Page 68 of The Last Dragon (The Great Burn Chronicles #1)

T he cave is shrouded in darkness, our makeshift torches the only source of light.

Wind slips through cracks in the stone, whistling low, carrying a faint stench of rotting meat.

Nida presses her shoulder to mine as we move deeper.

The only sounds are our footsteps and the soft crumble of dirt falling from above.

Water drips in the distance, and the wind shifts loose rocks across the ground.

Every sound keeps me on edge.I trace my finger over the red markings on the cold stone left by the soldiers who previously explored it. I smudge it. The markings are recent.

This is a good place to lay low.

“This cave is cleared,” I say, waving the torch from one side of the wall to another. “Nobody’s going to check for a while.” I kneel, brushing the dusty path with my fingertips.

“There’s an opening,” Nida whispers. She peers through a curtain of twisted branches clinging to the cave wall. She tugs at them, snapping a few with sharp cracks, until a narrow passage opens—just wide enough for us to slip through.

She glances back, brushing hair clinging to her face with the back of her hand. “Think anyone’s been here?”

I shake my head. “I doubt it.”

Gripping the thicker branches, I snap them aside, and a rush of warm air brushes against my face. I lean into the narrow gap, stone scraping my chest as I push through. Nida soon follows.

The rocks beneath my boots are sharp, forcing each step to be slow and deliberate. The air is tight, the space tighter, but with every stride, the passage widens, the weight on my ribs easing. I can breathe again.

We emerge into a vast, breath-stealing cavern.

“Divines,” Nida whispers, scanning the area. I slowly spin with my torch in hand, illuminating each crack and crevice in the uneven stone. I stop—my fear clawing at my chest.

Claw marks.

There’s claw marks on these walls. Everywhere. And they’re recent.

I move toward the claw marks that rake their way up the wall like a warning. My pulse quickens, and the skin on my arms prickles as if a cold wind passes over me. I glance back at Nida, jerking my chin in the opposite direction.

“We should split.” I keep my voice low. “No more than ten steps apart.”

She nods. “Be on guard.”

We separate, our footsteps soft against the stone. Quiet. We need to know if the dragon’s here.

I follow the wall, eyes locked on the claw marks etched into the stone.

I trace the depth of each gouge, the length of every strike.

It’s unlike anything I’ve seen—yet the pattern is familiar.

Recognizable . It’s like the Redsnout at the crag.

I draw in a sharp breath. My mind starts to race, calculating, questioning.

How fresh are these marks? And how can a dragon fit in this place?

There’s no opening large enough to go this deep.

“Zel!” My name bounces through the cave, Nida’s voice laced with panic. I turn. She’s by another wall, her torchlight casting long, flickering shadows. I rush to her side. The light spills across the stone, and my breath catches, skin prickling once more.

Bones. Sharp edges jut out from the wall like teeth—twisted, jagged things, half-embedded in the rock. I stare, trying to decide if they’re fossilized remains or just cruel tricks of the stone. But my gut already knows. My stomach drops.

“What is that thing?” she says, clutching her torch.

“That’s—” I stutter, my tongue twisting in my mouth. I find no words to say. No words I dare to say.

“A Stonetail?” Nida’s voice trembles. “But it’s— larger .” She quickly takes out a wrinkled, bloodied piece of paper from her side pocket—notes she’s taken during Marina Fay’s dragon anatomy class. She scans the wall from top to bottom.

“Nothing in my notes says anything about this type of anatomy,” she says. “But… I have a theory.” She shakes her head, brow furrowed, eyes scanning every scribbled line like she’s hoping something new might appear.

I wait.

“It doesn’t fully match any Stonetail structure. Not the rib curvature, not the density of the bone. And these” —she points to one of the rough, blade-like protrusions— “they’re too long to be dorsal spikes, so nothing to do with a Horntongue. And they grow from the wrong angle.”

“So?” I press.

Nida hesitates, then finally looks up. “What if we’re not looking at a dragon we know of?”

My breath stills.

“What if we’re looking at something entirely new?”

The torchlight flickers as a draft whistles through the cave.

“I need you to go to the end of that wall and see what you can find. Then we meet up and report our findings,” she says, pointing at the end of the cavern.

I trace the spine of the beast as I move, trying to figure out where it begins and where it ends.

But this creature is far larger than anything I’ve seen up close.

Not even a Redsnout reaches this size. It’s massive—I have to crane my neck just to glimpse the shadow of its wings, but the torchlight doesn’t reach that far.

Eventually, I reach the end of the spine and pause. A split runs through the tailbone just meters from the tip. It forks into two, creating the illusion of twin tails.

“Zel,” Nida calls again.

I turn and make my way back to her. It takes longer than I expected.

“Look at this.” She traces her fingers over the notes, a rough sketch of what’s in front of us.

“The anatomy aligns well with what a Stonetail looks like, but these here—” She waves her hands near the skull.

“You see this? Two large fangs on each side of the upper jaw. It has four fangs in total. The bone structure is” —she blows air from her mouth— “it has more bones compared to a regular Stonetail.”

I take a look at Nida’s notes, comparing the anatomy pictures with my own visual recollections of a Stonetail.

“Even the wingspan is larger,” I say. “Take a look at this.” I point at the end of the Stonetail’s abdomen, brushing my finger across its thick tail.

“The tail is shorter on a Stonetail, but this is longer, and it has a split at the end. Looks like two tails.” We pause for a moment, staring at the creature embedded in the walls with no idea what it is.

“Anything about the scales?” I ask, but she slowly shakes her head.

“There’s a few left that have fossilized, but everything else seems to have decomposed.” She folds her note with a shrug. “What I could tell—is that not even our metal poles would be able to penetrate that.”

“Divines,” I blurt.

“How long do you think it’s been here?” she asks.

“Could be centuries.” I shrug, approaching the wall with different claw marks. They’re deep. I shuffle my feet, feeling the coarse dust under my boot. I kneel and brush my hand on the ground. Sand . A faint voice drifts from Nida’s direction, and I turn toward her.

“You said something?” I say, furrowing my brow, but she remains silent. “I thought you said something,” I repeat.

“No,” she says, her brow creases. “What is it—did you hear something?”

“I thought I did.” I shake my head, wondering if I’m still a bit off from the venom.

Nida reaches for her pocket, pulling out a blank piece of paper, and lets out a sigh. “We have to figure out what this is. I’ll do some sketches.”

“I’ll make a fire,” I say, and begin gathering branches, anything I can find to keep us warm for a couple of days.

The cave breathes around us—low gusts curling through the stone like whispers.

I stack the driest branches in a shallow pit, striking stones until the spark catches.

It grows fast, shadows leaping across the strange wall of bones.

Nida sits cross-legged, paper balanced on her knee, charcoal scratching against it as she begins to sketch the twisted spine and split tail.

“This creature…” she mutters to herself. “It’s not just big—it’s old . But the split tail? That’s new. Nothing in any of the known species has that.”

I crouch beside the fire, eyes flicking between the bones and her focused face.

“You think it’s a mutation?”

“Maybe. Or a hybrid,” she says, not looking up.

“Either way, it’s not in the records.” She pauses, then adds quietly, “That means no one’s survived long enough to record it or study it.

” The fire crackles louder than before. I stare into the flames, jaw tight.

We might be the first to find this thing. Or the last.

“Anything in your old book?” I ask.

She shakes her head with a deep sigh. “I left it. It’s with Eryca.”

Damn.

“I wonder if Grogol knows about this,” she reflects.

“The Stonetail that killed Raumen seemed regular.” The words slip out before I can stop them, and a sharp ache coils in my chest. Raumen. My head throbs. Images flash—his twisted legs, the blood pooling beneath him. I squeeze my eyes shut.

Shut it off.

“I doubt Grogol knew this thing existed,” I add.

“Maybe not even Augustus knew.” But even as I say it, something twists in my gut.

A sliver of doubt. Grogol lied about there being only one dragon left.

Lied to us, to all of us. And hundreds died.

We followed his command into slaughter, thinking we were ending a war.

If he knows—if these things still exist—then I can’t even imagine what he would be capable of if he let these things roam free.

I glance at Nida as she sketches, her hands steady but her face pale in the flickering firelight.

Stray curls cling to her cheek, her brow furrowed in focus.

She doesn’t speak—just draws, breath slow, eyes sharp.

Calm. At least on the outside. I have no idea what she’s like on the inside.

I wish I did. Perhaps I’d know what to do.

A warmth stirs in my chest that has nothing to do with the fire.

I envy her calm—or maybe I just want to be close to it.

Maybe I just want her. I look away before I’m caught staring.

This isn’t the time. We’re half-starved, half-dead, hunted.

We’re sitting in the ribcage of a monster.

A monster I secretly beg the Divines we won’t encounter.