I need my hot spring. Not want—need. The compulsion claws beneath my skin, relentless and primal. My chambers are empty now, the lingering musk of my mates fading from the rumpled sheets. The stone floor is cold beneath my bare feet as I rise, and I move like a wraith through my home, silent and swift.
Need to hide…
Go to the cavern…
The island. Soft sand. Warm.
My dragoness echoes in my head, her voice layered over my thoughts like a second heartbeat. She’s driving me toward my nest. My private place. The urge is so overwhelming it bypasses thought entirely—my legs are moving before I’ve made the conscious decision to run.
I blow past my mates’ rooms; the torchlight flickering against the walls in my peripheral vision, nothing but smears of orange and shadow. My talons extend on instinct, the sharp points sinking into stone as I make the hard left into the egg chamber. Chips of rock scatter beneath my grip, pinging against the floor like scattered coins. I barely make it through the narrow opening into the hidden chamber beyond before the shift overtakes me.
It rips through my body without warning—bones snapping and reforming, muscles tearing and re-knitting, my spine elongating with a series of wet cracks that echo off the cavern walls. My skin splits to make way for scales, each one sliding into place with a whisper of keratin against keratin. The pain is exquisite and brief, swallowed by the rush of power that floods my larger form.
The water of the hot spring envelops me as I plunge in, silk-warm and mineral-rich, the heat seeping into my scales and loosening the tension coiled in my muscles. I swim to the island in the center, my powerful tail propelling me forward, the current I create lapping against the rocky shores. Steam rises around me, curling against my snout, carrying the scent of sulfur and ancient stone.
The stalagmites surrounding the island jut up like jagged teeth. I lower my horned head and slam into the first one. The impactreverberates through my skull, a deep satisfying crack that echoes through the cavern like an explosion. Fragments of stone rain down, splashing into the water, pinging off my armored hide. I strike again. And again. Each collision sends shockwaves up my neck, the vibration settling into my bones as I widen the gap.
Make it safe.
Make it right.
My talons slice through the broken bases, the stone parting like wet clay beneath the razor edges. Shards scatter across the sandy island, and I spit a small stream of acid onto the remaining jagged pieces. The hiss and sizzle fills the air, acrid smoke curling upward as the acid eats through rock, flattening the surface into something smooth. Something safe. The bitter chemical taste coats my tongue, familiar and grounding.
The interior of my nest is shaped like a shallow bowl, the sand still warm from the geothermal heat beneath. I curl into it, my massive body filling the space, scales scraping against the fine grains as I settle. Each granule presses into the softer hide of my underbelly—countless tiny points of pressure, oddly comforting. I turn myself so my horned head faces the opening, my neck curved, my eyes fixed on the only entrance.
This place. This hidden sanctuary.
I found it myself. I’d been exploring the network of tunnels that honeycomb beneath our territory when I felt it—the faintest tremor through the stone, a vibration that whispered of moving water somewhere beyond the solid rock face. Something called to me. Something ancient and instinctual that I couldn’t name. I pressed my palm against the cool stone in the egg chamber andfelt the warmth bleeding through from the other side, sensing the hollow space waiting in the darkness.
So I melted my way in.
The memory surfaces unbidden—the heat building in my chest, the acid rising in my throat, the first spray of corrosive liquid hitting the rock face. Steam erupted in a blinding cloud as stone dissolved like sugar in rain. The stone screamed as it melted, high-pitched hisses and pops that echoed through the empty tunnels. The sight that greeted me stole my breath.
A hidden hot spring, untouched for millennia. An island of black volcanic sand rising from water that glowed with bioluminescent algae. A perfect, secret sanctuary that had been waiting—just for me.
This was a black dragon’s instinct manifesting—the drive to find safe places, hidden places, spaces where we could retreat when the world demanded too much.
No one else knows this nest exists. Not my mates. Not my father’s court. This is mine, and mine alone.
The volcanic sand shifts beneath my weight, conforming to the curves of my body like a living thing. Heat radiates up from the Earth’s core far below, seeping through the dark grains, warming me from the outside in. The sand is ancient—ground down over millennia from volcanic rock, each grain smooth and fine as powder, black as my own scales. It smells of deep earth and fire long dormant, of something older than memory. Something that existed before dragons took to the skies.
The warmth sinks into my muscles, my bones, the very marrow of me. It soothes something I didn’t know was raw—something ancient and powerful that unfurls in my chest like a sleepingserpent finally given permission to rest. My dragoness sighs within me, a sound of bone-deep relief. This type of sand has cradled countless black dragons before me—I know this now with a certainty that transcends logic. Queens and warriors. Mothers and daughters. Their essence has seeped into every grain, and I feel them now like whispers against my scales. A lineage of strength. Of survival. Of fierce, unrelenting love for the lives they protected.
Perhaps they called to me through the stone. Perhaps they guided me here when I needed a sanctuary most.
I belong here. In this moment, in this place, I am exactly where I’m meant to be.
The natural rock formation rises around me like a fortress—solid, unyielding, eternal. Millions of years of geological pressure created these walls, layer upon layer of volcanic rock compressed into something harder than steel. I press my flank against the curved interior and feel the stone’s cool solidity, an anchor against the chaos churning in my mind. The walls arch overhead, forming a dome that blocks out the bioluminescent glow of the outer cavern. No light penetrates here. Not a single photon breaches this darkness.
The black is absolute. Complete. Perfect.
My scales—already the color of a moonless night—disappear entirely in the shadows. I hold up one massive, clawed hand and see nothing. Not the gleam of keratin, not the subtle iridescence that plays across my hide in the light. I am invisible. I am shadow given form. I am the darkness itself.
Only my face remains visible.
The white bone plates of my skull gleam faintly in the void—the pale mask that marks me as my father’s daughter. In the absolute darkness of the nest, my face floats disembodied, a specter hovering in the black. I know what I look like. I’ve seen the ancient paintings in my father’s private archives, the ones that predate written history. Black dragons curled in dark places, their bodies invisible, only the ghostly white of their skulls visible to any creature foolish enough to peer inside.
The skull dragons, we were called. The death bringers. The ancient ones.
