Lying all alone, just north of the Wood of Thorns, in an empty plain beneath an ancient tree, its branches concealing it well, sat a single egg.

A dragon’s egg.

Large and purple and hard, covered with scales, it sat there alone, as if waiting for its father to arrive. It was so out of place here in Escalon, not surrounded by molten fire, by lava and ash, by circling dragons, hovering, protecting, waiting for it to hatch. It could already feel it was different than all the others.

It sat there, waiting to die—or to hatch. It could feel how vulnerable it was.

Despite all odds, it had survived. Animals had come, sniffing out of curiosity, yet so far they had left. But now, he sensed, another one came. More than one—a pack of wolves. They were fast approaching his egg, and they were hungry. This time, they would kill him.

He knew he was not meant to hatch anytime soon, but this dragon summoned all his willpower, forced himself to move within the egg, to defy the natural waiting period. With all his might, he moved one arm, then one shoulder, then his knee. He did what no dragon was supposed to do, what no other dragon was able to do. For he was different. He was, he sensed, more powerful than them all.

As the final rays of the sun began to set, far out of earshot of all humans, in this barren countryside, there came a single crack.

Then another.

A small claw emerged, its fingernails reaching for the sky as if to claw it. This was followed by another.

Soon, the egg began to shatter, and finally, the arm, then the head of a baby dragon emerged. The son of Theos.

The wolves stopped in their tracks, for the first time in their lives experiencing fear of another creature.

The dragon leaned back and took his first glance at the world, the sky, and he blinked. It was not the world he had expected to see. He screeched. It was a young sound still—yet even so, terrifying enough to scare away anyone close.

For this dragon already wanted to breathe, to live, to kill.

He arched back his neck and breathed, his first breath, and out came a stream of fire. The fire of life. And the fire of the death to come.

The pack of wolves turned and ran, never looking back.

They were smart to run. For the first time in a millennium, in the land of Escalon, a dragon was born.

CHAPTER FORTY