When the Sky Bled

The mountains had always belonged to wings.

That was the first truth Letharion learned as a child. Stone endured. Wind bent. The sky

remembered who ruled it.

The second truth came later.

The sky could be wounded.

He stood on a narrow pass carved into the spine of the world, a strip of stone clinging to a cliff

so steep that clouds drifted below his boots. Waterfalls thundered far beneath, carving white

scars into the dark rock.

Above him, dragons circled.

Not in idle arcs. Not in courtship spirals.

They flew tight and low, wings beating hard, bodies angled as if pressing against resistance no

one else could see.

Letharion adjusted his grip on his spear. His scales caught the cold light, blue green and gold

flashing across his arms and throat. His horns curved back, smooth and unmarked.

He was young.

Not untested.

But not yet tempered by inevitability.

The air tasted sharp, metallic.

Then the mountain screamed.

The sound tore up through the stone beneath his feet, a grinding rupture that vibrated through

bone. Letharion staggered to the edge of the pass and looked down.

Something was climbing.

It was not a dragon.

Its body coiled around the cliff face, thick as ancient pine trunks, scales the color of wet iron

scraping grooves into the rock. It moved without wings. Without any magic he could sense.

Only muscle.

Another followed.

Then another.

They climbed as if the mountain were prey.

The shout tore from him before discipline could shape it. He raised his spear and called to the

sky.

The dragons answered.

They descended like falling suns.

Fire split cloud and wind. One serpent convulsed under the blaze, its coils slipping from stone. It

fell, smashing against the cliff, breaking apart as it vanished into mist.

A fierce, foolish cheer rose in Letharion’s throat.

Then the broken mass moved.

Far below, shattered coils drew together. Flesh knit slowly, deliberately. The serpent reformed

and began to climb again.

The cheer died.

A dragon struck from the side, jaws locking around a serpent’s neck. Bone cracked. With a

wrenching roar, the dragon tore the head free and hurled it into open air.

The body spasmed.

Then continued upward.

No blood spilled.

Instead, the stone beneath it darkened and steamed, as though the mountain itself bled in its

place.

Letharion’s wings twitched against his back. Instinct demanded he leap. That he prove himself

worthy of the blood that burned in his veins.

A shadow swallowed the pass.

Tiamatra descended.

Her wings eclipsed the light. Her roar split sky and stone alike, a command edged with fury and

something perilously close to disbelief.

She struck a serpent head on. Fire, claw, and iron scale collided. The shockwave hurled

Letharion across the pass. His spear skidded from his grasp.

When he forced himself upright, the serpent lay slack.

Truly slack.

Its coils loosened. Its grip failed. It slid down the mountainside in a cascade of torn flesh and

shattered scale, disappearing into cloud.

Silence followed.

Not peace.

Silence.

Dragons hovered, wings laboring now. Membranes hung torn. Blood streaked through the mist.

“We won,” Letharion whispered, the words barely sound.

The mountain answered.

Stone beneath the pass shuddered. A crack split the cliff face, thin as a seam at first, then

widening. From it spilled coils.

Smaller.

Faster.

Dozens.

They poured from the wound in the rock like living rope.

The sky dimmed as insects rose after them, a blackening swarm climbing toward torn wings and

open flesh.

A dragon fell.

Another screamed.

Fire roared again, brighter, angrier, less controlled. Serpents burned and fell and climbed again.

Insects died in waves and returned thicker.

Letharion watched a dragon rip a serpent in half.

Both halves kept moving.

Something inside him shifted then.

Not courage.

Not fear.

Understanding.

This was not a battle that ended.

This was a function.

The serpents would climb. The dragons would burn them from the stone. The mountain would

open again.

He retrieved his spear and braced himself against the shaking pass. Above him, the sky filled

with flame and broken scale.

Below him, the mountain kept opening its mouth.

And in the rhythm of kill and return, Letharion understood the truth no elder had yet spoken

aloud.

Victory meant nothing if the rules had changed.

The sky would remember this day.

Not as the day it was defended.

But as the day it learned how to bleed.