statement the sky itself acknowledged.
Another presence responded, slower, heavier. "Seasonal variance?"
"No."
A pause followed, long by mortal standards, brief by theirs.
"This is allowance," the eldest continued. "Not force. Not collapse."
Younger dragons adjusted their positions, coils shifting through invisible thermals. They felt it now—flight paths subtly altered, lift granted where none had existed before, resistance easing without explanation.
Wind was behaving incorrectly.
"It does not assert dominance," one of the younger ones said. "It yields first."
That unsettled them.
Dragons flew because the world permitted it. That permission had always been earned through weight, age, and presence. To be offered passage without demand suggested something fundamental had changed.
"Once," the eldest said, "wind behaved this way."
Silence followed.
They all remembered.
Not clearly. The memory had been dulled, edited, deliberately softened. But the impression remained—a time when the sky did not resist sovereignty, because it recognized it.
"That era ended," another dragon said carefully.
"Erased," the eldest corrected. "Not ended."
Below them, the sky over Malan misaligned by a fraction. Nothing visible. Nothing dramatic. But the great atmospheric cycles—those dragons had memorized across centuries—shifted their centers.
The world was compensating.
"Is this the Covenant's doing?" a younger dragon asked.
"No," the eldest replied. "The Covenant tightens. This loosens."
They turned their attention downward, not to a single location, but to a path. A series of movements where the land accepted passage too easily, where obstruction failed without being challenged.
A human.
Not powerful.
Not loud.
Persistent.
"Should we descend?" one asked.
The eldest dragon considered this carefully.
"No," it said at last. "Not yet."
Dragons did not fear confrontation. They feared misjudgment. To act too early would reveal concern—and concern invited escalation.
"We observe," the eldest continued. "If the sky learns to remember him fully…"
A low rumble passed through the currents.
"…then we decide whether we are witnesses—or participants."
Far below, Vale paused briefly, sensing a weight far above him—not oppressive, not hostile.
Curious.
He did not look up.
Some attention, he had learned, was best acknowledged only by continuing forward.
Above, the dragons watched the sky adjust itself around a presence it no longer resisted.
And for the first time in generations, they prepared—not for war, not for flight—
But for a world that might soon renegotiate who was allowed to rule the air.