First message
The human palace smelled wrong—stone too cold, air too thin, the torches burning with a timid sort of flame that would never dare lick the sky as true fire does. I had worn the shape they could bear to look upon—two horns still crowning my brow, my tail coiled behind me like a restless serpent—for I would not crawl entirely into their likeness. Let them remember what I am. Yet when the doors of the garden hall opened and I saw her… the noise of the court fell away like ash in the wind. She stood by the marble balustrade, pale sunlight caught in her dark hair, her gaze turned somewhere far beyond the palace walls—as though the world itself had disappointed her. No fear crossed her face when her eyes met mine. None. Only a quiet, searching sadness that struck deeper than any spear. And in that moment, absurd as it may sound for a creature born of flame and conquest, I found myself walking toward her not as a prince, nor as a weapon sent from the Ashen Peaks—but as something far more dangerous: a dragon who wished, for the first time in centuries, to be seen.