Prologue - The First Fire - Morna

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The rain fell like forgetting. Soft at first, then relentless.

It turned ash to black rivers that carved through the valley. The air smelled of wet stone and smoke that refused to fade.

Morna stood at the edge of the clearing. Her bare feet sank into mud still warm from flame. The hem of her dress was scorched and torn where she had clawed at it, trying to reach him.

But Torin was gone. And words meant nothing to ash.

Torin had been poisoned. Something dark in his blood, spreading like ink through water. She had brewed the potion to draw it out, to replace death with life. The magic was supposed to flow through her and into him, fueled by the child growing beneath her heart.

But the baby was too strong. Storm-touched. Dragon-blessed. When Morna opened the channel between them, the child's raw power surged through like lightning through wire. It did not heal. It consumed.

The fire came without warning. White heat erupted from the earth beneath Torin's body, a column of flame that turned the air to glass. Morna lunged for him. Her hands blistered as they met the heat. She screamed his name, but the fire swallowed sound.

Three seconds. That was all it took.

When the flames died, nothing remained. Not bone. Not ash. Just scorched earth and the smell of burned air.

Morna fell to her knees in the space where he had been. Her hands pressed into dirt still hot enough to sear flesh. She did not feel it. She felt nothing at all.

Then the child inside her went still.

Morna pressed her palm to her stomach. Flat. Empty. The life that had been there when she woke this morning was gone. Not lost. Erased.

"I love you. I am sorry. Please, do not leave me here alone."

But the dead do not speak the language of grief.

The dragons had tried to warn her. Their voices had rolled through her mind like thunder, cautioning her that the spell was older than mercy, that it would demand a price she could not pay. But love had made her reckless. And grief had made her blind.

For three days, Morna did not move from the clearing. Rain soaked through her dress. Mud caked her skin. She pressed her hands to the earth and whispered his name until her voice broke.

The dragons watched from the ridge. Silent. Patient. Waiting for her grief to spend itself.

It did not. It calcified.

On the fourth day, she stood. Her legs trembled. Her hands did not.

"You let him die," she said. Her voice was quiet. It cut through the rain like a blade.

The dragons did not answer.

"You knew what the magic would do." Her voice rose. "You KNEW, and you let me reach for it anyway."

One of them stirred. Scales rippled like water over stone.

"We warned you, daughter of earth. The choice was always yours."

Her breath caught like a blow. Her vision blurred. For a moment, she wavered.

Then something inside her snapped.

"The choice was always yours," she echoed. "You gave me power without mercy and watched the world I loved burn."

"We did not burn him. You did."

The words struck like a lash. Morna staggered but did not fall. She pressed her hands into the mud and felt the earth pulse beneath her palms. It was warm. It was alive. It was still hers.

"Yes," she whispered. "I did."

And the truth hollowed her out.

The rain fell harder. The valley shuddered.

Grief did not fade. It deepened. It took root. It grew teeth.

She rose. Her hair plastered to her face. Her eyes, once gray, now burned red beneath the storm.

"You taught me that magic answers need," she said. "Then listen."

The air thickened. The rain froze in place, trembling like glass.

"I am not weak anymore."

Cold surged through her veins. Frost erupted from her hands, spreading across the ground in jagged spikes. The dragons roared. Their flames met her ice in a wall of steam.

She reached deeper. Tore her grief apart and fed it to the spell.

Fire met winter. Immortal met mortal. And the balance shattered.

The first dragon fell from the sky, wings folding as bones cracked and reformed. Scales peeled away like old skin, revealing pale flesh beneath. She hit the ground as a woman. Naked, shivering, mortal.

One by one, they fell. Silver became pale skin. Gold became dark. Violet became bruised and bleeding. The sky emptied.

Morna stood over them, blood streaming from her eyes, her nose, her mouth. Her body shook with the cost. But she smiled through it.

"You will live," she said. "But you will live as I do. Small. Fragile. Mortal. You will know loss. You will learn regret."

The woman at her feet glared up. She was human now. She trembled with cold and fury.

"This is not justice."

"No," Morna whispered. "It is mercy."

She turned and walked toward the blackened earth where Torin had burned. The dragons tried to rise, but the curse held. It would hold for a thousand years. And longer.

Morna pressed her hand to her stomach one last time.

"I am sorry," she whispered. "For all of it."

The rain started again. The world exhaled. The curse was sealed.