The scream didn't just fade.
It lingered.
Not in the air, in something deeper,
something older.
It sank into the earth like blood into soil, spread through the roots of ancient trees, rippled across stone that remembered when gods walked freely and the world was young and terrible.
Every beast within felt it,
Heard it.
Knew it.
The dragon's presence, uncontained, unfiltered, divine, a signal flare shot into the primordial parts of their minds where instinct lived and reason had never been invited.
It bypassed thought entirely. Bypassed choice.
They didn't decide to answer.
They were compelled.
Like iron shavings to a magnet. Like moths to flame. Like prey recognizing the scent of something so far above them in the hierarchy of existence that survival instinct inverted, became compulsion, became the desperate need to either submit or destroy before being destroyed.
