The moon was high when Evelina slipped past the outer palace gates under the cloak of night, dressed in muted greys with her hair braided tight beneath her hood.
The guards didn’t stop her.
Most had grown used to her comings and goings during the late hours, assuming she was inspecting barricades or assisting the night watch.
But this wasn’t about Arcadia tonight.
This was about a vision.
And the entrance hidden near the crumbled rocks of the hunter’s trail.
She moved with practised silence, each step calculated as she wove through the woods. Her heartbeat remained calm, but her senses stayed alert.
The forest didn’t welco her the way it used to. Sothing had changed since Tobias carved his shadows into its bones.
By the ti she reached the base of the hill, the moonlight caught on sothing faint—almost imperceptible—a shimr of tal hidden behind a drape of tangled vines.
Evelina crouched and pulled them aside, revealing the outline of a concealed door embedded in the hillside, just as her vision had shown. The stone around it bore burn marks; it was faint but present.
A hidden entrance. Just as she had suspected.
She pressed a hand against the door. Nothing happened.
Relia’s voice stirred softly. "It’s warded."
"Can you break it?"
"Not without lighting up half the forest," Relia replied. "But... maybe you don’t need to."
Evelina ran her fingers along the edges, found a pressure point, and pressed. The stone clicked, and with a quiet hiss, the door creaked open just enough to let her slip inside.
The air inside the tunnel was stale, thick with the sll of oil and smoke.
She lit her small lantern and stepped deeper.
The tunnel curved downward. tal crates lined the walls, stacked with glass canisters filled with dark liquid, their wicks coiled tightly at the tops.
The explosive caches.
Evelina’s throat tightened.
She moved past them slowly, her eyes catching glimpses of old maps nailed into the wooden beams overhead. Battle plans. Routes. Markings over Arcadia. So were burnt; others splattered in what looked too much like blood.
Then she heard it.
A rustle. Footsteps.
She turned around.
Three masked figures erged from the shadowed side tunnel. Black robes, faces covered, curved blades glinting in the low light.
"Damn it," she hissed.
She reached for her dagger, but she was a second too late.
One charged, fast. She ducked under his swing and rolled to the side, slashing upward, slicing through fabric and flesh. He howled.
The others advanced, but before they could close in—
A roar shook the tunnel.
Not a human one.
A brilliant flash of violet and gold fire surged past Evelina, blinding her montarily as heat blasted through the narrow space.
When her vision cleared, the masked n were sprawled across the ground—unconscious or worse. Smoke curled off their robes.
And standing over them, cloaked in dark armour and scaled pauldrons that shimred faintly, was a man unlike any she had ever seen.
He was tall—taller than Damian, broader than Jasper—with iridescent eyes that flickered between athyst and sapphire. His hair fell in long, dark waves, streaked with crimson, and faint golden markings traced the skin near his temples.
He looked... otherworldly.
He stepped toward her in a slow and deliberate manner. "You carry sothing that does not belong to you."
Evelina’s hand clenched around the dagger. "Excuse ?"
"The pearl," the man said, eyes locking onto hers. "It sang when you entered the forest. It led here."
She blinked. "You’re...?"
"Draven," he said. "Prince of the Scorched Vale. Blood of the last true dragons. And that pearl—" he stepped closer, gaze intense, "—was stolen from my people."
Evelina stiffened, fingers tightening around the hilt of her dagger. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."
Draven’s gaze remained fixed on her, unfazed. "You carry it on your person. You may not understand it, but it knows you."
"I have no pearl," she said in a clipped voice. "Nothing that belongs to you."
For a beat, neither of them moved.
Then, with a quiet hum of power, Draven lifted a single hand, palm facing up and fingers spread—and whispered sothing in a language she didn’t understand.
The air shifted.
The ground beneath them seed to shudder, just faintly, and a pulse echoed through the tunnel, like a heartbeat buried beneath stone.
And then, from the pouch at her side, a soft light glowed.
Evelina’s eyes snapped downward.
The dragon pearl.
It was glowing.
A soft, ethereal violet that pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat. The sa pearl Zade had given her—now thrumming with energy, reacting not to her will but to the presence of the man before her.
Relia’s voice ca like a low breath in her mind. "Well... that’s awkward."
Draven took a step forward. "Still want to tell you don’t know what I’m talking about?"
Evelina stared down at the pouch, her throat tightening. The glow grew brighter, casting soft waves of light against the tunnel walls. The air felt warr now, almost alive.
"What did you do?" she demanded, taking a half step back.
"I called to it," Draven said. "And it answered. It rembers my blood."
She pulled the pouch free, holding the pearl in her palm. It pulsed again, stronger. "I don’t know how this connects with you, but Prince Zade actually gave it to ."
"Then he’s either a fool," Draven said coolly, "or a thief."
Relia stirred in her mind. "Oh... wow. Okay. Definitely not human."
Evelina narrowed her eyes. "Why now? Why show yourself now?"
"Because the pearl is awakening," Draven said. "And if you continue to use it without understanding what it is, you’ll destroy yourself—and possibly the land around you."
"I didn’t activate anything. I didn’t even know it could activate."
"That’s the problem."
He held out a hand, palm up. "Give it to ."
"No."
Draven’s expression didn’t change. But the heat in the air spiked. "You don’t understand its purpose."
"Then," she said. "Why don’t you tell what it is?"
Draven studied her in silence.
Then, with surprising softness, he said, "It’s a seed. Of mory. Of blood. It holds the last echoes of the dragons who died to protect the Skyborne Realm. Without it, my people cannot return. Our bond to this world will fade."
"So it’s sacred."
"To . To my clan. To magic itself."
She hesitated. "If I give it up, what happens to ?"
Draven’s eyes t hers. "That depends. Did it choose you? Or did you just stumble across it?"
Evelina exhaled, heart pounding. "I don’t know."
He stepped closer. "Then we find out."
"Not tonight," she said, backing toward the tunnel mouth. "I need ti... to figure all these out and fix them."
Draven looked at the unconscious soldiers on the ground, then back at her. "Then we have a common enemy."
She nodded once.
"Keep the pearl... for now," Draven said. "But if it burns, if it sings again—I will return. And next ti, I won’t ask."
Then he turned and vanished down the opposite corridor, the faint scent of smoke trailing behind him.
Evelina stood alone in the stillness, the pearl in her pouch humming faintly, her thoughts a storm.
Tobias. Explosives. Draven.
Evelina didn’t waste another second.
As soon as Draven disappeared into the dark tunnel, she quickly turned and ran in the opposite direction. Her boots thudded against the stone floor, and she could feel the warmth of the pearl pulsing against her chest where she had tucked it into her tunic.
Her lantern swung back and forth, casting strange, flickering shadows on the walls around her.
When she finally burst through the narrow stone door and into the woods, the fresh air hit her like a sudden shock.
She quickly pulled the vines back over the hidden entrance and dove into the underbrush, moving quickly and low to the ground until the tunnel was out of sight.
Only then did she allow herself to breathe.
She leaned against a tree, one palm pressed to her ribs where her heart thundered beneath it.
Tobias had built an arsenal beneath Arcadia’s bones.
And now... dragons?
She reached for the pearl again, half-expecting it to have stopped glowing—but it still pulsed gently, like a living heartbeat tethered to hers.
Heat radiated from it now, not enough to burn, but enough to make her skin prickle.
"Relia," she whispered, "are you still there?"
"I never left," ca the quiet reply. "You okay?"
"No," Evelina said honestly. "Not even a little."
She started to move again, picking her way through the forest, but before she’d gone more than a few paces, her legs locked up.
Her vision went out of focus.
The world around her tilted and suddenly felt like it was collapsing, like a mirror slamming shut.
She felt a heartbeat in her chest. It wasn’t hers, and it wasn’t from the pearl.
It ca from sowhere deeper, and for so odd reason, her mind could only focus on one person... Draven.
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