Sleep refuses to come. I stare at the ceiling while the compound settles into quiet around me. Tomorrow brings the final trial. Tomorrow decides everything I’ve fought for these past weeks.

The egg pulses beneath the floorboards, its warmth calling through wood and stone. Something feels different tonight—the pull stronger than it’s ever been. Urgent. Almost desperate. I press my hand against the wooden planks and feel heat seeping through, more intense than any night before.

“It’s time,” Aspis’s voice fills my mind, clear and certain. “Come to me.”

My heart slams against my ribs. I’ve waited weeks for these words. Dreamed of them during endless days of scrubbing floors and dodging hostile stares. Feared them during sleepless nights when discovery seemed inevitable.

I swing my legs off the bed and pry up the floorboards. The shell feels impossibly thin beneath my fingertips, warmth radiating like a heartbeat growing stronger with each passing moment. No mistaking what this means. No denying it any longer.

“The beach,” I whisper through our bond. “Where exactly?”

“A cove where cliffs hide the sand from view. Follow the servant’s passage to the forgotten gate.”

I wrap the egg in dark cloth and steal through shadowed corridors. Guards patrol the main paths, their torchlight casting long shadows across stone walls, but I’ve learned this compound’s secrets during my weeks here. Which floorboards creak. Which corners hide observers. Which routes the patrols avoid.

The forgotten gate creaks softly beneath my hands, and beyond it, the beach stretches silver beneath the full moon. Salt wind catches my hair as I slip through, bare feet sinking into cool sand.

The cove is exactly as she described—hidden, protected by towering cliffs on three sides. Moonlight spills across the sand like liquid silver, painting everything in shades of pearl and shadow. Waves whisper against the shore in rhythmic comfort. I feel safe here, embraced by stone and darkness and the endless murmur of the sea.

I settle cross-legged on the sand and unwrap the egg carefully.

My breath catches.

The shell has changed completely. Where green scales once gleamed, now they seem translucent, light pulsing from within like a living heartbeat. Beautiful. Terrifying. The shell I’ve carried for months, green as mountain pine—now glowing like a paper lantern holding captive starlight.

“Aspis?” My voice trembles.

“I’m ready.” Her voice carries something new. Anticipation. Relief. A hint of joy I’ve never heard before. “Are you?”

I cradle the egg closer, feeling its heat against my chest. “Always.”

A crack appears.

The sound splits the night—ice breaking, crystal shattering, something ancient finally awakening. Fractures spread across the shell in intricate patterns, each one glowing brighter until the egg becomes a constellation in my trembling hands.

I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can only watch as shell fragments fall away, scattering across moonlit sand like broken stars.

A small creature emerges, wet and gleaming.

And the world stops entirely.

White. Scales shimmer pure, unmarked white, gleaming like moonstone in the silver light. Not green—nothing like the green shell that deceived me for months. Not the dark scales of Aeloris sea dragons. Not mountain blue like my family’s ancestral beasts.

White.

I know the legends. Everyone knows them—whispered stories of dragons that appear only in times of great need, creatures most riders never see in a lifetime. Myths told to children, dismissed by scholars, coveted by the powerful. Wars have been fought over less.

I just never believed I’d be holding one in my own two hands.

“The shell was green,” I breathe, staring at the impossible creature before me. “How—”

“Shells lie.” Aspis lifts her head, golden eyes meeting mine with ancient knowing. Far older than any hatchling should be. Far wiser than her tiny form suggests. “I chose you before you ever touched my egg. I felt your pain across mountains and seas, and I came.”

“Yes. They will.”

I gasp, clutching her tighter. Too much. It’s all too much, rushing in at once like a dam breaking, and I’m going to shatter beneath the weight of it—

“Breathe with me.”

“What white dragons give their riders. What you were always meant to have.”

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