The waiting room smelled like iron and polish.
Jon already knew he wasn't supposed to be here.
The looks from the other cadets didn't hide their disdain.
Rows of cadets stood in formation, black-and-crimson uniforms cut with military precision. Gold-threaded insignias marked rank, lineage, expectation. Some wore them like crowns. Others like proof they still deserved to exist in the same room as everyone else.
He adjusted his collar. The fabric never sat right.
It never had—not since the first aptitude tests. Not since the results no one would explain, but everyone had already adjusted to.
Behind him, a voice landed softly.
"You're still here?"
He didn't turn.
Another voice followed, amused. "Maybe he thinks if he stands long enough, they'll mistake him for something useful."
A few quiet laughs.
Then closer—too close.
"You're a disgrace to the name you're wearing."
A pause.
Then, almost gently at his ear—
"Fucking nipo baby."
Not loud. Not dramatic. Just placed there, like a stamp on something already decided.
"Arsehole," Jon muttered under his breath.
"Did you say something?"
Jon stayed quiet.
"Thought so."
Jon didn't blame them. He would've thought the same if their places were reversed.
He should've gotten a pass or a fail like everyone else. A fail, most likely.
He wouldn't have been here at all if not for his grandfather's insistence and his mother's ultimatum: try again, or be sent straight to the military academy.
If it had been his decision, he would have been at the Great Literature University in Pern by now—becoming a scholar.
That's where his talent lay.
Behind a book. Pen in hand. Quiet work. Predictable work.
Then, as if his thoughts were being read aloud, someone said. "Two attempts," Not quietly enough to be private. Not loudly enough to be punished.
A faint laugh followed.
"Both unclassified."
That word made the air tighten slightly, like the hall itself disliked being reminded.
A pause.
Then another voice, sharper.
"Getting unclassified once is rare. Twice is damn near impossible."
A second voice answered almost immediately, like it had been waiting for permission to say it out loud.
"Impossible doesn't happen."
Silence held for a beat.
Then, colder—less certain now.
"Unless someone's burying it," someone whispered.
That earned a few quiet reactions—small, controlled, careful.
"Pulling ranks," someone admitted.
Jon exhaled.
Slow.
Controlled.
Anger was expensive. He couldn't afford it. Not here. Not again.
The doors opened.
No thunder. No spectacle. Just a shift in pressure, as if something old had decided they were now allowed to continue existing.
"Cadets. Proceed."
Stone moved against stone.
And the room stopped being a room.
The Dragonhall swallowed them.
Jon stepped forward with the others—
and for a moment, as the doors widened fully, he saw it.
Not clearly.
Not fully.
Just a glimpse through movement and distance.
At the center of the hall.
An elevated platform of black stone.
And on it—
an egg.
Three thousand years old, or so the stories claimed. Still unhatched. Still waiting.
Bound in iron filigree, like the world wasn't protecting it—but restraining it. As if reality itself was afraid of what would happen if it ever moved.
Jon's eyes caught it for less than a heartbeat.
Too short to think.
Long enough to feel it.
A pull—subtle, wrong, instinctive.
For a moment, it felt like the egg was pulling at him.
Like something inside him had recognized it before he did.
Then the doors shifted as they passed fully into the hall.
And it was gone from view—and the feeling with it.
As he crossed the threshold, the voice returned—low, almost conversational.
A quiet breath behind him.
"All that studying… and this is where it gets you."
Jon didn't look back.
A step closer.
"After today, we won't see the like of you again."
Somehow, Jon didn't even argue with the logic. It felt inevitable—either he would die, or worse, fail again and carry that disgrace for the rest of his life.
Because this time, if he failed, there would be no second attempt.
This time, it was permanent.
He walked forward.
His palms sweating.
Inside the hall pillars rose into shadowed height like the bones of something that had never fully died. Banners hung between them—faded victories, erased wars, names that survived only because someone had once bled hard enough to justify remembering them.
And the dragons.
They lined the hall in tiers of silence.
Massive bodies coiled in restraint rather than rest. Scales like iron, ash, obsidian. Wings folded, but never relaxed. Eyes open.
Not watching.
Assessing.
Every cadet felt it immediately—the difference between being seen and being evaluated.
Jon felt it more than most.
His mother stood near the central dais. Crimson and gold. Unmoving. The kind of presence that didn't demand space—it replaced it.
Beside her, his grandfather, Darius Veyrath. Older. Sharper. A history that had turned judgment into habit.
Together, they looked untouchable.
Like they belonged to a different version of the world.
And him?
He looked like a mistake standing too close to legacy.
The officiator called a name Jon didn't quite catch—something elvish.
A cadet stepped forward—perfect posture, perfect certainty, the kind of person who had never once considered failure as something that applied to them.
A dragon was brought forward. Massive. Scarred. Patient in the way predators become when they no longer need to prove anything. Even chained, it didn't look contained—only delayed.
A blade was offered. One cut. Clean. Controlled.
Blood welled.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the air tightened—not around the cadet, but around the blood itself. It lifted slowly at first, like gravity had briefly forgotten its duty, then sharper, as if something had noticed it had been spilled without permission.
The sigil began to form above the wound, but it wasn't drawn—it was pulled. Lines of light and blood-stained geometry unfolded in midair, locking into shape like a sentence being written by something that did not care whether it was understood.
The dragon shifted. Chains groaned. A low sound left its throat—not a roar yet, but the warning of one.
The cadet looked into the dragon's eyes, almost defiantly.
"Vakari hekte, argu masadi ko."
He spoke the words of binding without breaking contact.
Jon knew them well. He had memorised them like the back of his hand.
Ancient words from an ancient tongue. Dragon tongue.
They weren't spoken anymore in any normal sense—not taught as language, not used as speech. Only preserved where it mattered: within ritual, within sanctioned ceremony, within anything that still touched dragons without being torn apart.
Everything else had been lost. Or buried on purpose.
But these remained. Always these.
"Vakari hekte…" Blood."Argu masadi ko…" Oath.
The meaning didn't sit in the words the way normal speech did. It sat underneath them, like weight pressing down on reality itself.
Jon watched the sigil react as the final phrase left the speaker's mouth—not as meaning, but as structure locking into place. Like reality itself had recognized a correct instruction. Like hooks had been set into the air.
The sigil responded immediately. It sharpened, tightening its structure as if the incantation had given it spine.
Blood followed—not flowing now, but threading, drawing fine glowing lines between human and dragon, searching for matching violence inside scale and soul.
The dragon resisted. Properly this time.
Its head lifted. Chains snapped taut. Muscles surged against containment that had held far stronger beasts. The air bent under pressure.
For a heartbeat, it looked like the ritual might fail completely.
Then the binding words deepened. Not louder—heavier.
And the sigil pressed downward like a crown being forced into place.
The dragon's body jolted. Chains screamed as it surged upward, iron straining under force. One anchor tore halfway free from the stone before snapping back into place, dragged down by binding weight.
Its wings spread—then stalled mid-rise, like motion itself had been caught and twisted.
The dragon froze for a heartbeat. Not still—held.
Its head jerked once, sharply, as if trying to shake something unseen loose.
The struggle didn't end. It changed shape.
The force pushing outward collapsed inward instead, rippling through its frame. Muscles locked along its neck. Claws dug into stone without release.
Its breath hitched. A low sound dragged from deep in its throat, cut short before it could become a roar.
Then it moved again. Slower.
Controlled only in appearance, like restraint forced into posture rather than choice.
Its head lowered inch by inch. Not smooth. Not calm. Each movement resisted until the very last instant before completion.
The chains loosened—not because they were released, but because the tension holding them apart had shifted elsewhere.
Finally, the dragon's snout touched the ground.
A bond forced into existence.
Power recognized.
Power imposed.
The hall exhaled.
Applause followed.
Approving.
Another rider made.
One by one, they went.
Each ritual the same.
Each result expected.
Each success tightening something invisible around his chest.
The names stopped.
And the silence changed.
He realised too late.
"Jon Vayrath," the officiator called again—he hadn't caught it the first time.
Jon blinked, the name landing a moment too late. He looked up at the dais, then, almost instinctively, turned his head—his mother. Just for a second.
Then he moved.
Too quickly.
His foot caught the edge of the step—
a near stumble.
A soft hush of laughter rippled underneath it, and with it, every gaze sharpened—not into hope or expectation, but certainty.
They were watching something already decided.
The handlers moved.
Chains dragged.
And then—
They brought it out.
It was bigger.
Not impressive.
Not awe.
Wrong.
The largest dragon presented that day.
Its scales were darker—not in color, but in texture, like something that had burned too many times and learned to keep the damage. Its wings didn't fold fully, even in restraint. They twitched, restless, like the idea of stillness offended it.
Jon felt it before it looked at him.
Pressure.
Not from the room.
From it.
A female cadet murmured to the boy beside her, low enough to pretend it wasn't fear.
"That dragon's never been bound. Killed three people last year." She hadn't meant for anyone else to hear.
But Jon didn't need reminding—he had been there.
Even the handlers looked scared. He felt it in the way they stood—further back than the others had.
Not control.
Just distance.
The dragon's head lowered slightly.
Not submission.
Focus.
Jon stepped forward.
This is it. The thought came steady. Forced. This is the one. This is where it changes.
His hand tightened around the blade.
Pain would anchor it. It always did.
He could do this.
He had studied the words. Understood the structure. Memorized the sequence until it stopped feeling like language and started feeling like law.
This time.
The dragon moved.
Not fully.
Just enough.
A shift of muscle.
A tightening of chains.
The sound it made wasn't a roar.
It was worse.
A low, grinding exhale—like something remembering it was allowed to be violent.
Jon's breath hitched.
Just once.
He forced it back under control.
If it lunges—
The thought finished itself.
I die.
Not later.
Not painfully.
Immediately.
Before the instructors.
Before the handlers.
Before anything.
He stepped closer anyway.
Because stopping now was the same as admitting they were right.
The dragon's eye snapped to him.
Fully.
Sharply.
Jon raised the blade.
The cut came too deep—an accident, a slip in the thin space between intention and execution.
He raised his cut hand toward the dragon.
His mind ticked through the steps like scripture.
Then—
"Vakari hekte, argu masadi ko."
The words left his mouth cleanly.
Too clean.
Like the language itself did not want to resist being spoken through him.
Blood should have fallen by now.
Instead, it clung to his skin for a heartbeat too long, as if waiting for permission.
Then it welled—
slowly at first—
too slowly—
before curling upward instead of downward.
A thin thread of red lifted from his skin, defying gravity for half a heartbeat.
Not rising.
Searching.
Jon's breath caught.
That wasn't in the ritual.
It wasn't in anything.
The sigil above the dragon trembled.
For the first time that day, it did not form cleanly.
Lines of light fractured mid-structure, as if the spell had tried to recognize him and failed halfway through the attempt.
A distortion spread through the air.
Subtle.
Uncomfortable.
Like reality had mispronounced his name.
The dragon moved.
Not violently.
Not yet.
Just… attentively.
Its head tilted.
Chains groaned as its body shifted forward a fraction.
And then it stopped.
Completely.
The moment stretched.
Jon felt it then—
not fear from the dragon—
but recognition without category.
The dragon's pupils narrowed.
Not anger.
Not instinct.
Something colder.
A biological certainty that did not require thought.
Jon was not prey.
Jon was not rider.
Jon was not even enemy.
He was—
The dragon recoiled.
A single step backward dragged iron across stone.
The sound was loud in a way that made the hall feel smaller.
A low vibration rolled through its throat.
Not a roar.
A refusal.
The kind of sound made when something alive encounters something it cannot classify and chooses distance as survival.
Jon's blood finally dropped—
but even that was wrong.
It didn't fall cleanly.
It twisted midair.
A thin strand of red snapping sideways as if pulled by an invisible current.
The sigil collapsed halfway through formation.
Like a sentence erased before it could finish being read.
Silence broke.
The dragon pulled its head back further.
Its eyes locked onto Jon again.
And this time, there was no confusion left in them.
Only certainty.
Abomination.
The dragon exploded.
Chains screamed as its entire body surged forward, faster than something that size had any right to move. Stone cracked beneath its weight as it lunged—not testing, not warning.
Killing.
Jon didn't move.
Because there wasn't time to.
"Vakari hekte, argu masadi ko."
The dragon did not yield.
It came for him.
Wings tore upward. Eyes burned red. Its jaws opened, throat glowing like molten iron—
—and then it lunged.