Prologue - Birth and Death

There weren't always dragons in the Valley.

That was my fault.

Unearthing them from their slumber.

We stood at the peak of the Valley, the tower standing tall behind us, missing a piece of itself, snug in my pocket. I could feel its charge burning a thin hole in my pants. My right hand was singed and bloodied but there would be no pain soon because something worse was incoming. In the distance, deep inside Drachtal Valley, we could see home, our small village tucked away in peace. They were lucky to have those brief moments of silence—of ignorance. How I envied them.

There weren't always people in the Valley. For thousands of years it was home to the dragons. Our ancestors knew to avoid the Valley at all costs, except on one day of the year—the Day of the Offering. The people would bring one child of pure blood to the peak of the Valley in return for peace. They believed it was worthy to sacrifice few to save the rest. They did this for years, obeying the pact and sacrificing children to ancient beasts. Until one day they didn't.

The people feared the dragons for centuries for they did not know what would happen if they disobeyed them. The dragons said bow and the peopled bowed. And when they didn't, they expected hell to rain upon them. But instead, nothing happened. Days passed with silence, but not peace. A trembling anxiousness hung over the village from across the river. And when the people finally visited the Valley, it was empty. Not a single trace of a dragon remained. Neither a scale nor a tooth nor a bone. Dust and wind.

Soon after, the people began settling in Drachtal Valley and made their home in this place. At the top of the Valley, they built the Twisted Tower as a tribute to the dragons. And every year instead of offering a child's soul, a child must bless the altar that lies inside. A single slice to the palm, a prayer, and twelve drops of blood into the mouth of the dragonhead chalice as a thank you for sparing us. It stayed this way for so long that this story became legend. There was no proof.

I didn't believe stories.

I should have.

The ground trembled in quakes around the world. We didn't know for sure but we could feel it, like something waiting to be birthed, the water breaking of the earth beneath us. A baby's cry somewhere. A suckling and then quiet. The mist at our feet wrapped our ankles like a dead man's grasp.

Then soon they came. One by one they appeared in the sky from somewhere distant. Mere specs at first, mistaken for flies if one were not passing a second glance. I was trembling, I knew, but tried to be still. Still and Strong! The words of our house. But I was never those things. That was my twin sister, Margot, standing tall beside me. Braver, staring hell in the face.

They descended faster, dozens of them, big and haunting. The flap of their wings a low boom in the deep of our ear drums. The wind was warm and smelled of ash and earth. Scales shimmering even under the low light of the clouded sky. Some were green and ripe and the color of moss, a deep muddied puce, white as bone or icy blue. Black. The color of everything burned. They came down quick, with ease, as if they had been prepared for this hunt. The people of the Valley tried to run but the dragons were too large—too hungry. Homes were smashed and burned and the smell of hot skin stained the air. The screams were relentless. I stood frozen, burned and bloodied hand dripping at my side, the purple crystal I stole still sizzling hot in my pants. Through the rage and the weeps I could hear the pitter of wet drops on dirt as everything else drowned. I watched as people around me became people no more. Meat. Death swooping in with open maws, the crunch of bone on bone, and the sound of wet. Screams and then fewer and fewer. Thick silence.

Someone grabbed my hand and yanked me to the side. Her hand was soft and I recognized how it fit in my own, for we were the same. I stumbled over my feet as dragons continued to sweep low to the ground with their jaws cracked open, claws piercing through flesh. The cracks in the dry earth soon filled with a thick red. A pooling and splatter. I should have been the one guiding her, my sweet twin sister, through this carnage. But she was always more agile, more athletic. Faster and stronger. Still and Strong! I couldn't protect her. She wasn't supposed to be here. It was all my fault. All of this.

We ran. Fast and far. The twisted tower disappearing behind us. Bodies and their parts rained down upon us. The crunch of bones as they hit the dirt. A fleshy squish. Swept up dust clouded our vision as we continued down and away from the valley. There was a burning in my chest with each breath, a vibrato in my side, daggers in my legs with each step. I could not keep up with Margot. She would be able to make it to safety, continue on the family legacy. I didn't need to be here anymore. She would have been better off without me. If only I hadn't slowed her down.

I was always the one following in pursuit, grabbing her hand and watching her fly in front of me. She was the risk taker, the rebellion, the chosen one. She was unstoppable. She was on fire. As bright as the sun. This moment, this exact image, of holding her hand while she guides me through all of the troubles and dangers ahead of us, has been repeated over and over again for our entire lives. I'd learn to burn this moment into my head because this would be the last time I would see it.

The way back home into the Valley was twisted and steep, dangerous even without the dragons and burning bodies, but I knew we were not returning home. I wanted to cry out to Margot, say something, ask a question, but I was choking on soot and fear. We dodged fallen tree trunks, tipped carts, broken pieces of giant stone and earth. I turned my head behind me. The Twisted Tower was slowly becoming nothing but a thin line on the horizon, but I could have sworn I saw it glowing, bright and arcane. I could have sworn I heard it wailing. We should not have gone there. It was a mistake. Images of the tower flashed in my head. The ceilings that had no end, the marble pillars that resembled bone, the iris draperies that melted over the altar. The dragonhead chalice, onyx-eyed, beckoning my blood into its throat. It needed only twelve drops. Why couldn't I stop? I felt a surge in my pocket, a pulsing, hot sting. The crystal was calling out, I knew. It just wanted to return home. We were similar in that way.

"Come on! This way, keep going!" Margot shouted. I wanted to ask her where we were going, if Mother and Father were going to be okay, what we were going to do without them. But I didn't have to. "We're going to be all right. Everything is going to be all right! Trust me." She always knew what I was thinking, as if she could feel my thoughts as her own. I always wondered why I couldn't do the same. I had tried with all the power in me to read her mind, to comfort her when she needed, to find all the right things to say. But I was powerless.

We turned fast and hard around the Drachtal ruins, and this is when I knew we were going into the forest. The forest at the west end of the Valley, splaying itself out like a dark mouth at the edge of our village. The image of my sister leading me into the woods as kids flashed before me. Again, her soft hand in mine, a glowing light around her silhouette. "Don't be scared," she had said. And I wanted to cry right then and there at the edge of the woods. Drop to my knees and weep and cry for our mother because I was afraid of the dark and there were monsters in the forest and we would never make it out alive. But we did. And she led me through the darkness, but I hadn't even noticed it because of the sounds that kept the forest alive. Not monsters, but big bullfrogs the size of my feet, the chirping of bugs that lived in tree trunks, the bleating of goats. The sunlight broke through the fog and the dark juniper of the trees and shone on the soft, wet moss and my soft, wet face and I felt blessed. Blessed to have been in the company of someone stronger, whom I had entered this world with, and swore to never leave this place. "I promise will never leave without you," she had said. But I supposed she did not take into account dragons when she spoke those words to me all those years ago.

But I would never call my sister a liar. We were almost at the base of the Valley when I tripped over my own feet. I slid across the dry dirt, leaving a trail of blood behind me, slug-like. It felt good to be on the ground like this, to give my feet a rest, to let my heart pump against the earth. I looked up and there she was, standing over me with her big blue eyes that we inherited from our mother. Dirt marked her cheeks. Her hair—our hair—the color of the sun, blew wildly in the gust from the sky or the dragons' wings. I never got used to looking at her and seeing myself, yet she seemed so much older. With an extended hand she said to me, "C'mon! Get up!" And as I clasped onto her hand, a dark mass passed between us, and that was all that was left. A dangling arm snapped at the elbow. Dripping. The pattering.

The dust kicked up and swirled and once it settled I could see, one by one the dragons, too, settling in the Valley.

All but one, bigger than the rest.

I could do nothing but watch from the distance as it perched itself at the peak of the cliff, bones exposed and big as tree trunks, pink flesh slipping from them like wet burlap. I could see myself in the reflection of the tattered onyx skin and scales on whatever meat remained slapped onto the trellis of its giant wings and body. The exposed white of a skinless horn, twisting itself into the sky, protruded out from one side of the skull. The spaces where its eyes should be were deep and black and hollow. Limp, she lay between the boned jaw of the thing, smattered, bright hair falling over her face, and yet I could not help but see myself.

It reared its head, twisting neck, slopping meat; the other side of its face was fleshy and dark. In a moment, it arched its back and looked toward the sky. With a snap of its jaw, my sister Margot painted its teeth crimson and vanished. The black of its skin shimmered into an opalescence in the brief gleam of sunlight from behind the clouds. It seemed as though part of it was growing back, the dark meat crawling onto its ribs. The giant prison of its ribcage glowed with cinder inside it, a tiny yellow spark at first until it grew hotter and brighter and the beast expelled a fiery breath with a roar. The sky became alight with red and orange, as if the sun had managed to break free from the grey mass of clouds. Heat blessed my face, the shine of light reflecting off the well of tears in my eyes. The giant, shining dragon turned its head to me, new skin twisting around its skull. I watched as it turned back and made its descent into the mouth of the Valley.

There was silence again, for the first time in what felt like days. If I had screamed, it was no more than a tickle from my throat. If I had cried, not a single tear must have wet my cheeks. If I had felt anything, I could not tell you. What I can tell you is that I never let go of my sister's limp hand. I felt it drain beside me, felt her fingers go hard and cold, watched them turn a turbid grey. I don't recall how long I stood there, among the wasteland of bodies and flames. Groans slowly faded back into earshot as time finally moved forward again.

The dragons, ancient beasts long dead for thousands of years, approaching the status of myths, had returned. And my sister, one half of me—the better half—had been taken away.

This was the start of it all, but it was not the beginning.

The beginning is a more complicated story. How we ended up in Drachtal Valley. How I came into possession of the Cracked Crystal. How I had been the catalyst to the ending of the world.