I let Delilah talk excitedly as we walked deeper into the forest. She kept pointing out plants, moss, and flowers I would have ignored if she had not looked so happy every time she found one.
"This one is thriving," she said, crouching beside a patch of deep blue moss. "And this one too. Oh! Master, look at this vine. It should not be thriving here, but it is trying."
I slowed down and looked where she was pointing. At first it just looked like a vine. It was a blue-green vine, nothing more at first glance. It wrapped around the base of a tree like it belonged there. Then I focused on it properly.
There was that same green I had seen before, Delilah's green, or something so close to it that I knew it had to be nature. It moved through the vine in small, living pulses, soft and stubborn all at once. The plant was refusing to die. And as weird as it was, I could relate to that. Somehow, I found myself caring about this insignificant little plant.
I could sense something else, it was darker not black more like a green that had been weakened and necrotic it was wrong.
I frowned.
The more I looked, the more I started to notice the difference.
Delilah's magic was easy to spot now. It felt alive. When it touched something, even a little, that thing responded. Leaves straightened. Moss brightened. Tiny roots pushed deeper into the soil like they finally had the strength to do what they were meant to.
The rest of the forest was different.
The farther we walked, the more I realized how bad it really was. There was still life here, sure, but it felt weak. Thin. Like the whole place was surviving on almost nothing. Plants that should have been full of life and vitality, were barely hanging on.
Flowers bloomed, but not fully. Some of the grass still had color, but no real energy. The trees were still standing, still huge and strange with their blue leaves under that purple sky, but something had been taken out of them.
Drained.
That was the word that most described it this whole forest felt drained.
Delilah moved from one small patch of life to the next with an excitement only someone like her could have managed in a place like this. Every time she found something still surviving, her whole face softened.
"This one is trying so hard," she said, gently touching a thin cluster of pale flowers growing between two roots. "And this is trying to spread. It is weak, but it is trying. Oh! This one has even changed the shape of its leaves."
I looked down at the small plant she was crouched over. The leaves were narrow and curled inward at the edges, almost waxy.
"They're evolving?" I asked.
Delilah looked up at me and grasped what I meant as she doesn't know what evolution is, nodded quickly. "It is changing so it can survive. The air is wrong. The soil is wrong. The light is wrong. Yet it still wishes to live."
I stared at the plant a little longer than I meant to.
"Yeah I understand that as a wise man once said life finds aways," I muttered.
She smiled at me like I had said something wise. I really had not.
Still, I kept paying attention as we walked. The longer I did it, the easier it became. My senses, my magic, whatever this new part of me was, started sorting the forest into groups. Healthy life. Weak life. Delilah's magic. The corruption under all of it. I did not even have to force it anymore. It just happened.
And that was worse, because once I noticed it clearly, I could not stop noticing it.
There were places where the green was still strong enough to gather around roots and all spots of green. Those spots felt cooler, calmer, safer somehow. Then there were the dead patches. Places where the ground looked normal at first, but the moment my senses touched it, I felt nothing. No pulse. No growth. No resistance. Just emptiness.
I stopped beside one of those patches and crouched down, pressing my fingers into the dirt.
And nothing it wasn't even nothing it was the absence it should have held something. Even dead soil should have had some trace left in it. Some memory of life. This had less than that. It felt hollow, like whatever made the land alive had been pulled out of it.
A pulse of magic slipped from my fingers without me meaning to, and the truth rushed up my arm so sharply I had to grit my teeth.
Life energy or whatever it was called.
Was gone.
Drained until all that was left was a shell pretending to still be part of a forest.
I sat back and looked around again, really looked.
No birds or insects.
No rustling in the undergrowth. No small movements. No proper forest sounds at all, now that I was paying attention.
Just Delilah's footsteps. Mine. The distant movement of leaves. And under it all, that horrible wrongness hanging over everything like a blanket.
"You feel it," Delilah said quietly.
I looked over at her. She was not smiling now. Her eyes were fixed on the dead patch my hand was still half-buried in.
"Yeah," I said. "I do."
Her fingers tightened around the fabric of her leafy outfit. "I do not know what caused it. Only that something took too much. The land still tries to fix itself, but there is not enough left."
I rubbed my thumb against my fingers, dirt clinging to my new skin. "Battlefield," I said, half to myself. "That thing I woke up in. Maybe whatever happened there did not just kill people."
Delilah's face fell. "Death of that scale stains more than flesh."
Well that was a cheerful thought.
I pushed myself back to my feet and brushed off my hands. As grim as it all was, part of me could not stop studying it. My new senses kept breaking it all apart and showing it to me piece by piece, and underneath the dread there was something else too: fascination. The forest was wounded, wrong, half-drained and struggling, and I still could not stop wanting to understand how it all worked.
Useful but creepy as hell but still useful.
And maybe that was the strangest part. Even with all of this being wrong, the forest was not fully dead. Parts of it were still adapting. Still fighting. Still changing so they could survive.
I was still turning over everything the forest had shown me when something brighter caught my eye.
I spotted a cluster of strange fruit hanging from a branch a little way ahead, their skins shining somewhere between deep orange and gold.
And my winemaking skill instantly told me more than that. The fruit was ripe, high quality, and packed with potential. It was sweet, layered, and rare enough that my head immediately started filing it under useful.
I stop walking and point up at the fruit. "Tell me I'm not losing my mind and those are actually useful."
Delilah follows my gaze, and whatever excitement had been on her face shifts into curiosity.
Delilah tilts her head and pokes the fruit. I watch a thread of her magic flow into it, feeling her test it first, reading it the way only she can. A second later she gives it a little more, and the fruit reacts brightly, as if her power has coaxed it into ripening just a touch further. I almost close my eyes, but then I realise bright lights do not seem capable of damaging my retinas anymore.
Delilah picks the ripe fruit, takes a bite, then offers me some. I can't really refuse her, so I do the same, and my mouth fills with flavour. It tastes like mango and a dozen other things that should clash, but somehow blend perfectly.
I let out a small moan of bliss.
Delilah smiles.
I close my eyes and sigh in contentment. "This is amazing. Delilah, do you think you could grow more of these? I can already see the potential in them."
I scratch the back of my head. "Though that might just be the hunger talking."
Delilah looks back at the fruit and brushes her fingers over the branch. "I could grow more, Master… but not easily. I do not have the power to fix the damage done to this forest. The land wants more, and much of what strength I pour into it is swallowed before it can truly take root."
I glance around and nod.
That was a shame, because even with just one bite my head was already filled with ideas—food, trade, and wine. If this forest could still grow things like this, then maybe it was not as dead as it appeared. Maybe this place was a diamond in the rough.
"Do what you can. Stay close to the cave if anything feels wrong." My eyes drift back toward the distant castle. "Stay here, start making progress on the workshop, and collect as many of these fruits as you can find."
I poke her forehead and push the image of the workshop into her mind. She gasps, and I can see exactly what catches her attention: the plan, the scale of it, the fact that the fallen tree is large enough to work with, and the way magic could cut corners where hands and tools fail.
Then her face falls. "Master… you are leaving?"
"Only for a bit," I say, already looking back at the castle. "Something about that place is pulling at me, and I need to know why."
She hesitates, then nods. "Then please return soon."
I huff out a laugh. "That's the plan."
I start walking toward the castle and the disturbance. With every step, the pull in my chest grows stronger.
And beneath it, there is something else—something that does not feel fully mine.
Sorrow.
Why the hell do I feel sorrow when I look at that castle?
Delilah's eyes stay on me the whole time, and for a second I almost stop. Then the pull tightens in my chest, and I keep going.
The further I get from her, the more I notice the difference.
Now that I am alone, the green fades faster with every step. The trees are still massive, still wrong in that almost beautiful way, but the closer I get to the castle, the more they feel like they are only standing out of pride.
The red grass had darkened too.
Not by much at first, still strange, but richer now, thicker, closer to blood. Twisted roots push up through the earth in black-red knots like the ground itself is trying to claw its way back together. Some of them are so warped they barely look like roots anymore.
The air had changed too. The warmth had been pulled out of the forest and left it feeling hollow. It did not bother me as much as I thought it would, but I still rubbed my arms once. Then I flicked my hand, let a little warmth flow back into me, and continued my trek.
My senses do not let me ignore any of it.
Out here, it is the same feeling as before, only worse. I pause beside a tree with bark blackened almost to charcoal and press my hand against it.
A pulse of magic slips from my fingers on instinct, and the answer comes back at once. The tree is alive. Barely, but still alive, and somehow that feels incredible.
Its roots are still drawing something from the ground, but not enough. Whatever should be feeding it has been thinned out so badly that the tree feels half-starved.
"Lovely," I mutter, pulling my hand away. "Absolutely lovely."
The castle is bigger now.
I can still only see part of it through the trees, but what I can make out is enough. Black stone. Broken towers. Jagged edges where walls used to be. It sits on that mountain.
And every time I look at it, that strange pressure in my chest pulls a little harder.
I know I should be more afraid than I am.
Or maybe I am afraid and everything else is just piled on top of it. Confusion. Curiosity. That low ache of sorrow that still does not feel entirely like mine. There is too much in my head to pick it all apart neatly.
So I do the only thing that makes sense.
I keep moving.
The forest grows quieter the deeper I go. Just my own footsteps and the soft whisper of leaves overhead.
And even those start sounding wrong. I stop and listen properly.
Nothing.
No. Not nothing.
There.
Far ahead. Faint. Wet.
My nose catches the scent a second later.
Blood. Fresh enough that my whole body goes still.
I turn slowly in the direction of it and breathe in again.
Definitely blood. A lot of it, and I can taste it on my tongue.
"Well, that can't be good."
The pull in my chest does not lessen. If anything it gets worse, almost urging me forward now.
I follow the smell.
The ground changes under my boots. The red grass gives way in places to patches of churned earth and broken roots. Branches lie snapped where something large forced its way through. There are gouges on the bark of nearby trees, long enough and deep.
Claws. Big ones at that.
The marks are not random either. Some are low, angled like something lunged. Others are high up the trunk, as if whatever did this either reared or struck while it was moving. There is blackened residue around one of them too, almost like the wood was scorched.
I crouch beside the broken earth and touch it.
The magic comes back hot this time, almost burning. For one second it feels like a memory of violence. Not a real memory, though. More like an echo. It crawls over my skin in pieces, the rage first, then pain, then fear.
I push back to my feet a little too fast.
"Right," I say, my throat dry now. "So something big bled a lot, probably tore half the forest apart, and might be one of the reasons for all of this."
The blood trail becomes easier to follow after that. It stains the grass almost black, thick and smeared across the ground. Some of it has splashed over rocks. Some of it has soaked into the soil and fed it. The sheer amount of magic in the air almost makes me choke.
It is old, nothing like the magic I have tasted and seen before. I swallow against it and feel it settle inside me. It is almost addictive.
The deeper I go, the worse the signs get. A patch of trees has been blasted apart entirely. One trunk is split down the middle. Another has been knocked over, roots ripped out of the ground. There are scales caught on the broken bark, dark and iridescent, each one bigger than my hand.
I pick one up. It is warm.
That makes me stop dead.
Warm.
Whatever left this was alive not that long ago.
The sorrow in my chest twists hard enough to make me wince.
And then, like the universe has decided I was not uncomfortable enough, a familiar box appears in front of my face.
[Feat achieved! You will probably need this have fun. +1 Ticket]
[Roll Y/N]
Fine roll but it better not like the one before or I will kill you.
[Taming]
|Elite Skill|
[Expert Taming] |Elite Skill| You are an expert in taming and domestication. You know how to turn a ferocious beast into your best buddy, and you know how to skillfully train creatures to gain their obedience and their loyalty. This can also be applied to people to a lesser extent.
I stare at it.
Then I look down at the scale in my hand.
Then back at the box.
"…you have got to be joking."
No reply.
Of course not.
I dismiss the screen with a thought and keep going, because if there is one thing I have learned from this stupid thing, it is that it has a sense of humour.
The smell of blood gets stronger.
So does the pull.
The castle is close enough now that I can see more of its ruined shape through the trees, and somehow that only makes the sorrow worse. It presses at the back of my throat, sits heavy behind my ribs. I do not know if it belongs to me, the body I am in, or this place itself, but it is there all the same.
Then the trees thin out.
I stop at the edge of a clearing and just stare.
The ground has been destroyed.
Roots have been torn free and scattered. The red grass has been flattened into dark, wet streaks. Half the clearing looks burned, the soil cracked and black in a wide arc like something hot and furious hit it from above. There are gouges everywhere, long trenches carved into earth and stone, and in the middle of all of it lies the thing that made my senses scream before I even properly saw it.
A dragon.
My breath catches.
Even dying, she is enormous.
Her body is half-curled around a nest smashed almost beyond recognition, black-red scales dulled by blood and dirt but still beautiful in a way that makes my chest ache. One wing is torn so badly that bone shows through the membrane. Her side is split open in a wound too deep and ugly to have any hope of healing. Blood—dark, heavy, far too much of it—has pooled beneath her and soaked deep into the ruined nest.
For one second I do nothing.
I just stand there and stare, because my brain is trying and failing to catch up.
Dragon.
Actual dragon.
Not a story. Not a symbol. Not a figment of my imagination.
A real dragon.
I can feel it. I can taste it.
A real dragon. And she is dying.
Her head shifts, slowly and painfully.
One eye opens.
It finds me immediately.
I freeze.
Because there is no hatred in that gaze. No challenge. No instinctive violence. Nothing like I thought I would see. There is pain there. Exhaustion. And… recognition.
I do not know how I know that last part, but I do.
She knows me.
Or maybe not me. Not fully. But something in me. Maybe it was the original owner of this body. Maybe it was the blood. Whatever it was, the sorrow in my chest nearly sent me to my knees. I did not even realize I had moved.
Slowly, carefully, I step further into the clearing. The dragon's eye tracks me the whole way, but she does not lash out. Her breathing is ragged, each exhale sounding like a furnace struggling to stay lit.
"Hey," I say quietly, because apparently my brain has completely given up on appropriate responses. "Easy."
She blinks once.
I stop just short of her head.
Up close she is even worse.
There are deep punctures in her neck and shoulder, the kind that look like something monstrous bit down and did not let go. One of her horns is cracked. There are burns across her flank that do not look natural, more like concentrated blasts of something foul. And behind her, half-hidden beneath one shattered edge of wing, the nest is a graveyard.
Broken shells, crushed eggs, and blood. Something twists in my stomach.
"No…"
The word leaves me before I even realize I am saying it. A tear slips down my face. The dragon's eye narrows slightly, not in anger, but in understanding and sorrow.
I do the stupidest thing I have done in the last ten minutes, which is saying something.
I kneel.
Then I reach out and place my hand against her snout.
Her scales are warm. The moment I touch her, something passes between us.
Not words.
Grief so large it almost drowns me. Protective fury. Pain. Loss. And under all of that, beneath the wreckage and blood and death, the faintest thread of trust.
It is not for me.
Not exactly.
It is for the one who wore this face before me.
For the blood in my veins.
My throat tightens.
"I'm sorry," I whisper, and I do not even know who I am apologizing for.
The dragon lets out a low sound, too soft to be called a growl. More like a broken exhale.
Then, with what looks like the last of her strength, she moves.
It is barely anything. A twitch of muscle. A painful shift of her ruined wing. But it is enough.
The broken limb lifts just a little.
Enough for me to see what lies beneath it.
At first all I see are more shattered shells. More loss. The remains of eggs that never got the chance to be anything else.
Then I see it.
One egg.
Still whole.
Black.
Not plain black either. The shell is dark as obsidian, but threaded through with deep red veins that glow faintly under the blood smeared across it. It is larger than I expect, almost up to my chest if I stood it upright, and even from where I am kneeling I can feel the heat coming off it.
Warm.
Alive.
My hand slips from the dragon's snout to the edge of the nest without me meaning it to.
The dragon watches me.
There is no question in her gaze now.
Only certainty.
She is giving it to me.
The realization hits so hard I just stare at her.
"Why?"
My voice sounds small in the clearing.
Pathetic, really, but I do not know what else to say.
She lets out another weak breath and nudges the egg with the side of her snout. Just once. Careful, even now.
Toward me.
Toward my hands.
My chest hurts. The sorrow is not just in me anymore. It is everywhere. In the clearing. In the ruined nest. In the shattered shells. In the dragon looking at me like she already knows how this ends.
I put both hands on the egg.
It is heavier than I thought it would be. Smooth, hot, faintly pulsing beneath the shell like there is a heartbeat hidden somewhere inside.
The moment I touch it properly, a strange calm runs through my hands and up my arms.
The dragon sees that I have it.
And something in her finally loosens.
Her eye stays on me for one last second. There is still pain there. Still grief. But there is relief too.
She trusts me.
Me.
Or maybe him.
I swallow hard and place my hand on her snout.
"You have my word. I'll take care of it," I say, because I cannot leave this moment with nothing. "I swear."
The dragon's eye closes.
Her head lowers the smallest amount.
And the clearing goes still.
I do not move for a long time.
I just kneel there, blood on my knees, hands wrapped around a black-and-red egg, while the ruined castle looms over everything and the body I am wearing aches with a grief I still do not fully understand.
Then, far off through the trees, something moved.
I lift my head slowly, still holding the egg.
Whatever it is, it is coming this way.