Believe it or not, Soul Devourer Sormaidon still wasn’t waking, like a star gone cold behind storm clouds.

It lay motionless, its bulk flattening the freshly-collapsed hill of treasure, like a tide burying a sandcastle.

Here and there, metal slid and fell with tiny rattles, a rain of coins in a shaky scaffolding.

Everyone stayed in a rigid guard, bodies tense like drawn bows.

Heavy crossbows and spell circles aimed at Sormaidon, powder and mana coiled like snakes ready to strike.

No one dared bet on its condition; when that long neck finally moved, luck felt snapped like a broken string.

Yet the feared scene—a raised head and gold eyes blazing like twin suns—never came.

Yes, Sormaidon’s neck did shift, but only as the collapse’s aftershock rolling like a late wave.

That neck, long as its body and tail, lost balance; scales rasped on metal, a sound that gnawed teeth like gritty sand.

Friction couldn’t fight gravity; like a loose ship’s anchor, it slid off the treasure mound’s side in a slow avalanche.

Then came a thunderous clang, a bell struck in the deep, as it met stone.

The head fell free and slammed the floor, a quake that numbed their soles like winter water.

When the dust settled, the dragon’s head lay spread-eagled on the ground, maw agape, tongue lolling like a drunk in the gutter.

Honestly, Sormaidon looked like a blacked-out drunk, a toppled idol with wine breath.

It was almost funny, but no one felt laughter; blades and sigils stayed up like thorns in a hedge.

Even after that crash, those dragon eyes never opened; the curtains of its gaze stayed shut like midnight windows.

So what was it, really, this silence that tasted of iron?

No one knew; tension bled into puzzlement like stormlight sinking into fog.

Weapons sagged a little, points drooping like wilted leaves.

When Kabos slowly picked up the fallen reliquary near his boots and returned unharmed, relief settled like a warm cloak.

It hit back against the despair they’d carried, chewing through strain like fire eating dry brush.

The fragile ones’ knees gave out; they sat hard, as if gravity grew teeth.

Only Varie kept her bow at full draw, sight steady as a hawk over snow.

“It looks like it set itself a wake condition,” Queen Dreamlan said, her long pale fingers pausing in the air like white reeds.

Her voice was soft and clear, a bell in mist.

Deep hibernation is vital for most long-lived kinds; not all wake to a slap by the ear like a lazy ox.

Some set a specific trigger before sleep; unless that condition is met, or the body is harmed, the sleeper stays behind a locked winter.

“That’s nuts,” Varie muttered, eyes and bow-hand still steady like iron nails. “If the condition’s impossible, that’s real death, right?”

“And how do you know that dead lizard set one?” Her words flew like stones at still water.

Menglan shook her head, a slight motion like a willow in a light breeze.

“I don’t know its case. Mine works that way.” Her gaze was a lantern half-shaded.

“Huh? Then what cursed condition did you—” Varie’s quip broke, memory snagging like cloth on a thorn.

She glanced at Menglan, bowstring easing like a tired breath while she thought.

Then she snapped back, voice raised like a horn. “Everyone, grab what still works. Prepare to withdraw!”

It was the loudest bark since they’d entered the Magma Forge, a shout that rolled like a drumbeat.

The whole team exhaled in one wave; if such racket couldn’t wake this evil dragon, a little yelling meant nothing under these vaulted stones.

Once that settled, the taut string in their heads eased, like Varie’s bowstring sighing back to rest.

“**, we were so careful,” someone spat, a laugh caught like a fish in net. “Turns out it was nothing!”

In that loosened air, minds drifted like leaves.

Kabos stared at the treasure underfoot, drooling like a dog at a butcher’s door.

Tela went straight to picking favorites, fingers sifting gold like wheat, weighing what had the best value to carry back.

Hos, her childhood friend, dutifully hauled her in, a steady hand on a restless kite.

Even he couldn’t resist the sudden relief; he tugged her toward the exit steps and threw Sormaidon’s drunkard head a hard glare.

“Hmph. Wish this thing were awake, so we could beat him up—” His bravado sparkled like a cheap coin.

He leaned as if to spit, but Tela clapped a palm over his mouth, swift as a cat.

Hearts jumped for a few seconds; boots paused like stones in a stream.

A few moments passed; Sormaidon stayed dead drunk, a mountain asleep.

They sighed, a ripple of relief; someone even chuckled when Tela smacked Hos on the crown like a schoolmistress.

No one minded the little scene, Adelaide included; her hand lowered, a small feather drifting down.

It eased the air, a harmless pause of a few seconds in a room that breathed heat like a kiln.

Maybe it was that untouched air, still as glass, and Adelaide’s guard loosening like a loosened belt.

She had room to listen to other senses; the world crept in like smoke under a door.

She sniffed the air, almost without thinking, a fox tasting wind.

A scent returned—strange yet familiar, like smoke from a home she’d left.

Her brow furrowed; with the Echoing Souls’ pressure crushing her senses like deep water, clear reading was hard.

Luckily, the scent was strong; she checked the air, cautious as a deer in brush.

It seemed to seep from Sormaidon’s unmoving bulk, a musk that clung like tar.

“Sis…?” Mira asked, eyes tilting like a bird’s, puzzled.

Adelaide didn’t ignore the pull; unease pricked her skin like needles, then she moved.

She stepped to the dragon’s head, crouched, and drew a long breath, as if tasting a storm.

So familiar… but what was it? The question trembled like a wire.

She closed her eyes and chased memory, fingers curling like roots.

The answer clicked only when she opened them to the motionless head, truth falling like a blade.

Dragon. And this scent… wait.

Her face went bloodless, frost washing her skin like moonlight.

By association, she found the first time she’d smelled it, a breadcrumb trail in sand.

Back when they’d joined the convoy leaving the Empire, wheels creaking like beetles.

In the desert town called Takuri, while resupplying under a sun like brass.

She had been led into a trap and tripped a hidden circle, a snare set in dust.

A man in dragon-form lunged at her, shadow like a spear.

In that split-second, a maw stretched like a serpent, grazing her cheek by a hair’s breadth.

She smelled the same tang from his mouth, metallic and sweet like crushed petals and iron.

As the sacrificial victim’s last trace before annihilation, that scent lived only a heartbeat, then vanished like a firefly.

It left a thin scar in her mind, a pale line under water.

That was why she couldn’t place it at first when Varie had her smell that potion, a twin echo in glass.

Now, staring at the head, torn memories stitched together like silk threads.

A web of conspiracy glimmered into shape, strands shining like dew.

If the potion that warped the Nacha and the sacrificial circle that mutated that man came from the same hands, a single spider sat at the center.

What was their aim? Why drag her in? The questions bit like cold.

Right now, a sharper blade pressed at her neck, urgency burning like a brand.

Both the potion and that circle used materials taken from this dragon named Sormaidon, like thieves shaving a comet.

Turning in sleep is not the same as carving flesh with a knife; the difference is a river and a cliff.

That led to one inevitable conclusion, hard as bone.

Even with scant data, she could be sure of one thing.

This dead lizard was absolutely not asleep, a shark gliding under still water.

Cold flooded her fingers; her mouth opened on silence, fear a stone in her throat.

She realized a mistake—a fatal one, like stepping on a hidden blade.

She had walked up and crouched by the head, wearing suspicion like a banner on a hill.

It was a fawn pausing at a hunter’s scent, breath held tight.

Instinct saves, and often seals your fate; the coin flips like a leaf.

Before this, the hunter watching them waited, patience coiled like a spring.

It wanted them looser, their circles dropped, then one sweep like a scythe.

Now that the prey pricked its ears, the hunter had one option left.

Shoot now, like lightning without a cloud.

She seemed to hear it then, a near-unheard rasp of scales in the Magma Forge’s maze, a whisper of stone and skin.

She knew the strike would come the moment she turned, a knife for the back.

So she didn’t turn; she kept silent, a shadow holding breath.

She clenched her fist; her racing heart stabbed her chest like thorns.

Damn it. Which direction? The world spun like sparks.

Her thoughts jolted; a chill brushed the back of her head, winter fingers at her nape.

She fought the urge to look up into the dark above, a ceiling like a starless sea.

Since they came down, their eyes never left the dragon on that hill of wealth, a lighthouse of greed.

With the Echoing Souls’ domain suppressing senses, even the Nacha couldn’t catch an anomaly up there, like owls blinded at noon.

Is it there? Doesn’t matter. It has to be, a single path through thorns.

She could only gamble now; she bit her lip, taste of copper like old coins.

Fine blood-lines surged beneath her sleeves, threads waking like vines.

Varie and Menglan felt the mana stir first, a ripple in still water.

Menglan’s eyes widened, as if she knew the storm; Varie frowned and hissed toward Adelaide. “Hey, what are you doing—”

“Get down!” Adelaide’s shout cracked like a whip.

Most near Adelaide were lucky; the blood-lines wrapped their waists before the warning finished, cords snapping tight like snakes.

They yanked them toward her as the air thinned like glass.

Adelaide had turned already; her left index nail slit her right wrist, a petal of pain.

Blood flew, but didn’t fall; mana caught it in a whirlwind like a dust devil.

It spun into a round shield over her head, a crimson moon.

Before the last gap sealed, she saw it through the shield, a cross-shaped flash in the dark like a burning cruciform star.

She had bet right, a card landing face-up.

The flash was blinding, like a hundred suns going off at once, daylight hammered into a spike.

It lived in a dragon’s mouth opened wide, a furnace mouth.

The sound wasn’t a deep roar or a flame’s whoosh; it was a charged whine, like a coiled plasma beam waking to hunger.

A heartbeat later, the cross-light fired, a blade of white that carved air.

It slammed into Adelaide’s shield, raw annihilation in a single beam, a river of light.

There was no chant, no prep; the conjured shield couldn’t bear it, glass against a hammer.

It held one second, then shattered, pieces dissolving into white like salt in rain.

But her bet held, a door wedged on a storm.

One second was enough for a lot to happen, time stretched like gold leaf.

Enough for another being who needed no chant to cast, a queen with winter in her veins.

A green shield snapped into place before them, thin as a leaf, steady like a mountain against that laser-breath.

Queen Dreamlan stood before all, hand outstretched like a branch.

The tips of her long hair drifted in the air, threads loose in a tide.

A vast flow of mana moved unseen, a silent ocean pouring through her palm.

She’d just been ambushed, yet her silhouette outshone the crisis, like moon on steel after rain.

A beauty unlike any ordinary day spilled from her, like spring welling beneath frost.

Adelaide felt a quiet awe first, then understood; it was a threshold-born grace, a root-deep beauty beyond face.

It was their first time seeing Menglan serious, like jade set under winter light, but there was no time to linger.

A ragged ow-woo howl dragged them back, like a torn banner in wind.

Barni lay prone, her hind leg flayed; melted bone showed, soft as candle wax.

She and another partner had drifted too far from Adelaide’s side, so the blood-thread lash didn’t catch them.

She reacted on the first beat of the ambush, ramming her comrade into the shield like a bull under thunder.

She was a breath late; the dragon’s breath grazed her hind leg, and she shriveled like grass touched by lye.

Adelaide felt urgency surge, then rushed in, clapping a spell-circle onto the wound, turning tainted flesh to ash like burnt incense.

From the outpost’s lesson, they knew Soul Devourer Sormaidon’s breath carried venom more lethal than heat, like night seeping through cloth.

The toxin had to be contained before it flowed through her, like ink bleeding along veins.

That thought struck, and Adelaide shouted without looking back, voice sharp as flint on steel.

“Mira! Purify the air!”

Mira caught her sister’s intent at once, and her chant rose like a clear stream over pebbles.

Their teamwork flowed smooth as silk; in seconds, the wound was tended, and halos of strong air-purification settled on everyone.

The white light that seemed to break the world ebbed, like tide leaving shattered reef.

Adelaide handed the now cat-sized Barni to a nearby comrade, then traced complex circles in air like weaving bright thread.

She braced to catch the next wave when Menglan’s shield failed, like a cliff against storm surf.

But the pursuit she expected didn’t come; the dragonbreath stopped, and an ancient, raspy, relaxed voice drifted down like sand.

“Hrr... who would’ve thought—the first to find me is a tiny human,” it said, old as dry bone.

Bone wings cracked open with a clatter, and a massive pressure gusted down, enough to flip bodies like leaves.

With earth trembling and mountains groaning, a colossal shadow dropped before them, like night falling into a courtyard.

“But... very well. With another delicious soul to harvest, I’ve nothing to complain about,” it rumbled, like embers talking.