Chapter 4: First Blood

Maeva

When morning came, it brought no warmth, just a chalky wash of light that made the edges of the world even more brittle. We walked in silence. Aeron led, every step measured, every movement with the impossible poise of someone who had rehearsed each peril a thousand times in nightmares. The plateau didn’t last; soon the way funneled into a wind-scoured path carved into the face of the world itself. A line of footprints, my footprints, would have barely fit a child’s boot. On one side, the mountain. On the other, a plunge so deep it made the air taste thinner just to look at it.

At first I tried not to look at it. I focused on the play of sunlight across the black glass of the obsidian, the crunch of crusted snow under my feet, the way the breeze snapped my borrowed cloak against my calves like a living thing trying to throw me off-balance. The only safe handhold was the jagged rock itself. Sometimes I pressed my fingers so hard against the stone that it sliced them, tiny pricks of pain to keep my mind tethered to the task.

Aeron walked ahead of me, always just close enough to grab if I slipped. I hated how that comforted me. The wind had stripped him of any warmth; his hair was wild, and the morning shadow made the bones of his face look even less human. He walked as if the mountain belonged to him. Maybe it did.

We must have gone an hour before the silence began to get to me. I almost missed the way Aeron slowed, just a fraction, the way his spine went rigid and his nose twitched as if he was testing the wind. “What is it?” I asked, but the wind tore the words away.

He didn’t answer, not at first. Instead he halted, pivoted so that his back was to the abyss, and scanned the upper ledges. His eyes narrowed, slits of molten gold in the hard daylight. He reached back with his arm, not touching but blocking me with an invisible line. I stopped, and for a second, I felt something I hadn’t since the day I took the Reliquary: the animal certainty that something was about to kill me.

That’s when the first one dropped from above.

It landed so close I saw its teeth before I saw its eyes, jaws like a trap, curved fangs that weren’t bone at all but black obsidian, honed to scalpel points. The beast was a wolf only in the way a nightmare is a memory. Its fur was interrupted everywhere by ragged, overlapping plates of gray-green scale. When it opened its mouth to snarl, the tongue was blue, and the inside steamed like a corpse left in the sun.

Three more followed, one landing just below the path, scrambling for purchase with talons that dug chips from the glassy rock. The others dropped behind us, cutting off retreat. They fanned out, coordinated, as if they’d rehearsed the kill.

Aeron didn’t hesitate. He stepped sideways, wedged himself between me and the nearest wolf, and let the change happen mid-stride. I’d seen dragons transform once, from the safety of a high cliff at night, when all you saw was the silhouette and the lightning, never the flesh and bone. I wasn’t ready for how loud it would be, or how fast. The sound was like someone snapping every branch on a tree and then setting the splinters alight. Aeron’s limbs stretched, exploded, muscle and scale extruding out of nothing, shirt and boots shredding to ribbons in a single motion. His head elongated, jaw filling with new teeth as wide as my palm. The color bled from his skin, replaced by a bronze so deep it seemed black, except where molten veins traced the inside of every scale.

He reared up, wings unfurling so violently they cracked the air. The wind caught them and nearly toppled me from the path. I threw myself back, flattening against the stone. The wolves didn’t scatter. If anything, they surged forward, spurred by the promise of greater prey.

One went for his throat, and Aeron batted it from the path with a single swipe. The wolf vanished, tumbling end over end into the void, claws leaving a spray of sparks where they tried and failed to find purchase. But the next two worked as a pair: one darting left, drawing Aeron’s bulk with a feint, while the other lunged for the tendon just above his hind claw. Its teeth sank in, not to the bone but deep enough that blood, brighter than it had any right to be, splattered across the rock in a fan.

Aeron roared. Not the measured sound he used to intimidate me, but a full, from-the-core detonation that shook snow from the cliffs above. The impact of the sound alone sent the two wolves nearest me scrambling back. I pressed even harder against the wall, heart slamming in my chest. I looked for a way around, but there wasn’t one. The path was barely wide enough for two sets of footprints, and now it was awash in blood and wolf-drool.

Then I realized the plan. The wolves weren’t just attacking, they were herding. Two more shapes appeared above, leaping from a higher ledge, arcing through the air with impossible grace. They aimed for me, not Aeron. I didn’t even have time to scream; the first landed three meters away, claws clacking on the ice, the other right behind it, jaws already open. I reached for my belt out of instinct, hand closing on the hilt of my boot knife, but I knew… I knew… that even if I had a sword, I’d never beat these things.

Aeron twisted, slamming his tail down like a wrecking ball. The force made the whole cliff shudder. One wolf flew up, battered mid-leap, but the other dodged, clever and quick, and closed the distance to me in a single, horrifying lunge.

I stabbed it with the knife, but it wasn’t a killing strike, it hit the side of its head, right where fur met the scale, and barely went in at all. The beast snapped, jaws missing my face by a finger’s width, breath so foul I nearly gagged. I yanked the knife out and stabbed again, lower, and this time it stuck, blade wedged under a plate of armor, hot blood dribbling out in slow, tar-thick ropes.

The wolf shrieked, but didn’t stop. Its body pressed into mine, pinning me to the cliff face. Behind me was nothing, just the great, beckoning emptiness. My boots slid on the blood-slick rock. The beast scrabbled for a better hold, claws raking my thighs, and for a second I thought, this is it.

Then Aeron was there. He ripped the wolf off me with one foreclaw, the gesture almost dainty, and hurled it upward, smashing it into the rock above. The beast yelped, then tumbled limply over the edge.

I didn’t have time to thank him, or even breathe, because another wolf had broken through the melee, taking a bite out of Aeron’s exposed haunch before skittering toward me. This one was bigger, its scales frosted with silver, eyes lit from within by an orange that looked more like fire than flesh.

I braced for impact, arms up, expecting teeth in my throat. Instead, the wolf planted itself and howled. The sound was different from Aeron’s: colder, longer, the kind of noise that made your bones want to crawl out of your skin. The effect was instant: my knees buckled, and a pulse of white-hot panic shot through my chest.

But the howl was for Aeron, not me. He staggered, wings retracted, head shaking as if the sound hit him harder than any bite. For a moment, the dragon shimmered, his outline flickered, and he shrank, scales flowing back into skin, jaw shrinking, human form reassembling around a skeleton that should not have fit inside the beast I’d just seen.

Aeron collapsed to his knees, blood streaming from his thigh, his face contorted in an agony that looked as much spiritual as physical. The remaining wolves closed in, one circling from the left, another low and to the right. The howler paced in a slow arc, never breaking eye contact with Aeron, as if taunting him to try and transform again.

That was the moment I realized… I was on my own.

I pressed my back into the wall, scanning for anything, any handhold, any loose rock I could use as a weapon. All I had was the knife, the reliquary in my satchel, and the bitter certainty that if Aeron died here, I would be next.

The wolves stalked closer. The wind howled with them. I clenched the knife, blade slick with black blood, and tried to remember every lesson I’d ever learned about fighting, about surviving, about what you did when even hope wanted to run. I set my feet, locked my jaw, and waited to see who would make the first move.

It turned out the wolves moved first. The howler gave a guttural snap, and the two closest lunged, fast as arrows, one going high for my face, the other low for my thigh. I brought the knife up in both hands, but there was no way to block both.

Instead, I dropped the knife.

I let it clatter to the ground, used the motion to pivot on my heel, and slammed my free hand into the mouth of the first wolf just as it reached me. For a split second, its jaws closed around my wrist instead of my throat. I gritted my teeth against the pain and yanked the drawstring on my satchel, pulling it open with my teeth. Fingers found the first vial by shape alone.

The wolf thrashed, biting deeper, trying to shake me off, but I held tight and brought the vial up with my free hand. I smashed it against the wolf’s muzzle. The glass shattered; a white powder geysered out, filling the beast’s nostrils, eyes, and gaping mouth. It recoiled instantly, jaw spasming, the teeth sinking and then releasing. The powder was something I’d cooked up for repelling mountain cats, a blend of ground dried nettle, alkali, and the pollen of a flower that made your sinuses feel like you’d snorted fire ants.

The wolf sneezed. A disgusting, wet explosion of snot and foam. It shrieked and tried to wipe its face with both paws, going instantly blind. The next wolf hit me in the knee, and I fell to the ground hard enough to crack my head against the rock. Distantly, I heard Aeron roar again, closer this time, maybe finding his footing or maybe just dying noisier than expected.

I was sprawled half-off the path, boots scraping the edge, one leg dangling into the open sky. The wolf that had taken me down circled, cautious now, sniffing the air as if it could tell something was off. Its eyes never left mine. It bared its teeth, blood and powder still streaking the fur from where I’d splashed its companion.

I scrabbled for another vial, hand closing around one I’d labeled with a tiny, careful X. Not much time. The wolf feinted, then pounced. This time I rolled with the force, let it bowl me over, and when it landed on my chest, I jammed the vial into its mouth and squeezed. It was a sticky resin, a mix of plant gums and volatile oil I’d hoped never to use, thick as honey but twice as corrosive. The wolf’s jaws snapped down, crushing the container, and the resin erupted, gluing its teeth shut in an instant. It tried to yowl, but only a muffled, strangled sound came out. I shoved hard, sending it tumbling off me and toward the edge.

Both hands free now, I pushed myself upright, knees torn open by the stone. I couldn’t see Aeron, but I heard him, cursing in a guttural dragon tongue, the kind of noise that came from deep inside and was never meant for human ears. The howler was circling him, not attacking, just pacing, tail held low and stiff, like it was waiting for Aeron to try shifting again. Two more wolves were writhing at his feet. One looked dead, the other alive but limping, holding up a front leg twisted at the joint. The last, the howler, had eyes only for Aeron.

I thought about running, but there was nowhere to run to. The ledge curved ahead, but the next twenty meters were narrow as a balance beam, and the snow that dusted the stone would make every step a coin toss. Behind was just a wall, and the memory of wolves.

The howler saw me watching and gave a little shiver, hackles rising. It let out another shriek, this one higher, a sound that vibrated in my molars and made my jaw ache. Aeron doubled over, hands to his ears, blood running down his cheek where one of the wolves had clipped him.

That’s when the howler charged.

I had one more trick. Two vials left, but only one I trusted: the sunspore. A fine, orange dust, suspended in just enough alcohol to keep it inert. The stuff was meant to be a last-ditch signal flare, but I’d tested it on rats once and watched them go blind for hours.

The howler came at me with all the subtlety of a landslide. I popped the cork and waited until the very last second. When the beast was close enough to see the white of its eyes, I threw the vial directly at its face and shouted, “Back!”

The glass broke. The sunspore ignited instantly, filling the air with a burst of searing orange light and a cloud of dust thick as a sandstorm. The wolf ran right through it, but the effect was immediate. It reared up, howling, paws clawing at its own face, the dust burning into every mucous membrane. It stumbled, turned, and crashed headlong into the cliff wall, leaving a smear of blood and resin before rebounding and nearly tumbling over the ledge.

For good measure, I snatched up my last vial, a crude blend of alkali and wintergreen, and lobbed it at the wolf’s exposed hindquarters. The concoction reacted with the blood and snow, fizzing into a caustic foam. The wolf howled again, then ran, tail clamped between its legs, right off the side of the path and into empty air.

I fell to my knees, lungs burning, eyes streaming from the backdraft of my own chemical warfare. I blinked away tears and looked for Aeron. He was slumped against the wall, human again, bleeding from a dozen cuts. Two wolves lay at his feet, unmoving. The third was gone. The only sign of the howler was the lingering echo of its scream, bouncing off the cliffs and shivering down my spine.

I tried to stand, but my body disagreed, so I just sat there, breathing hard, staring at the carnage. The snow was littered with glass shards, sizzled blood, and clumps of burning wolf fur. The air stank of ozone and burnt herbs.

Aeron looked up at me, his face streaked with blood and grime. For a moment, he said nothing, just stared, eyes wide and unblinking. Then he smiled. “Useful,” he said, voice hoarse. “You are… very… useful.” I almost laughed, but then I noticed the bite on my wrist, and the way blood pulsed with each beat of my heart. The threat was gone, but the pain was just getting started.

The silence that followed the attack was almost obscene. There should have been more screaming, or maybe some kind of victory chorus. Instead there was just the wind, the thin, sharp snap of it as it threaded through the aftermath, carrying the stench of blood and the ghost of the howler’s last scream. My hands shook, the last of the adrenaline draining out in fits and jerks. I wiped my mouth on the back of my sleeve and realized I was grinning. Or maybe I was just baring my teeth.

Aeron was still slumped against the wall, one hand braced above his head. Blood sheeted down his bare shoulder, more oozed from a bite on his side. His eyes were distant, but as I approached he blinked, focused, and actually smiled. A real one, wry and crooked, the kind of smile that made you think he could be handsome if he ever bothered to care.

I bent to grab the pack I’d dropped in the fight, only to nearly pass out from the pain in my wrist. The wolf’s bite had gone deep, and my sleeve was already stained through with blood, more pink than red, the edges frothing where nerve met open air. I hissed, cradled the arm to my chest, and tried to remember if I had anything left for the pain.

Aeron saw the motion, and his eyes narrowed. Not in anger, but in concern. He straightened, staggering the two steps toward me. “Show me,” he said, voice low. Not a command this time. More like… worry.

I hesitated, then offered up the arm. He took it, hands huge and steady, turning my wrist over so the gash faced upward. The wound wasn’t pretty: ragged at the edges, already puffing with swelling. He brushed away the torn cloth, careful as a parent with a fevered child. “Hold still,” he said.

I did.

He placed his palm over the wound, the pressure gentle but absolute. There was no magic at first, just the warmth of his skin, the heat of him leaking through to my bones. It should have hurt, but instead it numbed. Then, beneath his hand, a glow began: amber at first, then brighter, until the flesh around the bite seemed to hum with life.

The pain retreated, replaced by a tingling itch, then a heat that wasn’t entirely physical. It was in my blood, in my lungs, in my head, like the light from the Reliquary or the first whiskey you drink after a day of freezing rain. The skin around the wound knit itself shut, new tissue blooming from the edges inward, nerves reconnecting, the ugly seam smoothing out until it was little more than a pink scar.

Aeron kept his hand there, longer than he needed. I looked up at his face, saw the lines of fatigue, the way his pupils dilated in the daylight. His other hand hovered in the air, as if he wanted to brush the hair from my eyes, but couldn’t quite give himself permission. He settled for letting his fingers trail down the inside of my forearm. I shivered, not from cold.

“There,” he said, and for once the words didn’t sound like a sentence. I flexed the wrist, astonished. “I thought you said dragon magic wasn’t for mortals.” He shrugged, a ghost of pride in it. “You’re not most mortals.” The words hung there, as fragile as the frost lining the edge of the path.

For a long second, we just breathed, the air hot and alive between us. His hand lingered on my skin. I waited for him to pull away, to cover the moment in a shell of anger or mockery, but instead he only said, “You are more useful than I expected.”

I should have been insulted. Instead, I laughed. He flinched, startled, as if the sound was a thing he’d never heard before. “Don’t get used to it,” I said, trying for bravado, but my voice cracked in the middle. “Next time, you’re the one with the bright ideas.”

He looked at me, eyes soft and molten and completely unreadable. Then, in a move so gentle it almost broke me, he reached up and wiped a smear of blood from my cheek with his thumb. I wanted to say something clever, but all the words were gone.

We sat there, adrift in the space between wounds and words, until the wind picked up again, reminding us that the world was still turning. Aeron was the first to stand, clearing his throat and rolling his shoulders like he was getting used to his skin again. “We should move,” he said, the old edge creeping back. “Before Valkar sends something worse.”

I nodded, re-shouldered the satchel as I followed suit, and glanced once over the cliff, watching the distant wolves limp away, tails tucked and pride in tatters. As we walked, Aeron kept pace beside me, not in front. He glanced down at me now and then, his expression unreadable but not unkind.

For the first time since I’d set foot on the mountain, I felt safer than I had any right to. And for the first time, I realized I wasn’t alone.