Prologue - Part 1 - The Calm Before.
The old world smelled like honey and iron.
That's what Elara remembered later, when she was old and tired and the memories had softened at the edges. Honey from the gardens that hung in terraces down the mountain's throat, and iron from the forges where the metal-workers sang to their creations. She could still feel it, sometimes, in the space between sleeping and waking—that scent, and the weight of air that had never learned to be afraid.
Lumina rose from the mountain's peak like a prayer made stone. Crystal spires caught the morning light and threw it back in pieces, scattering color across the streets below. The bridges between towers weren't built—they grew, slowly, over decades, guided by mages who understood that some things couldn't be rushed. Waterfalls climbed instead of fell because gravity hadn't yet become a tyrant here. Everything moved the way it was supposed to move, and nobody thought to question it.
On the highest platform, where the wind could cut through even the thickest robes, a young Seer sat with her legs dangling over the edge. Elara was barely a hundred years old—still a child by her people's counting—but she'd already started seeing things that made the elders shift uncomfortably and find excuses to leave rooms.
Today she watched the dragons.
They moved against the sky like thoughts given flesh. A pair of youngsters tumbled through the clouds, snapping at each other's tails, their scales flashing copper and brass in the sun. Higher up, the elders circled with slow patience, watching everything, missing nothing. One of them caught her staring and tilted a massive head in her direction. Even from this distance, Elara felt the weight of that gaze—ancient and curious and utterly unafraid.
She waved.
The dragon blinked, slow and deliberate, then returned to its circling. But Elara could have sworn she felt something brush against her mind—not words, exactly, but a kind of acknowledgment. I see you, little one. I see you seeing.
"Talking to dragons again?"
Elara didn't turn. She knew that voice, rough and warm as a forge fire. "They're more interesting than people."
Kaelen dropped onto the platform beside her, his metal arm clanking against the crystal in a way that made her wince. He'd been born without magic—a rarity, almost a curiosity—but he'd more than made up for it with stubbornness and skill. The arm was his own creation, jointed and clever, powered by nothing but good craftsmanship and sheer will.
"You're going to get yourself in trouble," he said, pulling a strip of dried meat from his pocket and tearing off a bite with his teeth. "The elders don't like it when Seers get too friendly with dragons."
"The elders don't like it when anyone does anything they didn't think of first." Elara pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. The wind tugged at her silver hair, trying to pull it loose from its braid. "Valdris says—"
"Valdris is a dragon."
"He's the Dragon-King."
"And I'm a metal-worker with one good arm and a bad attitude." Kaelen grinned, and the expression crinkled the scars that ran from his temple to his jaw—remnants of a forge accident when he was young and stupid, before he learned to respect fire. "Doesn't make me king of anything."
Elara laughed despite herself. That was the thing about Kaelen—he could find humor in anything, even the end of the world. Not that anyone thought the world was ending. That was just Elara's problem: she saw things that hadn't happened yet, and most of them were terrible.
"Tell me about the arm," she said, because she needed to think about something else. "How does it work?"
Kaelen's eyes lit up. He loved talking about his work. He held up the metal hand, flexing the fingers slowly. Each joint moved with precise, deliberate grace. "See the way the plates overlap? That's for protection and mobility both. The real trick is in the wrist—" He twisted it, demonstrating the range of motion. "Took me three years to get that right. Three years of dropping things and setting things on fire and once, almost drowning in the river when I tried to catch a fish and the whole thing seized up."
"But you fixed it."
"Always fix it. That's the point." He lowered the arm, flexing the fingers into a fist, then relaxing them. "Anything can be fixed if you're stubborn enough."
Elara looked at him—at the scars, the metal, the easy confidence in his eyes—and felt something twist in her chest. She'd seen him before, in visions. Not often, and never clearly, but she'd seen him standing in fire, seen him falling, seen him with his good hand stretched toward something she couldn't quite make out.
"What?" he asked, catching her stare.
"Nothing." She looked away, out toward the dragons. "Just thinking."
"About?"
"If anything can be fixed."
Kaelen was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was softer than she'd ever heard it. "That bad?"
She didn't answer. Couldn't answer. Because the visions were getting worse, and the shadows on the threads of magic were getting darker, and there was a man in the Crystal Palace beneath the mountain who was doing something that made her skin crawl every time she thought about it.
"Come on," Kaelen said, pushing himself to his feet. He offered his hand—his real one, calloused and warm. "Let's go down to the forges. I'll show you something that'll take your mind off... whatever."
Elara took his hand and let him pull her up. "What kind of something?"
"The kind that explodes if you do it wrong."
"That's supposed to make me feel better?"
"It's supposed to make you pay attention. Hard to worry about the future when you're worried about keeping all your eyebrows."
She laughed again, and for a moment, the shadows retreated. For a moment, she was just a girl on a mountain, walking toward fire and friendship and a world that still made sense.
For a moment.
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