The world came back in fragments.

  First, the weight—heavy, crushing. Stone pressing against my wings, my side, my chest. Then the pain, flaring from my face, sharp and blinding every time I tried to move. My nose throbbed, broken and swollen, each breath a struggle.

  I opened my eyes to darkness and dust. The once-familiar hum of the horde—the rhythm of wings and quiet speech—was gone. Silence pressed against my skull.

  I shifted slightly, stone grinding beneath me. It took everything I had to pull my foreleg free. Bits of rubble fell away, clinking down the slope of broken rock. The air around me stirred, light leaking through a jagged crack above. It illuminated only wreckage—shattered walls, collapsed ceilings, scorch marks blackening the stone.

  Ash drifted in the wind.

  I stilled and tilted my head, ears straining.

  Nothing.

  No wingbeats. No breath. No scrape of claws against stone. The silence was complete.

  I tried again, focusing harder, tuning myself to the smallest vibrations. But there was nothing alive to hear. Only the cold whisper of wind moving through shattered stone.

  I inhaled deeply, automatically, trying to scent the air. Nothing.

  No salt from the sea. No ash. No blood. No home.

  My breath caught.

  I sniffed again, harder, lungs straining—but a searing pain exploded through my nose, sharp and blinding. I gasped, recoiling instinctively as if I’d been stabbed from the inside. My sinuses burned, throbbing with every heartbeat, and still—the air was blank.

  Panic twisted in my chest. My face ached so badly I thought maybe it was just the injury, the swelling, the dust. I pressed a claw to my snout, tried to clear it. Still nothing.

  The numbness didn’t fade.

  That was when I knew.

  My sense of smell was gone.

  Gone.

  I curled tighter beneath the broken stones, trembling as the weight of that silence settled over me like another layer of rubble.

  I couldn’t smell the ruin. I couldn’t smell the dead.

  I couldn’t smell my family.

  I was alone.

  But then a flash hit me—Kaelen’s voice crying out, his small form lunging at the Poison Dragon’s legs. The echo of my scream as I fought to shield him. The heat, the smoke, the chaos.

  I saw him again—his eyes wide with fear, but his jaw set with stubborn courage. He was fighting beside me. And I had to find him.

  With a shuddering breath, I pushed against the rocks trapping me. My limbs trembled, my wing screamed in protest, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.

  I focused on Kaelen—on the sound of his voice in my memory, on the promise I made to my mother. Protect him. That was all that mattered now.

  One clawed limb at a time, I began to dig. My claws scraped at the rubble, stone grating on stone as I forced my aching body upward. Bit by bit, the crushing weight above me gave way. Light filtered in, casting gray shafts through the dust. Finally, with one last heave, I dragged myself free.

  I lay there for a moment, panting, my limbs shaking from the effort. Then I lifted my head.

  What had once been our home was gone.

  The caves were broken and collapsed, the familiar walls cracked wide open to the sky. Pools of poison clung to the stone, slick and luminous, seeping into every crevice. Rubble filled every passage. Wings no longer brushed the wind. Voices no longer echoed. The warmth, the rhythm, the scent of home—

  All of it destroyed.

  I turned back to the rubble, to the place where Kaelen had last stood beside me. I started digging again, slower now, with trembling claws and a hollow ache in my chest. Stones clattered and shifted as I tore them away, my breath rasping in my throat. I didn’t want to find him like this. I didn’t want to find him at all.

  But I had to.

  The moment my claws brushed familiar scales, I froze.

  His body was still. His face—peaceful, as if he had fallen asleep mid-shift. Blood dried along his side. A jagged stone jutted through his ribs. He hadn’t made it.

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  I let out a low, broken sound and folded myself around him, keening softly into the shattered stone. My sobs shook the rubble beneath me, my breath catching in ragged bursts between mournful wails. I pressed my muzzle to his neck, desperate to breathe in a scent I could no longer reach. That absence—the hollow where his life should have been, where his scent should have clung—was worse than pain. It was erasure.

  I whispered his name again and again, as if I could anchor him to the world by sound alone. Grief poured out of me in waves. There was no one to see. No one to hush me. Just my broken voice and my broken brother, surrounded by stone and silence.

  There was no sign of the Poison Dragon. No claw prints. No scent trail. Nothing.

  I listened again, ears straining against the silence. Still no movement. No life.

  When I could move again, I lifted Kaelen gently, cradling his small body to my chest. I carried him deeper into what remained of our home, to a narrow, sheltered corner of the caves untouched by poison or fire.

  There, I used boulders to build a cairn. Each stone laid with shaking claws. I placed his body inside, curling his wings around him. Then I carved his name into the largest stone I could find.

  KAELEN NARETHIN.

  I sat beside it until the sun began to set, shadows creeping across the ruins.

  Then, without looking back, I turned toward the open air and climbed over the rubble, searching for the scent—or the sound—of anyone who might still be alive.

  Grief weighed down every step, but I forced myself forward. I had to. I had to find my parents. Maybe they had survived. Maybe they were out there searching too. I just had to make it to them.

  But my body rebelled against me. One of my wings dragged at my side, limp and searing with pain. Broken. My limbs were bruised, battered, bleeding. Every movement sent fresh aches lancing through me, and I had to pause often to catch my breath.

  I didn’t make it far.

  Just beyond the mouth of our ruined home, I found her.

  My mother lay curled in the shadow of the outer cliff, wings folded, eyes closed. Her obsidian scales still gleamed, untouched by rot or flame, but she was still. Too still. I couldn’t smell her. I couldn’t hear her.

  I fell to my knees beside her.

  “Mama…”

  I pressed my face to hers, willing her to breathe, to stir, to speak.

  But there was nothing.

  Tears blurred my vision, falling freely down my snout and dripping onto the stone below. My claws trembled as I dragged a large rock from nearby, each step toward it feeling like a betrayal—like moving further away from her. I crouched beside her one last time, brushing my nose gently against her forehead, wishing desperately for the scent of her warmth, her safety, her presence. But there was nothing—just the dull, relentless pain in my nose, a raw reminder of what I had lost. No scent. No connection. Just emptiness.

  I turned back to the stone and began to carve. The name came slowly, not because I couldn’t remember it, but because each letter cut deeper than the one before. MIRA. My mother. My world.

  I didn’t want to finish. Finishing meant it was real.

  MIRA NARETHIN.

  I didn’t let myself collapse again. I couldn’t.

  I rose, stumbling forward, further along the broken cliff path. Not far beyond, I found him—my father. His massive form lay half-buried in fallen rock, his amethyst scales dulled with dust and blood. He had fallen defending the ledge, wings torn and jaw still bared in a silent roar.

  No sound. No scent.

  Just absence.

  My throat was raw as I picked up another stone. My claws ached with every motion, but I carved his name anyway.

  KAIRETH NARETHIN.

  I stood between them, swaying, barely upright. My family was gone.

  But I was still here.

  My legs trembled with every step as I turned away from their resting places. I was beyond tired—bloodied, battered, barely breathing. But I couldn’t stop. Not yet. I needed to know if anyone else had survived. If anyone was still out there, clinging to life the way I was.

  I forced myself to follow the broken cliff path toward the healer’s den, the small cove tucked deep into the stone where she had once patched Kaelen’s broken wing and wrapped herbs around my singed scales.

  Along the way, I saw them.

  Bodies.

  Dragons I had flown beside, laughed with, listened to. Their forms were still, twisted in positions of defense or flight. Some were collapsed over others, shielding them even in death. My breath caught in my throat, and I staggered—but I didn’t stop.

  By the time I reached the healer’s den, I was crawling.

  The cave inside was untouched by fire or poison, but cold and silent. I dragged myself to the shelf of salves and bundles tucked along the wall. The scent of them didn’t reach me, but I recognized the jars by color and shape—the green one for burns, the yellow for infection, the thick blue paste she used when Kaelen cracked his wing falling from the rookery ledge.

  I smeared the blue salve along my wing first, flinching as I brushed over the jagged bend. Broken. I wrapped it clumsily, teeth gritted. Then my nose. The pain there was sharp and constant, pulsing with every heartbeat.

  I coated it, layered the salve thick, trying not to think about how hollow everything felt.

  My limbs shook as I covered the bruises on my sides, the long scrape down my chest, the cuts across my legs. Everything ached.

  And then, finally, I collapsed on the healer’s mat of woven reeds and moss.

  And the world went dark again.

  Over the next few days, I searched every inch of what had once been our home.

  Caves that once rang with song and laughter were silent now, filled only with broken stone and the echo of my own footsteps. I moved from one chamber to the next, calling out in whispers, in roars, in sound pulses sent deep into the cliffside. Nothing answered.

  No one survived.

  I found the bodies one by one—dragons I had grown up beside, trained with, eaten with. Some had died fighting, their claws still curled in defiance. Others had been caught in the collapse, still and cold beneath fallen stone. I buried them as best I could. Marked every one with a carved stone. Every name.

  And all the while—I still couldn’t smell.

  Not the sea. Not the blood. Not even my own breath.

  My wounds healed quickly. My wing mended within days, and the bruises along my side faded to yellow and gray. But my nose remained numb. Hollow. My world was quiet in ways it had never been before.

  After days of hoping, of testing the air and waiting for some forgotten part of me to spark back to life, I accepted it.

  My sense of smell was gone.

  Not dulled.

  Gone.

  I couldn’t smell my own scales. Couldn’t scent the salt in the air. Couldn’t find the faintest trace of my mother in the den where she used to sleep.

  And for the first time, I started to wonder what that meant for the rest of my life.

  Dragons used their noses for everything.

  How would I know who was near? Friend or foe? How would I sense danger before it struck—or comfort before it left?

  I would never again smell my family. My home. The familiar comfort of a horde flying together on the wind.

  I would never smell prey. How would I hunt? How would I track? The thought twisted my stomach into knots.

  What was a dragon who couldn’t scent the world?

  What would become of me?

  KT