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DAIN

T he ruins breathe.

It’s a slow thing, more a shift of presence than sound—the tremor of something else moving in the deep, the slow trickle of dust spilling from broken stone. This place is old, but it is not dead.

Something still lingers.

I walk ahead, leading the girl deeper into the remains of my prison, my wounds sealing sluggishly, magic flickering unstable beneath my skin. The unnatural hum of whatever force she carries lingers against me like a whisper, like a brand that should not exist.

It is wrong.

She should not have been able to wake me.

Yet, here she is, trailing close, silent but watching. I can feel her gaze, the way it drags over my back, the hesitation, the uncertainty.

She is afraid of me.

Good.

She should be.

She follows.

The tunnels beneath the ruins are tight, carved with ancient purpose, meant to keep things in, not let them out. Walls of jagged black rock press close, their surfaces slick with some dampness that was never meant for human flesh. I remember this place—not as it is now, but as it was before.

A tomb, yes.

But not just any tomb.

Mine.

A cage built for a king, forged by the hands of those who feared him most.

She steps on loose stone, a quiet scuff against the silence. I stop. She stops.

“Where are we going?” Her voice is hushed, strained. Not weak. Just… unsure.

I don’t answer right away. Instead, I tilt my head, listening.

The air shifts.

Not from us.

Something else is moving, somewhere ahead.

Something big.

I roll my shoulders, flexing stiff wings, feeling the drag of ruined stone along their edges. The pulse beneath my chest stutters. Too slow. Too unnatural. My body is still waking, still finding its place between stone and flesh. The instability sits wrong, coiling in my stomach like spoiled food.

A weakness.

I do not allow weakness.

My gaze flicks back to her, measuring. “You ran when you found this place.”

She frowns. “You were there. Of course I ran.”

“Not from me.”

Her lips press together.

I step closer, watching the flicker of tension ripple through her frame. She doesn’t retreat. “Something else chased you,” I murmur, voice rough.

Her throat works on a swallow, barely visible in the dim light. “I—I didn’t see it. Just heard it. Felt it. Also, who are you? What do I call you? You can call me Liora.”

My claws twitch at my sides. Liora. Good name.

Curiosity will kill her, but I can’t stop myself from answering.

“Dain,” I whisper, staring at her.

“Dain,” she repeats, and something in me almost snaps. It’s as if it’s wrong and right at the same time. Why is that? I frown, disregarding my questions.

Now isn’t the time. We have a more pressing problem.

If she stumbled in here by chance, if her magic had truly been an accident, then why had she been hunted?

Unless…

I exhale, slow, steady. The dark elves would never leave something as valuable as this tomb unguarded.

She shouldn’t have escaped.

She was meant to die.

The realization settles over me like an old, familiar truth.

They fed her to the beast.

She doesn’t realize it yet, doesn’t understand the kind of death that had been meant for her.

But I do. And the beast still lingers.

A new sound crawls through the tunnel, slow, dragging. A deep inhalation of something ancient catching our scent.

The girl hears it too. She stiffens. Eyes go wide.

She is prey again.

I turn away from her, scanning the darkness ahead. My magic stirs, flickering in and out of reach, sluggish and wrong, still too raw from waking. I feel the echo of something more, something vast and furious, but I cannot grasp it.

A growl builds in my chest.

The girl hesitates behind me. “You… You said I used magic.”

I glance at her, irritation flickering through me. “You don’t know what you are?”

A slow shake of her head. “I’ve never practiced. I’ve never been allowed to. It just… happened.”

No. That is not how magic works. Magic is forged, trained, shaped into something precise. It does not simply happen.

Unless—

My eyes narrow.

“It felt like instinct,” she murmurs. “Like something buried—something that was always there.”

Something engraved in her soul.

I go still.

That is not possible.

That is not supposed to be possible.

The beast shifts ahead, a sound like claws dragging over stone, deep and slow, deliberate.

She stiffens, fists curling at her sides. “What is that?”

I don’t answer immediately. I let the question sit, let it sink into her bones, between us where something dark and old slithers into wakefulness.

A sound tears through the cavern.

Not a growl. Not a whisper.

A roar.

It shakes the walls, dislodges dust and debris from the arching ceiling, ripples through the ground itself.

Her breath stumbles.

I exhale through my nose.

“Welcome,” I murmur, voice low, “to the true depths of the tomb.”

She swallows, looking at me. “You know what it is.”

I do.

I remember.

A hunter of the old ways. A thing bred for war, for devouring.

A pet of the dark elves. Some serves the purnas.

A guardian of my prison.

She was never meant to survive.

I flex my claws. This will be fun.

A true, warm welcome for me.