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Eir stared unblinking into the eye of the dragon while her comrades formed up around her. “Why would you tell us this?”

“Because your battle is not against me. As before, I am your ally.”

“You would help us stop the dragonrise?”

“No one can stop it. But I will fight beside you against my master.”

“Tell us his name!”

The dragon’s massive eyes slowly slid closed, then opened again to focus on Eir. “His name is Kralkatorrik.”

The name crackled through the air, as if it were crystallizing.

“Why would you fight against your very master?”

Glint nodded in thought and turned away. Her voice sounded ancient and hollow. “Long ago, I lived in a dragon-dominated world. I saw how they feasted on all flesh, on all minds, on all life. I saw how they ate until there was nothing left to eat, and then fell, sated. The darkness of those days slowly gave way to a new dawn—a bright world that did not remember the rapacious beasts. From that time to this, I have feared one of those sleeping dragons. My master, Kralkatorrik.

“But three hundred years ago, the dragons’ bellies were empty, and their minds were awakening. Three hundred years ago, the sons of men fought me before they understood that I was their ally.”

Eir’s brow furrowed. “Why would you ally with humans against your own kind?”

The dragon’s great eyes went gray. “I can hear the thoughts of creatures. I am an oracle. I heard their plots against my master, stopped them before they reached him, killed them in their tracks. But I also felt their agony, their loss. It grieved me.

“At first, for centuries, I defended my master. But I could hear his thoughts, too, and I knew that if he rose again, all good things would come to an end.” Glint blinked, staring at Eir. “Now is that time. Even now, Kralkatorrik is rising.”

Eir gritted her teeth. “Then we will ally with you. Your master will rise to face Destiny’s Edge and a dragon such as himself!”

Glint shook her head. “If you call me a dragon, you must call him a mountain. If you call me a monster, you must call him a god. Even as I fight beside you—and I will—we will be battling a hurricane.”

“How can we battle a hurricane?” Eir echoed.

Glint bared her fangs. “I will show you.”

DRAGONRISE

Tyria should have known. The signs of the dragonrise were everywhere:

The earthquake that shook Rata Sum.

The tidal wave that carried ships into the streets of Lion’s Arch.

The geysers that erupted in the tundra beyond Hoelbrak.

The pall that hung over the Black Citadel.

Tyria had been wracked by such terrible birth pangs before.

The people should have guessed that a dragon was rising.

Ferroc Torchtail’s hackles rose. He didn’t like the look of that mountain—how it hulked there—spiky, scaly, massive . . . unnatural. He certainly didn’t like that his warband was marching toward it. He had a feeling of doom.

The last time he’d felt this way, a landslide had buried his centurion.

It had been a year earlier, when Centurion Korrak Blacksnout was marching his legion through a narrow defile in the Blazeridge Mountains. Ferroc was posted in the rear, the position of ignominy—far from the initial charge and the first kill and (as it turned out) the landslide that crushed the leaders. Blacksnout’s decapitated body was found on the other side of the landslide.

In shame, Ferroc and the rest of his legion had returned to the Black Citadel. For months, they’d gotten the worst assignments.

This one was no different: go investigate a strange mountain.

Locals said the mountain was moving. They said it grew every night. It shook, it rumbled, it sent down landslides.

Oh, good—landslides.

Land was sliding even now. Boulders rolled end over end down the slope and leaped as their edges caught the mountainside. They trailed dust behind them.

Ferroc’s warband was marching to fight what—boulders?

“Why are we still heading toward it?” Ferroc wondered aloud.

Legionnaire Kulbrok Torchfist sneered over his shoulder, “To find out!