The moon hangs heavy over Silageton, casting the village in ethereal silver light. The buildings seem to glow with their own iridescence, as if the very stones remember magic from a time before memory.
It's the kind of night that belongs in storybooks—beautiful, mysterious, *alive*.
In the village center, three adults sit around a low fire, their voices hushed but intense.
"Let them have their fun," Maybella says, her tone gentle but firm. "It's their nature. Although rebellious, they won't hurt us. This entire village—we're their parents. We've loved and protected them since birth."
The man with deep blue eyes and a jagged knife scar across his jaw nods slowly. "They're good children. Strange, yes. Powerful, certainly. But *good*."
The plump woman with gray eyes—once meek, now fierce after decades of raising dragon-blooded children—wrings her hands. "I wonder if their dragon mother will come looking for them now that they are of age. What could she possibly want with them?"
Maybella's expression hardens. "She better not have any nefarious thoughts. I'll fight her with my life if she hurts them."
"We all would," the scarred man agrees.
The plump woman leans forward, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Do you remember that day? Two thousand years ago, when she came?"
*Two thousand years.*
The words hang in the air, heavy with impossible weight.
"How could we forget?" Maybella says softly. "A female creature, beautiful and terrible, with silver hair and eyes that held no recognition. She... she took essence from the men. Impregnated fifty of us women."
"Triplets," the plump woman murmurs. "Some of us had quadruplets. Two hundred and fifty-six children, all born within weeks of each other."
"And then the blessing," the scarred man says. "Or the curse, depending on how you look at it."
The children—those born that day—gained slow aging. Immunity to human diseases. They grew, but *slowly*, their bodies developing at a fraction of the normal rate.
Those not in the village that day aged normally. As did the undersized children, the ones born premature or weak.
But the rest?
They've been adolescents for centuries.
"Seven hundred and thirty-five people in this village," Maybella says. "Three hundred adults who remember the before times. And two hundred and fifty-six dragon-blooded children who are finally coming of age."
"After two thousand years," the plump woman whispers.
"Do you think she knows?" the scarred man asks. "Do you think she remembers what she did?"
Maybella shakes her head. "I don't know. But if she comes... we'll be ready."
---
Twenty meters away, hidden in the shadows between buildings, a group of adolescents listens intently.
They've been here for twenty minutes, absorbing every word.
Finally, one of them—a girl with silver hair and striking green eyes—gestures for the others to follow. They slink away silently, moving with the kind of grace that comes from dragon blood.
When they're far enough from the adults, the silver-haired girl stops.
"Layla," one of the others says urgently. "We need to tell the others. The celebrations seem to be big."
Layla—the silver-haired girl, clearly the leader—gives her companion a sharp look. "Is that the *only* thing you took from that conversation, Mira?"
Mira, observant and thoughtful, meets her gaze steadily. "The adults kept it secret. As if it was something shameful."
"Well," Darius says—a boy with bronze hair and thoughtful blue eyes—"with how our physiques are, I don't find that so fantastic. We're different. We've always been different."
"A female dragon," Mira says slowly. "That's what they said. A female creature that impregnated all the women in the village."
"How else would one female dragon get all the females in the village pregnant?" Layla asks, her tone pragmatic.
The question hangs in the air, unanswered.
"Come on," Layla says finally. "The others need to know."
---
Deep in the forest, where quiet should reign, a massive bonfire blazes.
Dozens of adolescent dragons surround it, their faces illuminated by flickering orange light. They're beautiful—all of them—with features that are just slightly too perfect, too symmetrical, to be entirely human.
Silver hair. Bronze hair. Hair in shades that don't quite exist in nature.
Eyes that glow faintly in the firelight—green, blue, gold, violet.
They're *other*. And they know it.
Mira bursts into the clearing, breathless and excited. "It's going to be a big party! They said we are of age now, whatever that means."
Layla follows, her expression more serious. "They think there's a possibility our mother will come looking for us."
The crowd erupts.
"Mother?!"
"A female creature that impregnated our mothers?!"
"What does that even *mean*?!"
Trevor—a boy with bright blonde hair and red eyes, beautiful in a way that's almost unsettling—laughs awkwardly. "Well, that's... that's something."
"I think they might not be completely off," a new voice says.
Everyone turns.
Michael steps forward—the eldest of them all, with bronze hair and piercing blue eyes. There's something about him that commands attention, a gravity that makes the others fall silent.
"Lately I've been dreaming," he says quietly. "Of two women. One trapped and battered in slavery. The other searching, desperate, *relentless*."
The firelight flickers across his face, casting shadows that make him look older than his apparent years.
"I don't know which is our mother," he continues. "But the one that is searching... she's near us. Possibly three or four days' journey from here."
Vanessa—a girl with dark hair and violet eyes—nods slowly. "I've felt her too. After the dreams started, I could sense her. Like a pull in my chest, pointing in a specific direction."
"Our village is too deep for outsiders to happen upon," Jerald says—practical, logical, always thinking three steps ahead. "Is she going to come to us, or bypass us entirely?"
For a moment, no one speaks.
Then a small voice breaks the silence.
"I want to find her."
Everyone turns to look at Mina—petite, timid, speaking up for the first time in the entire conversation.
"I want to find her," she repeats, her voice stronger now. "I want to know who she is. What she is. Why she... why she made us."
Milo—the eldest of triplets, protective and fierce—steps forward. "Alright, little sister. I'll go with you."
"We should all go," Layla says.
"A search party," Darius agrees.
"We vote," Michael says, his voice carrying authority. "All in favor of searching for the female dragon?"
Hands rise. One by one, until nearly every adolescent in the clearing has their hand in the air.
"Then it's decided," Michael says. "We prepare. We leave at dawn."
The group begins to disperse, heading back toward the village to gather supplies and make ready.
Layla lingers by the fire, staring into the flames.
"What are you thinking?" Mira asks softly.
"I'm thinking," Layla says slowly, "that everything is about to change."
"For better or worse?"
Layla's green eyes reflect the firelight, glowing with an inner luminescence that has nothing to do with the flames.
"I don't know," she admits. "But I guess we're about to find out."
---
Three days' journey away, Astraea steps through a portal into Spiral Grove, still laughing at her own dark humor.
She has no idea that two hundred and fifty-six dragon-blooded adolescents are preparing to search for her.
She has no idea that they're her sister's children—Bia's unconscious legacy, created two thousand years ago in a moment of amnesiac desperation.
She has no idea that fate is pulling them all together.
*But she will.*
*Soon.*