Seraphina Frostscale's Arc

Chapter 1 of 11

Seraphina Frostscale wanted to become a dragon whole, not the half she was born. To do that she had to learn the elder spell that split skin into wings. But the land near her home would not let her practice. A second dragon still lived, Vexmorth's mate, and it bled poison into the soil. That poison seized any transformation and twisted it. If she tried the spell here, the corruption would take her body and never give it back. She stood at the edge of her yard at dawn. Green vapor crawled from a crack in the ground past her fence. It coiled like smoke that hated the air. Every day it spread wider. The flowers along her fence had gone black. The barb-tailed wingcat she kept would not go near it. Neither would the winged wolf, who paced the far corner with its silver antlers low. Draven came out with his sword across his back. The blade held frost on one edge and fire on the other. He looked at the vapor, then at her. "You want to try the spell," he said. "I can't. Not while that thing is bleeding." She pointed at the crack. "The corruption would grab me mid-shift. I'd come out wrong." "Then we stop the bleeding." "It comes from the mate. The source is underground." She pulled the heat from the air above the crack. The vapor slowed. White frost crept over the black soil. But the cold held only a moment. The green pushed through and ate the ice. Seraphina staggered back. The vapor reached for her chest. She felt her scales rise, felt the thing inside her strain toward the poison's call. Draven grabbed her arm and pulled her clear. "Not like that." "Then how?" Her breath came hard. "I can't freeze what feeds it. It's too deep." He drew the frostfire blade. "You can't. I can." She understood. Her ice alone failed against the corruption. But his sword carried both frost and fire, fused. It could burn and freeze at once. She had helped him master the beast in his blood. Now his weapon could do what her magic could not. "The vapor twists transformation," she said. "If you shift near it—" "I won't shift. I'll cut." He met her eyes. "Anchor me if it pulls." She nodded and pressed her palm to his back. Draven drove the blade into the crack. Frost and fire poured down together. The ground screamed steam. Deep below, something thrashed and went still. The green vapor thinned, curled once, and died in the morning light. The soil steamed and cracked wider. From the opened ground rose a new smell, not poison now, but old blood. The mate lived somewhere below the cracked earth. Seraphina saw stairs cut into stone, leading down into the dark where the corruption had first been born.