The rusted iron gate of Fallow’s Market shrieked on its hinges. Diego emerged from the wagon first, his white tunic streaked with grime and dark, drying blood. His hands were not clean. He made no move to wipe them, to hide the evidence on his knuckles and palms. He simply stood in the muddy path, his silver eyes scanning the gathered trainees, the wardens, the ruined stalls. Sebastian, the white tiger, padded silently to his side.

Swan followed a moment later, her curly silver hair escaping its tie. Her green eyes found Arianda, held for a second, then moved to Diego with an understanding so deep it needed no words. Salem, the green rabbit, hopped down the wagon steps behind her, whiskers twitching.

Diego walked toward where Sage stood with Balor and Sherief. His steps were measured, his shoulders loose. The blood on his hands was a stark, silent proclamation. He stopped before them, his gaze including Arianda, Simon, Lilith, and Kira who stood close by.

“The secret is out,” Diego said. His voice was calm, a low rumble that carried over the sigh of the wind through broken wood. “About the silver dragon.”

Arianda felt Zariel press against her leg. She didn’t look down. She kept her eyes on Diego’s stained hands, then on his face.

“You have a choice, Arianda,” Diego continued. “You can keep hiding him. Let him be a dying myth, a story that fades. It’s safer for travel, but you will always be worried someone knows your secret. Or you can let him be what he is. A beacon.”

He let the word hang in the damp air. A beacon. Arianda’s fingers twitched at her sides. Simon shifted his weight beside her.

“A beacon draws people,” Diego said. “It also draws both allies and enemies, it cannot differentiate what it attracts. It will make you a target. But it might also call others to you. Others who desire change. Who are waiting for a sign to fight.”

Arianda looked at Zariel then. His golden eyes were wide, watching her. She saw no fear in them. Only a steady, waiting loyalty. She saw Leo’s empty gaze, the hollowed faces in the ruins, Sage’s wound under her hands. The coal of resolve in her chest glowed hotter.

“What is your intent?” she asked Diego. Her voice was quieter than his, but it didn’t waver.

Diego’s lips pressed into a thin line. “To guide you all back to the Zarinthar. You need to finish your lessons. You need to understand what you’re choosing, with clear eyes and trained hands. After that, you decide your path.”

He glanced at the shattered market around them. “I will see you safe to your lessons. Then I will rebuild this. After that… I move on. To deal with the Brood.”

The word landed with a different weight. It wasn’t like ‘quieting.’ It felt older, more deliberate. Arianda tilted her head. “What is the Brood?”

Diego went very still. It wasn’t a flinch. It was a coiling, a drawing in. Sebastian let out a low, almost inaudible growl that vibrated through the ground. Swan’s hand rose, as if to touch Diego’s arm, but stopped an inch short.

“The Brood,” Diego said, the calm in his voice now layered over something hard and jagged, “is the source of my deepest sorrows.”

He looked directly at Arianda, and for the first time, she saw past the merchant, past the guide, past the strength. She saw a wound that had closed but remained as deep scars.

“And their leader,” he said, each word precise and cold, “may be one of the few in this world who could match my ferocity.”

A silence followed, deeper than before. It was not the silence of grief or shock. It was the silence of a threshold recognized, a path turning toward a darker wood. Diego’s bloody hands hung at his sides, a promise and a testament. The choice was no longer just about hiding or shining. It was about what awaited in the shadows when the beacon was lit.

Sage took a step forward, his face tightening as the movement pulled at the wound Arianda had sealed. He pressed a hand to his side, the gesture casual but the strain evident in the set of his jaw. He looked from the trainees to Diego, his voice carrying the weary weight of experience. “Everything Diego has stated is something I can attest to. This world has many who live under the power of tyrants. Many who wish to be free. But most do not have a light to guide them.” His eyes, old and tired, settled on Arianda. “You could be that beacon. You could give them hope. But only if you choose to do so.”

Simon’s hand came to rest on Arianda’s shoulder. It was a solid, warm weight. Grounding. A silent reminder she was not alone in the circle of this choice.

Arianda looked from Sage’s pained stance to Diego’s bloody, patient hands. The enormity of it pressed down, a physical force. The word ‘beacon’ had felt right a moment ago, a defiant flame in the dark. Now it felt like a target painted on her chest. “I need time,” she said, the words leaving her lips softer than she intended. “I need to consider.”

Diego nodded once, a clean, accepting motion. He turned without another word and began walking back toward the wagon, Sebastian falling into step beside him. The blood on his hands was just part of him now.

Swan lingered a moment longer. She offered Arianda a gentle smile that didn’t quite reach her worried green eyes. “I will support any decision you make,” she said, her voice as soft as crushed mint. Then she turned, her silver curls catching the fading light, and followed Diego.

Sage let out a slow breath, nodded at Arianda, and turned with a slight grimace. Zudrok nudged his shoulder, a massive, careful support. Joan appeared from near a broken stall, her calm, observant manner taking in Sage’s condition, and moved to assist him as they walked away.

The space around Arianda, Simon, Lilith, and Kira suddenly felt more intimate, more real. The dragons clustered close. Zariel pressed his head against Arianda’s hip. Raphaela coiled by Simons back, her red scales dull with dust. Moss and Raltz stood alert at their partners’ sides.

Simon dropped his hand from her shoulder, but stayed close. “I don’t like it,” he said, his usual sarcasm stripped bare, leaving blunt concern. “Putting a sign over your head that says ‘silver dragon here, come and get it’? It’s asking for trouble. For you and for him.” He jerked his chin toward Zariel.

Kira crossed his arms, his sandy hair falling across his forehead. His blue eyes were analytical, scanning the ruined market as if it were a tactical map. “Simon’s right. From a strategic standpoint, remaining hidden grants mobility and reduces immediate threat. Announcing yourselves raises every alarm from here to the capital. It would make simple travel… complicated.”

Their words landed in the quiet space Sage and Diego had left behind. Arianda traced the edge of Zariel’s silver scale with her thumb. She looked at the shattered wood of a nearby stall, the blackened marks of fire. “Were they waiting for us?” she asked, the question barely a whisper. “The soldiers here. The dragons. Was this…” She couldn’t finish. *Was this destruction our fault?*

The thought was a cold stone in her stomach. Leo’s death, the hollowed faces, the market in ruins—had their mere presence, the rumor of a silver dragon, drawn this violence here like a lightning rod? Hiding felt cowardly. But shining a light felt like leading death to every doorstep.

She found herself leaning toward Simon’s opinion. Toward safety. Toward survival. “It would be safer,” she murmured, more to herself than to them.

Lilith stepped forward then. She had been quiet, her crystal blue eyes moving between each speaker. Now she placed herself in the center of their little circle, her expression thoughtful but firm. “Safer for who?” she asked, her voice steady. “For us, maybe. For a while.” She looked at Arianda, then at the distant forms of the wounded being tended near the wagons. “But if what Sage and Diego say is true… if there are people waiting for a sign to fight back against… against whatever the Brood is, against the tyrants… then isn’t hiding just leaving them in the dark?”

She didn’t raise her voice. Her sense of justice was a quiet, persistent thing. “We could bring good to others. Real good. Why shouldn’t we?”

Simon ran a hand through his brown hair, frustrated. “Because ‘real good’ doesn’t help if you’re dead, Lilith. We just saw what ‘drawing attention’ looks like.”

“We also saw what hiding gets us,” Kira countered, though his tone was still analytical. “Ambushes. Surprises. They found us anyway, or found this place because of rumors. Secrecy is a fragile defense.”

Arianda listened, the two arguments weaving a knot in her mind. Simon’s fear was for her, personal and protective. Kira’s logic was cold, weighing odds. Lilith’s was moral, looking outward. Zariel’s warmth against her leg was a constant, silent question.

The sky deepened toward twilight. The air grew cooler, carrying the scent of old smoke and the fresh, damp earth from beyond the broken gate. Somewhere, a cookfire was lit, the smell of simple stew cutting through the heavier scents.

“I can’t decide now,” Arianda said finally, looking at each of them. “I need to sleep on it. We all should.”

Simon let out a long breath, but nodded. “Okay. Yeah. Just… think about staying alive, okay?”

“I am,” she said. She was thinking about Leo not being alive. She was thinking about the hollowed eyes in the ruins. She was thinking about the weight of a beacon, and the deeper dark of hiding from a world that needed one.

Arianda stepped away from the circle of firelight, into the cooler dark near the broken gate. Zariel moved with her, silent at her side.

“Ari—”

“Alone,” she said. Quiet. Firm.

She didn’t look back.

The sounds of the camp softened behind her. Damp earth and old stone filled the air.

Garrick stood ahead, leaning against a collapsed wall, arms crossed, head bowed. He didn’t look up as she approached.

She angled to pass.

“He looked up to your group.”

The words came rough.

Arianda stopped. “Leo?”

Garrick let out a breath that almost passed for a laugh. “Yeah. Him.”

He dragged a hand down his face. “Guy walked around like nothing could touch him…” A small shake of his head. “Jealous of a group of friends.”

Arianda said nothing.

“I was right there,” Garrick went on. “We had it. Then something hit me. Hard.” He swallowed. “By the time I got back up…”

He gestured vaguely toward the ruins.

“He was gone. Sigma too.”

A pause.

“Joan just stood there,” he added quietly. “Like she forgot how to move.”

His gaze drifted.

“He always did that,” Garrick muttered. “Made it feel like things were under control. Even when they weren’t.” A faint, broken smile flickered. “Drove me insane.”

Another breath.

“He talked a lot. Wrestling team. Missed state by one match.” A small shake of his head. “Kept saying next year… like that still meant something.”

Silence stretched between them.

“He stepped in once,” Garrick said after a moment. “In Veridia. Merchant getting rough with a kid. Leo didn’t even think. Just moved.”

Arianda felt something tighten in her chest.

“Didn’t always think things through,” Garrick added. “Didn’t know when to stop.”

A beat.

“…But he didn’t wait either.” That hung there. Garrick huffed softly, eyes still distant. “He was…” He paused, like the word didn’t quite sit right. “…a beacon.”

Silence.

“Didn’t matter where you were standing,” he added. “You always knew where he was.”

Arianda’s breath slowed. Images surfaced—Leo stepping forward, Leo supporting her, Leo simply being there.

Not perfect. Not careful. Present.

A beacon.

The word settled differently now. Not light. Not hope. A fixed point.

“Thank you,” she whispered. A tear slipped down her cheek. Zariel pressed his head gently against hers—steady, warm. Garrick gave a small nod, not trusting himself to speak. He turned back to the wall.

Arianda left him to his silence. She turned toward the firelight.

Simon, Kira, and Lilith waited where she’d left them, tension held between them. Their dragons stood close, alert. Arianda stopped before them. Her eyes were clear now.

“I know what we need to do.”