Dylan Drakon's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Dylan Drakon knelt in the snow and opened his metal ledger. Ice-etched columns held months of dragon sightings. Landing spots. Wing angles. Departure times. He traced a finger across the rows and felt his breath catch. The lines all bent toward one place. The bond he had hunted his whole life waited at the end of that curve. He drew the convergence point on the map. His hand stopped moving. The spot sat deep in the hollow his father had forbidden him as a boy. No tracker returned from it whole. Dylan climbed the ridge to confirm it with his own eyes. A pale elk with antlers of clear ice watched him pass and did not flee. That alone should have warned him. At the hollow's mouth stood three blackened trees, their branches clawing the sky like trapped hands. Beyond them, a broken platform of ice glowed from within, lava bleeding through every crack. Heat and frost fought in the same breath. This was the place. Dylan closed the ledger and stepped past the trees.