Dezhi

I remember the exact moment his body gave in.

Even dragons can be exhausted.

His breath came slow, heavy—each exhale stirring dust and old magic through the cavern air. The battle had taken much from him. Even something as ancient as he was not beyond depletion.

I stepped beside him before his eyes fully dimmed.

He felt me.

Of course he did.

My hand slid over his scales—cool against their lingering heat—tracing every ridge, every scar carved by time and war. I have touched him since before mortals learned to shape prayer. I know the map of his body better than the constellations I hung in the sky.

He pressed his great head closer to my touch, surrendering to the inevitable pull of sleep. His consciousness thinned like mist at dawn.

I leaned down, resting my brow against his.

“Rest, my heart,” I whispered. “You did it. I will be here. I will always be here.”

And then he slept.

Eight hundred years passed.

The cavern remained untouched by time’s cruelty. I willed it so.

Many came.

Greed has a scent—I could taste it before they even crossed the outer cliffs. Knights clad in polished steel. Sorcerers drunk on borrowed magic. Even gods—arrogant, curious, foolish—testing the limits of my patience.

They never left.

My fury is not loud. It is not chaotic. It is absolute.

Weapons shattered before they could graze a single scale. Spells unraveled like rotten thread. Bones turned to ash. Their ambitions dissolved into nothing beneath my gaze.

No one touches what is mine.

The world could rot.

All that mattered lay beneath my hands.

Then—

He moved.

It was subtle at first. A tremor beneath ancient muscle. The cavern air shifted as one wing stretched, stone groaning in protest. And then his eyes opened—vast, luminous, old as the first star I ever set aflame.

In an instant I was around him, arms wrapping around his neck, pressing myself against the warm strength of him as if eight hundred years were nothing at all.

“You’re awake.”