Beneath the Red Dragon

The first thing Karon feels is hunger.

Not the human kind he remembers from another life, but a furnace roaring in a scaled chest, the sharp ache of an empty belly in a nest that reeks of blood, smoke, and molten stone. He blinks awake as a newborn red dragon in a world where dragons are not myths but rulers, predators, and gods.

Before he can stretch his torn wings, his food is already under attack—by a tiny, hissing shape with the same crimson scales. His sister. Barely hatched, already vicious, claws sunk into the meat that’s supposed to keep him alive until his first deep slumber.

He should rip it back. Instead, the little dragon snarls at him, shoves the bloody chunk toward his snout, and snaps, “Eat it, idiot. If you go weak, you won’t survive your first sleep.”

He stares at her, at the warmth of the meat between them, at the way her tail trembles from her own hunger. Then he accepts the offering like a pact.

Karon has been thrown into a nest where kin are rivals, where the sky belongs to those strong enough to burn it, and where a single misstep before that long, dangerous first slumber means never waking again. With an old human mind trapped in a young dragon’s body and a sister who might be both his fiercest enemy and his only ally, every bite of stolen flesh and every spark of flame becomes a quiet promise: to live long enough to grow, to fight, and to carve out a place beneath the shadow of the red dragon age.