The dragon beneath the city screamed every night.
Kael felt it in his teeth. In the marrow of his bones. In the silent spaces between heartbeats where no one else listened.
Seventeen years old, grease ground into his knuckles, standing on a narrow gantry above the heart of the reactor, he braced himself against the coming wave. The pressure built behind his blue eyes, in the roots of his messy jet-black hair, in the ache that had haunted his sleep since childhood.
Below him, bound in chains of sigil-forged steel, the dragon stirred.
The reactor chamber was a cylindrical wound carved hundreds of feet into bedrock beneath the capital, Aurelion. Runes the size of wagons glowed along its walls, pulsing in time with the city's stolen breath. Heat shimmered, distorting the air. Magic compressed, refined, stolen flowed upward through conduits like luminous veins feeding a parasitic host.
At the center lay the source.
The dragon's body was vast enough that its full shape vanished into the shadow and scale. Only fragments were visible at once: a horn ridged like a mountain spine, an eye sealed shut by plates of binding script, a chest that rose and fell with a labored, patient rhythm that powered a million lives.
Every exhale lit a street. Every heartbeat turned a factory wheel.
"Output stable," came a voice behind him. "Don't just stare, boy. Read the gauges."
Kael flinched and turned.
Master Kelth stood at the edge of the gantry, robes immaculate despite the heat, his artificer's staff humming softly at his side. The old man's eyes flicked from rune-panel to rune-panel with practiced efficiency, never once lingering on the dragon itself.
"It's… steady," Kael said, forcing his gaze back to the instruments. His hands trembled, he hid them behind the control panel. "Mana flow at ninety-eight percent. No harmonic bleed."
Kelth grunted approval. "As it should be. The bindings were reinforced last month."
The scream came again.
Stronger this time.
Kael's breath caught it. His fingers curled against the cold metal railing as something pressed against his thoughts not pain exactly, but weight. Like standing beneath a storm cloud heavy with unshed lightning.
"Master," Kael said carefully, "do you ever hear...."
"No," Kelth interrupted, sharp. "And neither do you."
The words weren't angry. They were afraid.
Kael swallowed. "Yes, Master."
He returned to his work, checking seals, recalibrating conduits, pretending his hands weren't shaking. The scream ebbed, fading back into the constant low thrum that had defined his life. He'd grown up with it. As a child, he thought it was thunder. Then the earth itself. Later, he decided it must be his own heart, beating too loudly in his ears.
No one else ever reacted. No one else ever noticed.
So he learned to be quiet.
The city above them Aurelion, Crown of the Concord Empire thrived on the dragon's suffering. Airships crossed its skies in endless procession. Lifts carried nobles between floating districts. Factories sang day and night, forging weapons and wonders from power they did not understand.
And beneath it all, the dragon endured.
The shift should have ended there.
But as Kael reached to close the final seal, the rune-panel flickered.
Just once.
Kelth stiffened. "Kael. What did you touch?"
"Nothing," Kael answered truthfully. He had followed the sequence exactly as taught.
The runes pulsed again. Faster now.
A low tremor rippled through the chamber.
Alarms began to sound sharp, mechanical shrieks that echoed off the walls.
Kelth raised his staff, sigils flaring along its length. "Containment breach! Step back!"
Kael obeyed, but then he froze.
Because the scream was gone.
In its place came something else.
A presence.
Not vast and distant as before, but close. Focused. A pressure that coiled around his thoughts with terrifying clarity.
"You hear me."
The words were not sound. They were meaning, delivered whole and undeniable.
Kael's knees buckled. He caught himself on the railing, gasping.
Kelth spun toward him. "What's wrong with you?"
Kael tried to speak. but nothing came out.
The dragon's eye opened.
Just a fraction.
Light, ancient, molten, intelligent spilled into the chamber. Runes along the chains flared violently, straining to reassert control. The reactor's hum rose to a shriek.
"You have always heard me", the presence said. "But tonight, you listened".
The world tilted.
Power surged not outward into the city, but inward, toward him. The rune-panel beneath his hand shattered, glass and light exploding in a storm of fragments.
Kelth shouted an order, but it was lost beneath the roar of failing containment.
The dragon did not break its chains.
It did something far worse.
It spoke and the city felt it.
Above them, lights flickered across Aurelion. Airships faltered mid-ascent. Towers groaned as their enchantments stuttered.
For the first time in centuries, the flow of stolen magic changed direction.
Kael stared into the dragon's half-opened eye, ancient intelligence burning back at him, and understood three things simultaneously:
The city's lights were powered by stolen pain.
The dragon had been waiting for him.
Tonight, the theft would end.
"Breathe," the presence commanded.
He did.
And seventeen years of silence shattered.