Chapter 1

Vandor

The first thing I know is the crushing weight.

It is absolute, a pressure that should pulverize bone and liquefy organs. It presses in from every side, a coffin of my own making, colder than the deepest vein of iron in the mountain. I am not flesh. I am not blood. I am a statue, a monument to a war forgotten by the dirt that holds me.

Then, the sound comes.

Crack.

It is the loudest thing I have heard in three century. It splits the silence of my mind like a thunderclap. A spiderweb of agony shoots through my chest, radiating outward to the tips of my fingers. The paralysis that the Purna witches wove into my marrow begins to fray.

I try to inhale. My lungs are filled with dust. I heave, my chest slamming against the stone casing that imprisons me.

Crack. Snap.

The sound of my own skin shattering is sickening. I shove outward, a blind, primal impulse to be. Stone gives way. Shards of mineralized casing explode outward, raining down the cliffside like hail. I fall forward, my hands hitting the rough granite of the ledge, scrabbling for purchase.

I retch, hacking up dry clots of grey dust. The air rushes into me, shocking and cold. It tastes different. Stale. Thin.

I drag myself out of the debris of my former self. My limbs are heavy, sluggish, responding with a delay that infuriates me. I am Vandor. I am the Alpha of the High Ridge. I do not crawl.

I force myself to stand. My knees pop, a sound like dry branches snapping. I am massive—seven feet of dense muscle and hate, weighing nearly four hundred pounds now that the stone sleep is fading. I gaze down at my hands. They are grey, the color of storm clouds, dusted with the debris of my shell. I flex them. The claws are long, black, and serrated. They ache to tear something open.

"Blix?" I rasp. My voice is a ruin, a grinding of tectonic plates.

There is no answer.

I turn my head, my neck stiffness protesting. The ledge is empty. The other roosts along the cliff face are silent. Some are still whole, smooth, moss-covered statues indistinguishable from the mountain. Others are broken, jagged stumps where brothers have crumbled or been smashed during the long sleep.

I am alone.

A rage, hot and sudden, flares in my gut. I unfurl my wings. They are stiff, the membranes dry as parchment. I stretch them to their full fourteen-foot span, shaking off the last of the stone dust. I can feel the magnetic field of the world humming beneath my feet—the invisible currents that we ride. It feels wrong. Weaker. Shifted.

I tilt my head back and scream at the stars. It is a roar meant to shatter glass, a territorial claim that should echo for miles.

I am here. I am awake. Yield.

The sound rolls down the valley, bouncing off the canyon walls. I wait for the answering calls. I wait for my pack to scream back, for the challengers to shriek their defiance.

Silence.

Only the wind answers, whistling mournfully through the crags.

The emptiness of it hits me harder than the witches’ curse. The world is quiet. Too quiet.

Then, the hunger takes me. It is a violent, cramping void in my stomach. The stone sleep preserves the body, but it demands a tithe upon waking. I need meat. I need blood to turn this mineral sludge in my veins back into life.

I launch myself from the ledge.

For a heartbeat, I fall like a boulder, the wind tearing at my face. Then, my instincts take over. I catch the magnetic current, locking my wings into the unseen grid of force. I bank hard, the air screaming over my scales. My tail, heavy and muscular, snaps out behind me, acting as a rudder to stabilize my descent.

I see movement on the lower scree. A mountain goat, its white coat stark against the dark rock.

It hears me too late.

I drop from the sky like a hammer. I do not use magic; I do not waste the energy. I use gravity and weight. I slam into the beast, my claws sinking deep into the spine. It dies instantly, spared the terror of the chase.

I tear into it right there on the slope, ignoring the grit of the dirt. I eat raw, tearing huge strips of muscle from the bone, swallowing them whole. The hot blood washes away the taste of dust. Strength floods back into me, vibrant and electric. The grey of my skin deepens, taking on the dark, rich sheen of polished hematite.

Sated, I wipe my mouth with my hand and look up.

I am standing on the lower ridge, looking out over the valley that has been my territory since we drove the Dark Elves back to the sea.

I freeze.

The horizon is burning.

Not with fire, but with light. unnatural, steady, ugly yellow light. It bleeds into the sky from the south, blotting out the stars. There are structures there—sprawling, geometric hives that glow like embers.

Cities. Human cities.

I hiss, a low vibration in my throat. They are close. Too close. When I went to sleep, the humans huddled in mud huts and feared the dark. Now, they have pushed back the night with their artificial suns.

I look closer at the forest below me. The tree line has receded. The ancient groves where we hunted have been cut back, tamed, replaced by orderly rows of... nothing.

"Parasites," I spit. The word tastes foul.

I take to the air again, needing to see the extent of the infestation. I fly the perimeter of my domain, checking the ancient markers. The stone pillars we erected to warn off intruders are gone, weathered away or toppled by time.

I circle the central valley, the heart of my territory. This should be the deepest, darkest part of the wilderness.

And then I smell it.

It hits me like a physical blow—a scent that has no place in the high air of the mountains. It is not the musk of an animal or the rot of the swamp.

It is woodsmoke. Dried sage. Lavender. And beneath it all, the milky, cloying scent of a soft-skinned mammal.

Human.

My lip curls back, exposing my fangs. A human. Here. In the center of my land.

I bank my wings, diving toward the scent. I track it through the dark canopy, the smell growing stronger, more offensive. It smells of domesticity. Of safety.

I break through the trees and hover, my wings beating silently against the updraft.

There, nestled between the roots of the Great Oaks, is a structure. It is not a mud hut. It is a cottage of stone and timber, with a slate roof and a chimney that breathes grey smoke into my sky. Light spills from a window—warm, golden light that cuts a wound in the darkness of my forest.

I stare at it, uncomprehending. They have built a nest in my ribs.

I land on the thick branch of an oak that overlooks the roof. The wood groans under my four hundred pounds, but it holds. I crouch, my tail twitching with agitation.

Through the window, I see movement. A figure passes in front of the light. Small. Frail. No armor. No weapons.

I should kill it. It would be easy. A single dive, a single crush of my fist, and the infestation would be removed. I could tear the roof off this hovel and scatter the stones.

But I pause.

The creature is humming. The sound drifts up through the chimney. It is a soft, melodic sound, devoid of fear.

It does not know I am here. It does not know that the mountain has woken up, and that the owner of this land has returned to collect his rent.

I narrow my eyes, my vision shifting to the thermal spectrum. The figure glows with heat—life, vibrant and unaware.

Let it hum. Let it feel safe for one more hour.

I launch myself from the branch, climbing back into the sky to circle my reclaimed kingdom. The human is small, but the insult is large.

Tomorrow, the stone wakes fully. Tomorrow, the intruder learns that the statues do not just watch.

We judge. And we execute.