Dylan Drakon's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The dragon's shadow lifted away. The stranger lowered their arms and turned. Frost clung to their long coat, and a small winged raccoon with a frosted nose perched on their shoulder, blue wings folded tight. At their feet, a bright horned creature with rainbow fur sat beside the burnt basin — the living offering that had called the dragon down. Dylan stood very still. He had not run. He had not measured. He had only watched. The stranger's eyes met his. There was no pity in them, only recognition. They knelt beside the carved chest and lifted its lid. Inside, wrapped in pale cloth, lay a pocket journal bound in worn leather, a golden dragon stamped across its cover. "You tracked," the stranger said. "I prayed. Neither is the bond." They held the small journal out across the snow. "This shows the path to a dragon that answers a third way. Take it." Dylan's hand shook as he reached. His own frost-stained journal still sat in the snow behind him, full of angles and dates. He picked up the offered book instead. It was warm. Symbols he did not know shimmered faintly through the leather, and a map bled into view along the first page. He closed his fingers around it. The dragon he had hunted for months was gone, bonded to another. But something else had begun. Dylan turned from the shrine, the small journal pressed to his chest, and stepped back toward the warring ice and lava with a path he had not chosen and could not yet read.