The Dragon Throne

Chapter One: The Whispering Scales

The kitchens of Ashenmoor Keep smelled of rosemary and rendered fat, but beneath it all, Sera could taste something older on the air—something like thunder before rain. She wiped her hands on her apron and paused, ladle halfway to the pot, because the sound had returned. Not a sound, exactly. More like a pressure behind her eyes, syllables too large for human ears folding themselves into her skull.

She had heard the whispers since childhood, always dismissed as fancy or fever. But today the words were unmistakable: Come to us, last-blood. The throne waits. Sera set the ladle down. Across the courtyard, beyond the curtain wall, the Dragonspire rose black against a bruised sky, and for the first time she understood the whispers were not madness. They were an invitation.

She left the kitchen without looking back. The head cook shouted after her, but the words dissolved in the roar that filled her mind—a roar of wings and fire and centuries of waiting. By the time she reached the outer gate the guards were staring upward, mouths slack, because the sky had begun to move. It was not clouds. It was scales.