In the fog-shrouded town of El Hollow, where church bells rang late and time moved like thick honey, twelve-year-old Corin first heard the voice beneath the cobblestones.
Help me…
It wasn’t wind or water.
It was vast, ancient, and unbearably tired.
At first he thought he was imagining it.
Then the whispers followed him home, slipping through cracks in the walls, humming in the floorboards of his grandfather’s cottage.
Old Bram, the stonemason, finally broke his silence one cold evening.
“This town wasn’t built on rock,” he whispered, eyes hollow.
“It was built on the back of a dragon.
And the dragon… is starting to dream again.”
That night, Corin found the map carved inside his grandfather’s own coffin — a delicate web of tunnels spiraling deep beneath the chapel ruins.
Ignoring Bram’s warnings, he pried open the sealed hatch and descended into darkness.
The tunnels were not carved.
They had grown.
The walls were warm, smooth, and faintly pulsing, like veins.
Deeper he went, past chambers lined with enormous fossilized scales, past walls that breathed softly in the dark.
Then he found the first eye.
A colossal golden eye embedded in the stone floor, slowly blinking as if waking from centuries of sleep.
When Corin touched it, visions crashed into him: cities of flame and glass, skies torn by wings, dragons shaping mountains like clay.
He saw the truth — every road was a rib, every well a vein, every tower a tooth.
The entire town of El Hollow had been built upon the sleeping body of the last dragon.
And now it was remembering.
The whispers became clearer, wrapping around his mind like smoke.
You are not the jailer, child.
You are the key.
Corin ran, but the tunnels shifted behind him, guiding him deeper.
He emerged into a vast cavern where ribs the size of castle towers curved overhead.
At its center floated a colossal egg of black scales veined with molten gold — the dragon’s heart, ticking like a countdown.
A low, ancient voice filled the chamber:
Shall I wake?
The egg cracked.
A single golden eye opened inside it, staring straight into Corin’s soul.
The ground trembled.
Above, in the town, bells began ringing by themselves.
The mist rising from the wells turned red.
The city itself was beginning to breathe.
Corin stood frozen before the pulsing heart, hand outstretched toward the glowing core.
One choice remained — to seal the dragon forever… or to let it rise and become what it was always meant to be.
The dragon’s voice whispered one final time:
Decide.
