The dormitory door slammed violently against the stone wall before Greg could catch the handle, and for a long, agonizing heartbeat, he simply stood paralyzed in the threshold.His modest bed had been completely overturned, its thin straw mattress viciously ripped open so that pale stalks littered the wooden floor like a dusting of fallen feathers. His only spare training clothes had been slashed into useless strips and hung mockingly from the exposed rafters.The small wooden chest that held his meager worldly possessions lay shattered in the far corner, its lid hanging pitifully by a single rusted hinge.A heavy, suffocating silence settled over the ruined room, but it was not the peaceful quiet of a restful evening. Instead, it was a mocking, malicious stillness—the kind of ugly atmosphere that lingers like a bad scent long after the cruel laughter has faded.Greg slowly stepped inside, his heavy boots crunching loudly over the splintered wood that covered the floor. He knelt caref

As moonlight fully replaced the setting sun, the abandoned corner of the grounds felt noticeably colder and more unwelcoming than the rest of the academy.Greg approached the ledge slowly, noting how the old wooden warning sign still hung precariously beside the opening. The letters spelling out DANGER - DO NOT DESCEND had nearly faded away entirely, worn down by decades of harsh weather and neglect.He leaned forward and peered over the crumbling edge, met only by an endless, suffocating darkness that offered no comforting reflection of water and hinted at no bottom—only a pure, consuming black void."So this is where you ended up," Greg muttered into the abyss.He moved to untie the heavy spare practice rope that hung from a nearby rusted iron ring. The coarse fibers looked incredibly worn and frayed, proving to be far older and less reliable than he would have preferred for such a dangerous climb.Still, lacking any other options, it would simply have to do. He wrapped the heavy ro

Murmurs of agreement rippled through the attentive classroom. Greg, however, felt his fingers curl tightly around the wooden edge of his desk, his knuckles whitening from the pressure.Varis continued his lecture with practiced precision. "Thousands of years ago, the primitive tribes of our world lacked any scientific understanding of natural disasters or geological phenomena."He began pacing across the front of the classroom again, gesturing theatrically. "When volcanoes erupted without warning,"He flicked his staff, causing orange and red illusions of flowing lava to appear, "they imagined fire-breathing beasts living within the mountains."Another flick of his staff produced a new image. "When devastating earthquakes struck without explanation,"He caused the entire classroom floor to tremble slightly through sophisticated illusion magic: "They invented stories of sleeping dragons thrashing beneath the earth itself."Many students nodded thoughtfully, finding the explanation logi

Greg found his thoughts involuntarily returning to the inexplicable warmth of the pendant against his chest, the impossible roar that had echoed through the depths of Blackstone Well, and the old stories his mother had whispered to him beside their meager fireplace.He lowered his voice to barely a whisper, as if the words themselves were forbidden, dangerous. "If dragons truly existed as living creatures..."Aldric's pale eyes sharpened with sudden intensity."...then why would someone bother to erase them from history?" Greg finished.For several long, agonizing seconds, the old librarian said absolutely nothing. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper, barely audible above the eternal silence of the library."Because history is written by survivors," he said slowly, his gaze drifting toward the towering shelves that surrounded them, "not by the truth."A terrible chill crawled slowly across Greg's skin, raising the fine hairs on his arms and the back of his neck

The roar rolled across the academy a second time. This time, Greg knew it wasn't his imagination. It was too deep, too vast.The sound seemed to pass through the stone beneath his boots rather than through the air, vibrating in his bones and rattling his teeth. The crowd had gone completely silent.Even Roland lowered his wand. A plume of black smoke rose beyond the northern wall, twisting into the afternoon sky. Then came screaming not the excited screams of spectators, real screams.People were running. "Get inside!" someone shouted."Seal the gates!""There's been an attack!"The arena erupted into chaos.Students pushed toward the exits, trampling over dropped weapons and shattered pieces of stone. Instructors shouted orders, trying to impose discipline on a crowd that had suddenly remembered it was mortal.Greg remained still. His hand pressed against his chest. The dragon pendant was burning. Not warm. Burning. He grabbed it through his tunic. For one strange instant, he thought