In the far north, where the ice never thaws and the wind carries the taste of iron, the Dragonborn of Ioth'arand felt the first omen.
It began as tremors beneath their temples — faint at first, like the stirring of something vast beneath the world. Then came the smoke: thin threads rising from fissures in the glaciers, black against the pale horizon. Hunters found whole valleys where the snow had turned to ash overnight. The elders spoke of warmth beneath their feet for the first time in living memory.
For days, the sun had not pierced the shroud that coiled over the northern range. The air tasted of ash and thunder. Herds scattered south, crows wheeled in circles, and the snow itself began to melt in places untouched by warmth for a thousand years. Beneath the ice, the earth trembled — slow, rhythmic, almost like breath.
They gathered in the great amphitheater of stone, scales gleaming like frost-bitten bronze, faces lifted to the sky. The air thrummed. The mountain range beyond their city pulsed faintly, each beat like the echo of a forgotten heart.
The tremors deepened until cups rattled in the temples and the ice upon the altars began to crack. The air grew heavy — pregnant with something vast and waiting.
Then came the sound.
A heartbeat — immense and deep, echoing through the stone.
Priests unsealed shrines untouched for a thousand years. They lit the old fires, burned the offerings, and whispered names that had not been spoken since the first exile.
Some wept. Others fell to their knees, trembling — not from faith, but recognition.
"They wake," the high priestess breathed. "The gods of our blood."
The words lingered in the smoky air, carried away by the wind that swept over the amphitheater and across the frozen expanse beyond. The prayers of the Dragonborn rose with it — smoke, blood, and song — drifting toward the shrouded peaks.
Far beyond their temples, the mountains heard.
Stone remembered heat. Ice split like glass.
And deep beneath the range, something vast began to stir — answering the call that had waited a thousand years.
The first to wake were the lesser ones: scales dulled from centuries of stillness, eyes flickering with buried flame. They stirred within caverns lined with ancient bone and crystal, testing wings that cracked the frost as they unfurled. Their growls rolled like distant storms, shaking dust from the vaulted ceilings.
The sound spread — one pulse answering another — until the entire mountain throbbed with life. Steam hissed from fissures in the rock; rivers of molten light veined the black stone. From every crevice and shadow, the Draken emerged, stretching, exhaling smoke and gold — a chorus of awakening that made the world hold its breath.
They were not chaos. They moved with ritual precision — a civilization reborn, not beasts roused from slumber. Each one took its place in silent formation, vast wings folding, heads bowing toward the heart of the mountain where the throne waited.
Upon a dais of dark crystal, a sovereign waited — still as stone, haloed by molten light.
The Draken King watched as one might watch children rediscover their strength — quiet pride gleaming behind eyes that held the memory of ages. The light of molten stone painted the king in shades of gold and shadow; the sovereign's horns caught it like a crown of fire. When the king rose, the tremor of the motion rippled through the air, commanding stillness.
Below, hundreds bowed — wings folding tight, foreheads pressed to stone.
The King's words rolled not through sound but through essence, vibrating in every scale, every bone, every heartbeat. The molten crystal veins pulsed in harmony with the command, and the Draken host inclined their heads, wings folding in reverence.
"Ssearth ssej galadth," the king intoned, and the cavern seemed to pulse with the words. The long silence ends.
They were both benediction and decree.
Above the king, the cavern roof began to fracture — thin veins of light piercing the dark, as if the mountain itself could no longer contain them.
The king stepped forward, gaze lifting to the unseen world beyond the stone.
A ripple passed through the host. Even the molten rivers seemed to pause.
"The third is ready," the King continued, voice soft now, yet no less commanding. "Thurirl ir ssearth" — it comes now.
A hush followed — a moment so absolute that even the molten rivers seemed to still. Then, with a single beat of the king's wings, the throne behind shattered, its fragments swallowed by fire.
Around the king, the host answered with a roar that split the sky.
The mountain replied with thunder and flame. Smoke rose like banners into the dark, and when the first of the Draken took flight, their wings eclipsed the sun.
From the heart of the host, the Draken King raised a single clawed hand. A ripple passed through the ancient scales and sinew of the awakened army, subtle, commanding, inevitable. One of the eldest and largest Draken — its wings broad as glaciers, eyes like molten brass — stepped forward.
It did not speak. Its motion carried purpose, a resonance older than the mountains themselves. From the peak of the northern range, it lifted into the storm-wracked sky, wings slicing through clouds that had not seen flight in a thousand years. Below, the Dragonborn of Ioth'arand felt it before they saw it: a pulse in their bones, a vibration that rolled like distant thunder through their frozen city.
The high priest — Hierarch of the First Flame, keeper of the ancient rites — looked to the sky and knelt instinctively. The envoy descended like a shadowed comet, landing with the earth-shaking authority of inevitability.
The Hierarch's scales shivered under the shadowed comet, the pulse of ancient power thrumming in his bones.
The Draken's eyes glowed, a silent command that burned into the priest's mind: ossalur — travel.
And so he went.
Through frozen valleys and ash-strewn plains, across rivers that hissed and boiled where the earth remembered fire, the Hierarch journeyed. Every step was a prayer, every breath an offering. He did not question, for the echo of the King's presence thrummed in his chest like the pulse of the mountain itself.
When at last he arrived, the cavern stretched endlessly before him, its ceilings lost in molten haze. Columns of black crystal twisted upward, veins of light running through them like rivers of fire. The Draken host bowed in silence, wings folded, heads lowered, awaiting the word. And there, upon a dais carved of obsidian and molten stone, the Draken King stood.
The air shimmered with heat and power, yet the King was still — every muscle coiled in restraint, eyes older than memory. The Hierarch's scales reflected the golden glow, but he dared not raise his gaze.
"Darahar de wer Ioth'arand. Do you still remember whose breath forged your blood?" The King's voice rolled not through sound, but through essence, vibrating in every scale, every bone, every heartbeat.
The Hierarch lowered himself to the cold stone, kneeling. "We remember, my King. We have never ceased."
He dared not raise his gaze, yet every nerve screamed with the memory of fire that had forged their blood.
The King's gaze, slow and penetrating, studied him. "You kneel too quickly. I asked if you remember — not if you serve."
The Hierarch dared a shiver of acknowledgment. "Throtominarr. We serve through memory, through honor."
A silence followed, thick and heavy with aeons. Then the King's words fell like fire:
"Darastrixethe. Rise — and carry my word to the south. The second and the third Neri must be found. Tell them the Eir Arand beats again."
The Hierarch's pulse flared with a strange heat. He had expected names, faces, guidance. The King gave none. Only destiny, absolute and incomprehensible.
He bent his head, feeling the weight of command and the echo of uncountable centuries in his bones. The King's eyes seemed to pierce through time, marking him, charging him with the memory of fire itself.
When the audience ended, the Hierarch returned home, carrying the King's will like a torch burning in his chest. The Dragonborn city stirred at his approach. The air thrummed with expectation as the armies gathered, not for conquest, but for pilgrimage. They readied banners dyed in ash and flame, drew steel etched with sacred runes, and mounted their beasts, scales shimmering with reflected fire.
They did not march for war. They marched for prophecy.
Across frozen plains, over jagged ridges, and through valleys where rivers still boiled from the first awakening, the Dragonborn moved as one. Their drums echoed the heartbeat of the mountain, their chants carried the words of the King, and their eyes, bright with devotion and fear, scanned the horizon for signs of the second and third Spears.
The mountain pulsed far behind them, a silent witness, a heartbeat that would not cease. And the wind carried the message south: the world had stirred, the long silence had ended, and the ancient children had been called.