A list of names. Safe houses. Trade routes.
The kind of information someone carries when they’re running from one place that’s fallen toward another that might still stand.
Most of the names mean nothing to me. Dead people. Dead places. But one snags my attention, makes my bloodline twitch like recognition?—
Kaster Nexis.
No safe house listed beside it. No trade route. The name, underlined twice, with a single notation: Predator. Solitary. Do not approach unless necessary.
I read the words three times.
Kaster Nexis.
I’ve heard the name before. Whispers in dying settlements, warnings passed between refugees. A dragon who hunts alone in the wastelands, who kills monsters the way other predatorskill prey—without hesitation, without mercy, without apparent purpose except that they exist and he wants them to stop.
He doesn’t protect territory. Doesn’t guard populations. Doesn’t enforce anything.
He kills.
The trader’s dead eyes stare up at me, and I wonder if he was trying to reach this dragon when the scouts caught him. If he thought solitary violence might save him when nothing else would.
My magic stirs again. That same recognition, almost like my bloodline knows a truth I haven’t learned yet.
I fold the parchment and tuck it into my belt.
I findhim dying in the cellar of an abandoned inn.
Not the dragon—the trader’s companion. I almost miss him entirely, but the sound of labored breathing draws me down the stairs into darkness. He’s wedged himself into a corner, legs splayed at wrong angles, a wound in his stomach that’s stopped bleeding only because there’s nothing left to bleed.
His eyes track my movement when I kneel beside him. Lucid, despite the pain. Dying people get that clarity at the end—the body’s last gift before it gives up.
“You’re not one of them.” His voice is a wet rasp.
“No.”
“Thank the—” He breaks off, coughing. Blood flecks his lips. “Thank nothing. The gods did this.”
I don’t argue. My bloodline knows the truth of it better than most—the monsters aren’t random. They’re designed. Built for specific purposes by a power that doesn’t want to be seen.
“The trader outside.” I pull out the parchment. “He had this. You were traveling with him.”
Recognition flickers across his face. Grief, maybe, if he has the energy for it. “Mikkel. Fuck. They got Mikkel.”
“He was dead when I found him.”
“Good.” The word comes out savage, relieved. “Better that than—” Another wet cough. “Than what they do when they take you alive.”
I’ve heard stories. I don’t need details.
“This name.” I point to the underlined entry. “Kaster Nexis. You were looking for him?”
The dying man’s eyes sharpen. For a moment, he looks almost lucid. Almost hopeful.
“Dragon,” he manages. “Predator domain. He hunts in the Ash Wastes, three days east. Kills everything the gods throw at him.” A horrible bubbling laugh that ends in choking. “If anyone can—if anyone could?—”
His hand closes around my wrist. The grip is weak, but desperate.
“Find him. Do whatever you have to. He’s the only—” Blood floods from his mouth. His body convulses once, twice, then goes still.
