Warmth.
That's all there was.
Not fire, not comfort—just a thick, wet heat. Like being held in a heartbeat.
No thoughts. No voice. No "I."
Only being.
My body was folded in on itself, limbs tucked, tail curled, wings tight against my back. My world was curved and close. Soft pulses vibrated around me—some distant, some intimate.
Everything was pressure and motionless weight.
But then… something shifted.
The pulse faltered. The warmth thinned. The pressure changed.
My claws twitched.
Not because I wanted to move. But because something older than want whispered in my bones:
Now.
My snout tilted upward. My body trembled.
At the tip of my mouth, something sharp pulsed—an ache begging to be used.
An egg tooth.
I didn't remember what I was.
Didn't know what I was becoming.
But I knew what to do.
Tap.
Scratch.
CRACK.
Light exploded behind my sealed lids. My world split. Cold air surged in like a knife.
It hurt. My body jerked, flinched. I whimpered—a dry, sharp breath that didn't feel like mine.
I pushed again.
CRUNCH.
SNAP.
The shell broke beneath me. My limbs scrambled for ground. My body was too soft. My muscles barely worked. My wings dragged like wet cloth.
But I moved.
And for the first time, I breathed.
The air was raw. Every molecule stung. It carried the scent of wet stone, ash, and something electric—Aether. I didn't know the word yet, but my blood did. My bones.
It clung to everything. The cave. The wind. Me.
My instincts kicked again. I turned back to the shattered shell and began eating it.
The taste was bitter, mineral-heavy, tinged with yolk and blood. But every swallow fed me. Every fragment devoured became part of me—my strength, my first power.
Even in myths, dragons eat their own shell. For strength. For growth.
In Aetheryn, it's more than tradition. It's survival. It's the first rite.
When I finished, I slumped forward, chest heaving. The glow of the cave pulsed with faint violet veins across the walls—Aether veins. Alive.
Then something happened.
Not outside.
Inside.
A resonance. A vibration, deep and old.
It wasn't a sound. It was a name.
Not the name from my last life. Not Icaris, the lost human watching his world burn.
This was deeper.
My true name, etched in my scales, sung through my soul.
Icaris.
I didn't know what it meant now. But it fit.
Like it was waiting for this moment.
My tail twitched.
My claws dug into the soft earth.
I pulled myself fully out of the egg fragments and stood.
Shaky. Small. Alive.
My wings twitched again. Membranes still damp. Useless—for now.
But one day, they'd carry me higher than the broken moon above.
I looked up. Through a crack in the cavern roof, pale shards of Aetheryn's moon cast light down on me. It wasn't Earth's moon. But it had the same sadness in its glow.
The same silence.
I didn't cry. Dragons don't.
But I remembered something like sorrow.
And in that quiet moment, surrounded by egg fragments, stone, and silver light, I realized:
I was alone.
But I was alive.
And I wasn't human anymore.