The Dragon Kings' Forbidden Witch

"What is so urgent that you enter my chambers without permission?"

Rhen’s voice shook as he forced the words out. "Pardon my manners, Your Majesty."

His bow remained perfect even as panic screamed through every line of his body.

"I just received urgent news from the guards at the outer palace."

He paused, gathering himself, trying to force his voice into steadiness.

"The ancient ones..."

His voice dropped. "They are in distress."

Kaelen’s voice exploded through the chamber.

"What the fuck do you mean by they are in distress?"

His pale eyes blazed with something that was part fury and part exhilaration.

Rhen swallowed hard.

"According to the reports from the guards stationed at the Dragon Sanctum, they became restless approximately one hour ago."

His words came in a rush, tumbling over each other in his desperation to convey the information.

"They have destroyed half of their chamber with dragonfire."

He paused, his voice dropping to barely a whisper.

"One guard is reported dead already."

Draeven stood sharply.

"What?"

"How is that possible?"

His hand gripped the edge of the desk so tightly that the wood began to crack.

"They’ve been stable for centuries without...."

And then....

THE BELL TOLLED.

The sound seemed to come from the very heart of the palace, reverberating throughout the stones and It shook the very foundations of the palace.

Thorne was immediately on his feet.

His analytical mind was already working through possibilities, through implications, through what this disturbance meant and why it was happening now.

"Something must have triggered them, they wouldn’t enter this state without cause."

THE BELL TOLLED AGAIN.

A second deep note that seemed to shake the entire palace.

Draeven was already moving, his entire body responding to the call.

"Rhen, assemble the guard," he commanded.

Kaelen followed immediately, his pale eyes burning with the kind of excitement that only comes before battle.

Thorne moved last. he took a deep breath, shook his head and then walked out of the room.

***

*THE DRAGON SANCTUM*

The doors to the Dragon Sanctum were massive.

Ancient stone carved with symbols that predated the current age. Heavy wood reinforced with iron bands. They towered above even the kings, monuments to the need to contain something so powerful that it required architecture as much as magic.

As Draeven, Kaelen, and Thorne approached, those doors were thrown wide open.

And what emerged was chaos.

Pure, undeniable, devastating chaos.

Fire.

There was fire everywhere.

Not the controlled flames of a hearth or the strategic burn of a torch. This was dragon fire, wild and ancient and utterly indifferent to mortal concepts of destruction. It climbed the walls in places where stone itself seemed to burn. It licked at the edges of collapsed doorways and melted what had once been wooden structures into pools of slag and ash.

The heat was staggering.

Even from a distance, even filtered through the chaos and confusion of the courtyard before the Sanctum, the heat struck the kings like a physical blow. It was the kind of heat that suggested the very air was burning, that breathing would singe the lungs, that standing still for too long would result in the skin beginning to char.

And in the midst of that chaos, servants moved.

Desperate, frantic, utterly futile in their efforts.

They carried buckets...empty buckets and full buckets and buckets of sand and buckets of whatever water could be spared from the palace reserves. They moved in patterns that might have made sense in response to a normal fire. Lines of servants passing buckets from one to the next, attempting to contain the blaze, attempting to prevent the destruction from spreading.

But this was not a normal fire.

Dragonfire did not respond to water or sand or mortal effort.

Dragonfire was a force of nature, ancient and primal, responding only to the will of the dragon that breathed it.

And yet the servants continued.

Because what else could they do?

They continued to run, their faces streaked with soot and sweat. They continued to throw water against flames that devoured it without flinching. They continued to move buckets and organize lines and attempt to create the appearance of response even as they understood, on some level, that their efforts were meaningless.

Some of them were crying.

Guards were shouting orders that no one could hear over the roar of flames and the crashing sound of stones falling as the structure itself began to fail. Sections of the Sanctum’s outer wall were cracking. Pieces of stone were falling....small at first, then larger, then massive chunks that crushed anything beneath them.

One guard had already been killed.

His body lay covered with a cloth in a corner of the courtyard, a silent reminder that this was not a drill.

The three kings took in the devastation with the understanding of beings who had witnessed centuries of destruction.

Draeven’s expression hardened into something carved from stone. His golden eyes swept across the scene, taking in the damage, assessing the remaining threats, calculating what could still be saved.

Kaelen’s pale eyes gleamed with something between fear and a terrible, exhilarating excitement.

The youngest king had always been closest to his dragon. Had always felt the hunger of GLACIUS most keenly. And watching destruction on this scale, watching power unleashed without restraint, was stirring something dangerous in his blood.

His hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides.

His breathing was slightly elevated.

The barely restrained energy of a predator sensing that a hunt was about to begin.

Thorne’s dark eyes moved across the scene.

Draeven turned to face his brothers. "Do you think we can handle them?"

The practicality of it. The necessity. The understanding that sentiment and caution and self-preservation all had to be abandoned in the face of what might happen if the ancient dragons continued unchecked.

If they weren’t stopped, the palace would fall.

Stones would crumble. Structures would collapse. The kingdom’s heart would be destroyed.

And everyone in it...thousands of people, children and elderly and those too ill or injured to flee, would die.