Aeris stares at me with those strange, ancient eyes—too knowing, too unafraid.
He is no bigger than a fox, coiled up beside the dying embers of our stolen fire in the hollowed root of a tree older than any name I know. His black scales shimmer like starlight drowned in ink, and when he speaks, his mouth doesn't move. The words just happen in my mind.
"You once swallowed a sun, Sire," he murmurs, flicking ash from his obsidian claws. "But now you can't even remember how to light a twig."
I don't respond. My breath comes in frost, my clothes are still damp from the river, and the burn on my shoulder from the Rift Hunters' arc-blade hasn't stopped searing since last night. Every part of me aches, but nothing more than my mind.
"I'm not your Sire," I say for the fifth time.
He yawns, baring small, glowing fangs. "You keep saying that. But your fire says otherwise."
My fire. The one that tore a hole in the forest sky when I screamed. The one that turned a Rift Hunter into nothing but a glass silhouette and ash. I didn't summon it. I didn't control it. It came like instinct, like memory. Like hunger.
"I don't remember who I was," I say again, quieter.
Aeris stares into the flames. "I do."
That should comfort me, but it doesn't. Every answer Aeris gives births two more riddles. Every truth he offers feels wrapped in shadows and claws.
"You used to ride dragons," he whispers. "Speak with stars. Crack open worlds like fruit."
I glance at the branches above. The frostwoods creak in the wind, silver leaves catching moonlight like blades. Somewhere in the distance, a Rift Hunter's horn howls through the trees, cold and sharp and cruel.
Aeris tilts his head toward the sound.
"They still want you," he says. "Even when you don't know what you are."
"I'm nothing."
He narrows his eyes. "You are not nothing. You are Aetherion."
The name makes my skin crawl. That name again. The one I woke with burned into my thoughts like an old scar beneath the surface.
Aetherion.
I hate it. I fear it. I need it.
I shift on the stone and moss beneath me, wrapping my arms around myself.
"Tell me what that name means," I whisper.
Aeris chirps softly, as if amused. "If I told you, it would burn your mind. Like trying to hold the sun in your teeth. No. You must remember it. And remember what they did to you."
"Who's they?"
"The Ones Who Tear Threads."
The wind howls again. This time closer.
Aeris stands, small wings flaring slightly, casting dragon-shaped shadows that dance across the bark.
"They're not just hunters," he says. "They're archivists. They don't kill you because they hate you. They do it to preserve you."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"They've killed you before, Sire. Again and again and again. You die, and the Rift forgets you. And every time… you climb back out of the silence."
I feel like throwing up. My head throbs. I can still taste blood on the back of my tongue. Nothing about this feels real. And yet I can't shake the sense that it's all more real than anything else I've ever known.
I look at Aeris, the small creature who appeared to me in a throne-dream and called me Sire.
"How old are you?"
He shrugs, tail flicking. "I was born from your dying breath."
"What?"
"When your last self was pulled apart between timelines, your breath—the final one you gave up—became me. Flame given shape. Memory given wings."
I blink. "That's not… how anything works."
Aeris chuckles. "In the Rift, everything works."
I don't know whether to cry or laugh or run. Instead, I stare into the dying fire and whisper the name I swore I wouldn't speak again.
"Aetherion."
The air shifts.
The name echoes. Not around us—but within. Like the roots of the world just listened.
And suddenly, my vision splits.
In one eye, I still see the fire, the frostwood, Aeris.
In the other—I see another life.
A silver hall lined with glass constellations. Stars breathing in cages. My reflection on the surface of a sword taller than me, engraved with runes I can't read—but feel. My hands wrapped in white flame. A throne of bone and stone—shattered.
And behind it… a figure. A man? A god? A shadow made of time?
It's smiling.
My eyes snap shut.
When I open them, I'm on my knees. Gasping.
Aeris is at my side, wings curled around me like a cloak. "You saw it," he whispers.
"I saw him."
Aeris goes still.
"You're not supposed to remember him yet."
"Who is he?"
Aeris doesn't answer.
Instead, the dragon cub turns his gaze to the dark woods beyond our firelight. I follow his eyes.
And I see the glow.
Blue. Cold. Flickering.
"They found us," I whisper.
Aeris steps between me and the light, growling low. Not like a pup—but like something much, much older than he looks.
"I'll hold them," he says.
"You're just a cub."
"I'm your cub."
There's something in his voice—ancient, broken, regal. A trace of that same impossible power that cracked the sky when I screamed.
Aeris turns to me, eyes burning bright now.
"Run, Sire. Find the girl with the rune-braids. She has the rest of your name."
"But I don't even—"
"Run!"
The light in the woods splits open like a mouth. A Rift Hunter steps forward, draped in mirrored armor that shows me in every angle—bleeding, burning, broken.
And then Aeris roars.
The fire explodes outward in a ring of dragon-shaped flame.
I don't watch what happens next. I run.
Branches tear at my skin. Snow bites my bare feet. Every heartbeat is a scream of thunder in my ears.
And through it all, one name pulses behind my ribs.
Not Aetherion.
Not Sire.
Not Subject.
But a name I haven't heard yet—and somehow already know.
It's waiting for me.
In the frost.
In the girl's memory.
In the fire I used to command.
I don't know who I am.
But they do.
And they're all closing in.