The world was a blur of mud and fury. Zoran Ironfoot, sixteen years of farm-hardened muscle and desperate speed, crashed through the undergrowth, thorny vines whipping at his face like invisible whips. His lungs burned, each breath a ragged, fire-edged gasp that tasted of earth and his own coppery blood. A split lip, a gift from Lord Valerius's pompous son, throbbed in time with the frantic drumming of his heart. The stolen loaf of bread, now a mangled, sodden lump clutched in his hand, felt heavier than a millstone.
"Get back here, you gutter-born rat!" a voice roared behind him, laced with the lazy arrogance of the noble-born. "My father will have you flogged for this!"
Zoran didn't dare look back. He knew the scene all too well: Garrick Valerius, his face flushed with wine and indignation, flanked by two thick-necked guards who were only too happy to brutalize a commoner. The fight hadn't been about the bread, not really. It had been about the sneer in Garrick's voice as he snatched it from a market vendor's stall, the casual cruelty of a boy who had never known a day of hunger. Zoran's fist had flown before his mind had caught up, a raw, instinctual act of defiance that now had him running for his life.
He vaulted a fallen log, his worn leather boots finding purchase on the slick moss. The foothills of the Dragon's Tooth mountains rose before him, a mist-shrouded labyrinth of stone and ancient forest. It was forbidden territory for the villagers of Oakhaven, spoken of in hushed tones. They said the rocks themselves remembered the old wars, that the mists carried the ghosts of dragons long dead. To Zoran right now, it was the only sanctuary he had. The rain began to fall, not a gentle drizzle but a sudden, torrential downpour that turned the forest floor into a treacherous, sliding mire. The cold drops plastered his dark hair to his forehead, soaking his simple tunic and chilling him to the bone. The shouts of his pursuers faded, swallowed by the drumming of the rain on the canopy and the growing roar of his own blood in his ears. He was a simple farm boy, a nobody. What did he know of defiance? He only knew the gnawing ache in his own belly and the injustice that had curdled in his gut. He had acted, and now he would pay the price, as he always did.
He scrambled up a steep, rocky incline, his fingers scrabbling for purchase on wet stone. Water streamed down the rock face, blinding him. He slipped, his knee slamming against a jagged edge, but he pushed himself up with a grunt, the pain a distant, secondary thing. He had to keep moving. Ahead, through the sheets of rain, he saw it: a dark cleft in the mountainside, almost completely hidden by a curtain of overgrown ivy and the swirling grey mist. A cave. It was a chance, any chance. He half-fell, half-crawled the last few yards, tearing the ivy aside and plunging into the welcome darkness.
The sudden silence was deafening. The roar of the storm and the pounding of his heart were replaced by a profound, resonant quiet. Zoran collapsed against the cool stone wall, his chest heaving, his body trembling with exhaustion and adrenaline. He was safe, for now. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he became aware of something strange. The air in the cave wasn't cold and damp as he'd expected. It was warm, almost humid, and carried a scent unlike anything he had ever encountered—a mix of ozone after a lightning strike, freshly turned earth, and a faint, sweet floral note like night-blooming jasmine.
A soft, rhythmic light pulsed from deeper within the cave. It was a gentle, pearlescent glow that shifted through iridescent hues of violet, emerald, and gold. Curiosity, a force far more powerful than his fear, began to stir within him. This was no ordinary cave. The villagers' warnings echoed in his mind, but they felt distant, unimportant. This place felt… alive. He pushed himself to his feet, his forgotten bread dropping to the ground. He followed the light, his footsteps silent on the smooth, unnaturally warm floor. The passage widened into a small, circular chamber. The source of the light was at its center.
There, resting on a pedestal of what looked like fused crystal, was a single, massive egg.
It was larger than any ostrich egg he had ever seen, perfectly ovoid and covered in a shell that swirled with all the colors of the nebulae he'd seen pictured in the Scribes' old books. It wasn't just reflecting the light; it was generating it. A soft, rhythmic thrumming emanated from it, a deep, bass vibration that he felt in his bones more than he heard. It was the sound of a colossal heartbeat. As he drew closer, a strange sensation washed over him. It was a feeling of coming home, of a missing piece of his soul suddenly clicking into place. The world outside, with its lords and guards and injustices, dissolved into meaningless noise. Here, there was only the egg, the light, and the thrumming.
He knew, with a certainty that defied all logic, that this was a dragon egg. Not just any dragon egg, but something more. The legends spoke of Primal Dragons, beings of creation and destruction born at the dawn of the world. They were myths, stories to frighten children. But standing here, feeling the raw, untamed power radiating from the shell, Zoran believed. He, a farm boy who couldn't even afford a new pair of boots, had stumbled upon a legend. The thought was so absurd, so impossible, that a hysterical laugh almost escaped him. But the pull was undeniable. It wasn't a desire for power or glory. It was simpler, purer than that. It was a connection. He felt a flicker of empathy, a sense of profound loneliness emanating from the egg, a mirror to his own feelings of being an outcast in a world ruled by the powerful. He was just Zoran Ironfoot, a boy who knew the turn of the seasons and the weight of a plow. What right did he have to even be in the presence of something so magnificent? The Lie, the one he told himself every day, whispered that he was unworthy, that he should turn and run and forget he ever saw this place. But his feet remained rooted to the spot.
His short-term goal was simple: survive the night and return to his family's farm before he was missed. But now, a new, terrifyingly beautiful objective had taken root. He had to protect this egg. He didn't know from what, or how, but the instinct was as primal as the creature within it. The obstacle was immense: his own insignificance. He was a commoner in a world where dragons were the exclusive property of the Great Houses, tools of power and status. A boy like him found with a Primal Dragon egg wouldn't be celebrated; he would be executed. The King's riders, the Ironfang, they would hunt him down without a second thought. The risk was absolute, the reward unknown, yet the choice felt like it had already been made for him.
Slowly, reverently, Zoran reached out a trembling hand. The air around the egg shimmered with heat. His fingers, calloused from farm work and scraped from his flight, hovered just above the surface. He could feel the energy thrumming against his skin, a chaotic symphony of life. He thought of his family, of his younger sister Elara's smile. He thought of the hunger in his village and the casual cruelty of men like Garrick Valerius. He thought of the smallness of his own life, a life spent tilling soil that would never truly belong to him. He was just a farm boy. But in this moment, touching this impossible thing, he felt like he could be more.
His fingertips made contact.
The world shattered.
It wasn't a sound, but a silent, explosive wave of pure energy that flooded his senses. Colors he had no names for bloomed behind his eyes. The thrumming in the cave floor became a deafening roar inside his skull, a tidal wave of alien consciousness that crashed over his own. He felt a searing heat, not from the egg, but from within his own veins, as if his very blood was being rewritten. A thousand images flashed through his mind in an instant: the birth of stars, the grinding of tectonic plates, the eruption of volcanoes, the first green shoot pushing through barren rock. It was a history of creation, violent and beautiful and utterly overwhelming. He felt a desperate, newborn hunger, a primal fear of the cold and the dark, and a flicker of recognition, of *seeing* him. The connection wasn't just sight or sound; it was a soul-deep binding, a chain forged in an instant that could never be broken. He cried out, a sound of pure agony and ecstasy, as his mind struggled to contain the sheer, cosmic scale of it all. His knees buckled, and he would have fallen if not for the invisible force holding him upright, a force that was both part of him and utterly separate.
The iridescent shell fractured. A single, perfect crack spiderwebbed across its surface, from which a brilliant, white-gold light spilled out. The crack widened, and another, and another, the sound of their breaking like the chiming of a thousand tiny, crystal bells. The energy intensified, a vortex of raw power that pulled at Zoran's very essence, threatening to tear him apart. He was drowning, his own identity a tiny, flickering candle in a supernova. He tried to pull back, to sever the contact, but his hand was fused to the shell, his soul locked to the being within. He was Zoran Ironfoot, a farm boy from Oakhaven. He was also… something else. Something new. Something impossibly old. The final pieces of the shell fell away, and the wave of creation crested, leaving him breathless, broken, and irrevocably changed, bound to the creature that was now his to protect, and his to bear.