The mountain itself seemed to hold its breath.

Then—his voice, low and raw, no longer laced with command but with something far more dangerous: fear.

“You think you’re ready, but you don’t even know what you’re asking for.”

Eira turned, eyes glinting in the dim firelight. “Then tell me. Show me. Or stop pretending that I’m some breakable thing.”

A flicker passed across his face—an emotion too quick to catch. “You’re not breakable, Eira. That’s what terrifies me.”

For a moment, neither of them moved. The sealed door loomed behind her, ancient and unmoving, yet humming faintly with something alive beneath the stone.

She stepped back from it—not in retreat, but in defiance. “You keep talking in riddles. I’m done playing this game.”

He stepped closer, shadows curling at his heels like living smoke. “And I’m done watching another girl walk to her own ruin.”

The words hit like a slap. Eira’s voice was tight. “Another?”

His jaw locked, but he didn’t deny it.

“You said they kept sending girls. Offerings,” she pressed. “What happened to them?”

“I tried to protect them.”

“But you failed,” she said, softer now.

The air thickened between them. He didn’t answer.

Eira’s heart pounded. She could feel it—this was the edge of something. A cliff where one word too far might send them both falling.

“I’m not like them,” she said.

He looked at her then, truly looked—and the pain in his gaze was something not even dragons should carry.

“I know.”

That single, ragged confession made her chest tighten. She wasn’t sure why.

“I won’t open it,” she said at last, stepping away from the door, “but not because you told me to. Because I’m not walking into something blind. Not again.”

The Dragon King exhaled, the smallest release of tension in his shoulders.

“I’ll tell you what’s behind it,” he said, voice nearly a whisper. “But not tonight.”

“Why not?”

“Because once you know, it won’t leave you.”

Eira held his gaze. “Neither will you.”

Something unreadable passed between them.

Then he turned, vanishing into the shadows as swiftly as he’d come.

And Eira was left staring at the door that sang only to her, wondering what kind of truth had been buried deep enough to need stone to hold it back.