The Forgotten Pact

The last time a dragon was seen in the skies of Aeldor was over three hundred years ago. Since then, magic had withered like a flower denied sunlight—slow, silent, and irreversible.

Therin Hale remembered when he could split fire with a whisper. That was thirty years ago, before the magic began to fade from his blood like warmth from cooling embers. Now, even lighting a candle took effort.

They called him the last mage of Eltarin, though he preferred exile to title. His tower, once alive with arcane light, now stood quiet on the cliffs of Vaelmoor. Books gathered dust. Spells refused to spark. And the world carried on—industrial, loud, and faithless.

But everything changed the day the girl arrived.


---

She came at dusk, when the horizon burned with the same crimson gold that once lived in Therin’s spells.

“I’m Kira,” she said, brushing wind-tangled hair from her face. “You’re Therin Hale, aren’t you?”

“I used to be,” he replied. “What do you want?”

She pulled something from her satchel—a small, cracked stone, faintly glowing with heat. It pulsed like a heartbeat.

“I found this in the ruins near Serindal. It called me.”

Therin took it with trembling fingers. It was a scale—a dragon’s scale. Still warm.


---

That night, Therin could not sleep.

He lit candles without effort. The cold in his limbs lifted. Something ancient stirred inside him.

A dragon’s scale. After all this time. He had thought them extinct, legends, echoes of a wilder age.

In the old texts—ones long banned by the Kingdom Council—it was said that dragons were bound to the magic of the land. Not merely creatures of flame and sky, but anchors. When they vanished, magic began to decay.

Unless...

Unless one still lived.


---

Kira watched the mage with quiet intensity. She was young, but her eyes held something old—grief or fire, perhaps both.

“Why did it call to you?” Therin asked.

“I don’t know. But I feel it... pulling me east. Beyond the Grey Barrens.”

He stiffened. “That’s cursed land.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But maybe that’s where it went.”


---

They left at dawn.

The journey was perilous. Forests twisted with corrupted magic, towns where even the stars didn’t shine. Therin taught Kira old glyphs, forgotten chants. Her talent was raw, but pure—she didn’t use magic, she became it.

“She’s tied to it,” he wrote in his journal. “Like the dragons were.”

Weeks passed. The pull grew stronger.

And one night, deep in the Ashen Wastes, they found it.


---

A cave, half-buried in obsidian rock. Ancient runes lined the entrance—draconic script. Therin hadn’t seen the language in decades, but he knew the words by heart.

“We bind. We burn. We balance.”

Inside, the air shimmered with power.

They descended.

And there, at the heart of the mountain, lay a dragon—coiled and sleeping. Its scales dim but intact. The same crimson gold as the scale Kira had carried.

It was enormous. Even at rest, it radiated something deeper than heat. Something... alive.

And on the cave wall, engraved in flame-riven stone, was the Pact.

A vow made between dragon and mage, centuries ago, when the world was young:
Magic for life. Life for magic.
A balance upheld by one chosen mage and one dragon. A Bond.

But the Bond had broken when the last pact-holder died, and no one remembered how to renew it.

Except Therin.


---

“I can’t do it,” he said quietly, backing away. “I’m not strong enough.”

“You are,” Kira whispered. “You just don’t believe it.”

“It’s not belief. It’s cost. The Bond requires... a soul.”

She placed a hand over her heart. “Then I’ll give mine.”

“No!” he snapped. “You’re just a child.”

“I’m the one it called,” she said. “Maybe I was born for this.”

The dragon stirred. Its eyes—molten and endless—opened. It looked at Kira.

Then at Therin.

Then it spoke, but not aloud. The voice was inside their minds:

"Will you restore the Balance?"

Kira stepped forward. “Yes.”

"Do you offer your heart to the fire?"

She turned to Therin. “Will you help me?”

He hesitated.

But he saw the glow returning to the walls. He felt the tremble in the ground. The breath of magic waking again.

He stepped beside her.

Together, their hands touched the dragon’s snout.

Flame erupted, but it did not burn. It remade them.

Mage and flame. Child and sky. Soul and power.

The Bond reforged.


---

When they emerged from the cave, the world had changed.

The wind carried whispers of old spells. Rivers glowed faintly under moonlight. Far in the distance, other dragons stirred beneath mountains, in lakes, under stars.

And above them, the first dragon in centuries took flight—crimson and gold, its roar shaking the heavens.

Kira smiled.

Therin wept.

Magic had returned.

And this time, it would not be forgotten.