We leave at dawn.
Or what passes for dawn in this broken world. The sky lightens from deep orange to a sickly yellow, casting everything in shades of amber and rust. The air still tastes like ash, but there's something else now—a faint metallic tang that makes my dragon instincts prickle with unease.
Magic residue. Old magic, dying magic, clinging to the ruins like a ghost.
Ghatak carries the eggs.
We spent the early morning hours reinforcing the incubation wards, weaving our combined void and chaos energy into the existing structure until the magic hummed with renewed strength.
The eggs rest now in a specially crafted harness across Ghatak's back—obsidian leather reinforced with protective runes, cushioned with moss we gathered from the cave. The violet egg pulses against his left shoulder blade. The black one nestles against his right.
Our children. Our responsibility. Our future.
I still can't quite wrap my mind around it.
"You're staring," Ghatak says without looking back at me.
"I'm thinking."
"Dangerous pastime for you."
I snort. "Says the man carrying two-thousand-year-old dragon eggs across a post-apocalyptic wasteland."
"Fair point."
We pick our way through the palace ruins, following a path I remember from childhood. It leads east, toward the Spire of Echoes—that impossible structure still standing in the distance, untouched by the devastation that claimed everything else. From here, it's maybe a day's journey on foot. Less if we fly.
But we don't fly.
The eggs are too precious, too fragile. And something tells me we need to see this world up close. Need to understand what was lost, what remains, what might still be salvaged from the ashes.
Besides, I'm not ready to face the full scope of the destruction from above. Not yet.
The landscape beyond the palace is worse than I imagined.
What was once a thriving city—the capital of our civilization, home to thousands of dragons—is now a graveyard. Buildings lie collapsed in on themselves, their elegant spires reduced to rubble. Streets are cracked and overgrown with strange, twisted vegetation that glows faintly in the dim light. And everywhere, everywhere, there are bones.
Dragon bones.
They litter the ground like fallen leaves, bleached white by time and weather. Skulls the size of boulders. Rib cages large enough to walk through. Wing bones stretched across the earth like the fingers of some long-dead god.
My people. My species. My family.
I stop walking.
Ghatak pauses beside me, his dark eyes scanning my face. "Astraea—"
"How many?" I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. "How many died here?"
He's quiet for a long moment. Then: "Millions. Maybe tens of miliona. This was the capital. When the civil war reached its peak, this is where the final battles were fought."
Tens of millions.
The number is incomprehensible. I knew my species was exterminated. I saw the evidence in the palace, in the throne room where my parents died. But knowing and seeing are two different things.
"They fought each other," I say flatly. "Chaos against Void. Family against family. All because Sadie whispered the right lies in the right ears."
"Yes." His voice is steady, ancient. The weight of millennia behind that single word.
"And I tried to stop her." My throat tightens, the words tasting like poison. "I was creating a dimensional prison—something that had never been done before. A pocket dimension specifically designed to trap Sadie and her followers. Lock them away where they couldn't hurt anyone ever again."
Ghatak's hand finds mine, his grip firm and grounding. Not gentle—commanding. The touch of a primordial being who has seen civilizations rise and fall. "You were ambitious," he says, his tone brooking no argument. "Brilliant. You saw what needed to be done and you attempted it."
"I failed," I spit. "I was working on the sealing method—the final component that would lock them inside permanently. But the dimensional framework collapsed before I could stabilize it. The spell backfired."
His thumb traces a deliberate circle on the back of my hand—a gesture both possessive and reassuring. "Dimensional magic is volatile even under ideal conditions. Combining chaos and void energies to create a prison dimension?" He shakes his head slowly. "The fact that you came as close as you did is extraordinary."
Extraordinary. What a useless word.
"The dimensional collapse caught me instead of Sadie," I whisper. "The backlash tore through my consciousness and sent me into a coma. Two thousand years, Ghatak. I was supposed to be the weapon that stopped her, and instead I slept while she slaughtered everyone."
"Your spell kept you alive," Ghatak corrects, his voice dropping to that low, authoritative rumble that makes my dragon instincts want to submit. "Against all probability, the dimensional backlash preserved you rather than destroying you. That matters."
"And the spell?" I force myself to ask. "The broken prison dimension?"
His expression darkens. "Still exists. Still broken. A fractured pocket dimension drifting somewhere between realities, unstable and dangerous. We'll need to deal with it eventually—before it collapses completely and tears a hole in the fabric of space."
Of course it does. Of course my failure is still out there, waiting to cause more damage.
"I tried to fight back," I say, my voice barely audible. "I saw what Sadie was doing, saw the civil war she was orchestrating, and I thought I could stop it. Thought I could be the one to end her before she ended us." I laugh, the sound harsh and broken.
"Instead, my ambition put me to sleep while my entire species was slaughtered."
"Your ambition gave you the courage to attempt the impossible," Ghatak says firmly. "The spell failed. You survived. Those are the facts we work with now."
He's right, but it doesn't make the guilt any lighter. My creation—my weapon against Sadie—backfired and preserved me while my entire species died fighting the war I tried to end.
The war didn't end. It just stopped when there was no one left to fight.Astraea was
We walk in silence for a while, navigating the ruins. The city gives way to what was once farmland—vast stretches of earth that should be green and fertile but are instead cracked and barren. The irrigation channels are dry, clogged with debris. The orchards are skeletal forests of dead trees, their branches reaching toward the poisoned sky like prayers that went unanswered.
This is what Sadie wanted. This desolation. This emptiness.
"Tell me about dragon incubation," I say suddenly, needing to focus on something other than the devastation around us. "What do the eggs need? How long until they hatch?"
Ghatak adjusts the harness, his movements careful and precise. "Dragon eggs are... complicated," he says slowly. "They're not like other species. They don't hatch on a predetermined timeline."
"I remember that much from my education," I say. "They wait for the right conditions. But what does that mean, exactly?"
"It means they're sentient," he explains. "Even in the egg, they can sense the world around them. Temperature, energy levels, the presence of their parents or guardians. They won't hatch until they feel safe."
Safe. The word tastes like ash in my mouth. "And how long can they wait?"
"Indefinitely, if the incubation magic holds. There are records of eggs remaining dormant for thousands of years." He glances back at me, his expression thoughtful. "Your parents' wards were masterwork. The eggs could have waited another thousand years if necessary."
But they didn't have to. Because I came back.
"What else do they need?" I press. "Besides safety?"
"Warmth," he says. "Constant, steady heat. Dragon eggs incubate at temperatures that would kill most other species. And they need energy—magical energy, preferably from their own element. Chaos eggs need chaos magic. Void eggs need void energy."
I think of the violet egg pulsing with my mother's chaos power, the black egg humming with my father's void energy.
"They're getting that from us," I say. "From the wards we reinforced."
"Yes. But it's not enough for hatching. Just for preservation." He pauses, choosing his words carefully. "When they're ready to hatch—when they decide the conditions are right—they'll need a massive influx of energy. A... catalyst."
"What kind of catalyst?"
"That's what we need to find out at the Spire."
Of course it is.
We walked to crest a hill, and the landscape changed again. Here, the destruction is different—not the aftermath of battle, but something stranger. The ground is scorched in perfect circles, as if someone drew them with a compass made of fire. In the center of each circle, the earth has turned to glass, smooth and black and reflective.
"Void bombs," Ghatak says quietly. "Sadie's forces used them in the later stages of the war. They don't just kill—they erase. Everything caught in the blast radius is simply... unmade."
I stare at the glass circles, my stomach churning. "How many dragons did she erase?"
"Too many."
We skirt around the blast sites, neither of us willing to walk across that glass. It feels wrong, disrespectful. Like stepping on graves.
Which, I suppose, it is.
The sun—if you can call that sickly yellow orb a sun—climbs higher in the sky. The heat is oppressive, dry and suffocating. Sweat beads on my skin, and I can feel my dragon form pressing against the edges of my humanoid shape, wanting to emerge, wanting to fly.
But we don't fly. Not yet.
"There," Ghatak says suddenly, pointing.
I follow his gaze and see it—a structure in the distance, half-collapsed but still recognizable. A watchtower, one of dozens that used to ring the capital. This one is leaning precariously to one side, its top third sheared off by some massive impact.
But there's something else.
"Smoke," I breathe.
A thin tendril of gray smoke rises from behind the watchtower, barely visible against the poisoned sky. It's faint, almost imperceptible, but it's there.
Fire. Recent fire.
"Survivors?" I ask, my heart suddenly pounding.
Ghatak's expression is cautious. "Maybe. Or scavengers. Or something worse."
"We should investigate."
"Astraea—"
"We should investigate," I repeat, more firmly this time. "If there are survivors, they need to know they're not alone. And if there are scavengers..." I let chaos energy crackle across my fingertips. "Then they need to know this world isn't theirs for the taking."
He studies me for a long moment, then nods. "Stay close. And if I tell you to run, you run."
"I'm not leaving you."
"I'm not asking you to leave me. I'm asking you to protect the eggs."
Oh.
The weight of that responsibility settles over me like a physical thing. He's right. If something happens, if we encounter hostiles, my first priority has to be the eggs. Not vengeance. Not pride. Not even Ghatak.
The eggs. Always the eggs.
"Fine," I mutter. "But if you die heroically, I'm going to be very annoyed."
"Noted."