The mist did not smell like smoke.
It smelled like rotten eggs and sour water.
Kiran stepped down into the cloud behind Vaelgor, and the air immediately bit into his eyes.
Tears welled up, blurring the sight of the dragon’s dark tail in front of him.
His throat scratched as if he had swallowed a handful of dry sand.
He opened his mouth to cough, but the second he sucked in a shallow breath, his chest seized up.
A sharp, stabbing pain flared behind his ribs, like someone had poured hot lemon juice straight into his lungs.
[JYOTI]
Warning: Corrosive vapor detected.
Do not take shallow breaths.
Maintain the Iron Breath cycle.
I’m trying!
Kiran coughed, his knees buckling on the loose stone.
“Do not stop,” Vaelgor’s voice drifted back through the yellow gloom, low and muffled.
“If you drop to your knees here, the vapor settles on your skin.
Keep your feet under you.”
Kiran clamped his jaw shut.
He forced his shoulders down and drove his air deep into his belly, pulling against the painful burn in his windpipe.
It hurt.
It felt like dragging a wire brush down his throat.
But as the heavy air settled deep below his navel, that small, stubborn heat in his chest flared back to life.
It didn’t put out the fire; it absorbed it.
The hot, sour ache slowly turned into a dull, heavy warmth that pushed out toward his ribs, keeping the yellow dampness from drowning his lungs.
He let out a slow breath through his nose.
A thin streamer of pale yellow vapor curled out of his nostrils into the cold air.
[JYOTI]
Iron Breath: Cycle maintained under hostile conditions.
Progress: 0.5%
Lung tissue resistance: Slightly increased.
Kiran wiped his watering eyes with his forearm and kept walking.
The trail was barely a path at all.
It was a narrow ledge cut into the sheer wall of the gorge, sloping down at a steep, treacherous angle.
On their left was the solid, damp stone of the cliff face, covered in slick black moss.
On their right was a drop into blank, swirling yellow fog.
If Kiran slipped, he wouldn’t hit the bottom—he would just fall into the soup until he vanished.
Vaelgor had it worse.
The dragon was far too wide for the ledge.
His right shoulder scraped against the rough cliff with every step, shedding flakes of grey rock, while his left claws hung inches over the empty drop.
His broken horn knocked against low stone overhangs, and his injured wing dragged limp and heavy along the gravel.
Every few yards, Vaelgor had to stop, shivering from the sheer strain on his front leg.
“You’re leaning too far right,” Kiran called out softly through the fog.
Vaelgor didn’t look back.
“I am not leaning.
The rock is crooked.”
“Your left foot is two inches from nothing,” Kiran said, taking careful steps on his cloth-wrapped shoes.
“If that edge crumbles under your weight, you’re going over.
Pull your belly closer to the wall.”
“I am a dragon, ape.
I know where my feet—”
A loud crack cut him off.
The outer edge of the stone shelf sheared away beneath Vaelgor’s back claw. Get faster updates on g.com.
A slab of rock the size of a kitchen table broke off and tumbled silently into the yellow mist.
Vaelgor’s hind leg dropped into empty air.
His body jerked sideways.
His good claws dug into the cliff face, gouging four deep, white furrows into the wet stone, but the sheer weight of his massive body began to drag him backward toward the drop.
“Vaelgor!” Kiran lunged forward, not thinking about the difference in their sizes.
He couldn’t pull a forty-foot dragon.
It was like trying to stop a falling truck with a piece of string.
But he saw the problem immediately: Vaelgor was panicking, thrashing his tail against the empty air, throwing off his balance even more.
“Stop moving the tail!” Kiran yelled, pressing his back hard against the inner cliff wall.
“Jam your front knee into the crease!
There’s a notch in the rock by your foot!”
Vaelgor froze.
He didn’t argue.
He locked his front knee tight against the cleft in the stone, swung his heavy neck inward toward the wall, and used the leverage to heave his back leg up onto the solid path.
The stone groaned, but it held.
The dragon collapsed flat against the ledge, his snout buried in the damp gravel, panting hard.
Thick, hot breath blew the yellow fog away from his face in wide circles.
Kiran stood three feet behind him, his heart hammering against his ribs, his hands shaking as he leaned against the cold stone.
“You almost went off,” Kiran wheezed, wiping sweat and mist from his forehead.
Vaelgor lay still for a long time.
His bronze eye rolled back, looking at Kiran through the yellow haze.
There was no growl in his throat.
No sneer.
“A dragon does not thank a human,” Vaelgor muttered, his voice rough as gravel.
“Good,” Kiran said, sitting down hard on the wet path to give his trembling legs a break.
“Because I didn’t save you to get a thank you.
I saved you so I don’t have to walk through this soup alone.”
Vaelgor let out a quiet huff.
A tiny flicker of yellow flame sparkled inside his left nostril before vanishing.
“The notch,” the dragon said quietly.
“How did you see it through the fog?”
“I have two working eyes that aren’t panicking,” Kiran said.
He didn’t mention the faint blue outline that Jyoti had briefly projected over the rock face, highlighting the structural fracture before it gave way.
[JYOTI]
Hazard averted.
Terrain stability: Very poor.
Recommendation: Rest here until visibility improves.
“Is there anywhere flat down there?” Kiran asked, peering over Vaelgor’s broad, scaly flank into the gloom below.
“Or does this ledge just go down forever?”
“It opens up into the first shelf,” Vaelgor said, slowly lifting his horned head.
“An old checkpoint from the war.
The Iron King used to keep human work-crews there to dig for fire-crystals in the deep seams.”
Kiran’s ears perked up.
“Humans?
There were humans down here?”
“Dead ones,” Vaelgor replied bluntly.
“They died five hundred years ago when the vents opened and filled the lower levels with sulfur.
But the stone shelters they built should still have roofs.
The mist is thinner inside the stone.”
“How much further?”
“If the rock does not break again.”
They moved slower this time.
Kiran walked ahead, testing the path with the flat end of his steel wrench, tapping the stone to check for hollow cracks before Vaelgor put his full weight down.
The descent felt endless.
The yellow fog stayed thick, clinging to Kiran’s skin like grease.
His clothes were damp, cold, and sticky, but every time he felt the chill seeping into his bones, he pulled the heavy air down into his gut, stoking that small ember behind his ribs.
With every cycle, the breathing felt a tiny bit more natural.
It was like learning the rhythm of a heavy hand-pump—hard work at first, but once the flow started, the weight moved on its own.
Finally, the narrow ledge flattened out.
The cliff opened into a wide, hollow cavern carved directly into the belly of the mountain.
The ceiling arched thirty feet overhead, supported by thick pillars of rough-hewn black stone.
The yellow mist didn’t enter the cave.
It hung at the threshold like a heavy curtain, held back by a faint, warm draft blowing from deep within the rock.
Kiran stumbled past the entrance and collapsed onto the dry stone floor, rolling onto his back with a groan of pure relief.
“Dry air,” Kiran gasped, staring up at the dark ceiling.
“Actual, dry air.”
Vaelgor dragged himself through the opening, his tail leaving a wide track in the dust.
The dragon slumped heavily against the base of a central stone pillar, his eyes closing the moment his bulk hit the ground.
“Two hours,” Vaelgor muttered, his breath coming slow and ragged.
“I need…
two hours.”
Kiran didn’t answer.
He was too tired to move.
The cave was dead silent, save for the dragon’s heavy breathing and the faint drip of water somewhere far in the back.
Kiran turned his head to the side, looking at the floor of the shelter.
Half-buried in the dry dirt near the cave wall, something caught his eye.
It wasn’t a bone, and it wasn’t a piece of broken rock.
It was an old, rusted iron pickaxe.
And right beside it, carved into the stone of the pillar above Vaelgor’s head, were crude, jagged lines.
Kiran squinted through the dim light, pulling himself up onto his elbows.
They weren’t dragon claw marks.
They were human letters.
Old, crooked, and carved with a metal chisel, but unmistakably human.
Kiran stood up slowly, his wrapped feet shuffling across the dry stone, and walked toward the pillar.
He reached out with his soot-stained fingers and brushed the dirt away from the carved stone.
The words were short.
Simple.
We dug until the fire spoke.
We buried what was left.
Beneath the words, carved deep into the rock, was a rough symbol: a circle split by a jagged line, with three small dots on either side.
Kiran frowned, his fingers tracing the strange mark.
Before he could step back, the blue screen in his head didn’t just blink—it flared with a sudden, sharp pulse of white light that made his skull throb.
[JYOTI]
Unknown Marker Detected.
Memory Index: Sealed.
Authority Level: Insufficient.
Heart rate spike detected.
Host…
recognize this?
Kiran blinked hard, stumbling back a step.
It was the first time the voice in his head had ever asked him a question.