Lothar von Finsterherz was a patchwork of bruises.
Yellow blooms sat on his ribs. Fresh ones striped his shoulders. His knuckles were split and raw. His back ached so deeply that sleep sometimes broke from it, like his body had been working all night just to keep the pain on schedule. Days stopped mattering. Lothar got up, ate, endured, and did what was required.
Wilt Norcutt did not do mercy. Allowances were not part of the deal.
Every morning started with a run. Then weights. Then another run. Then sparring. It was not pretty. It was useful. Survival, not sport.
Terry Goodman barely showed. Ypsilon kept the captain busy with forms, inspections, debts, deals. Work on the ship came first, and training stayed off to the side, like it belonged to someone else. Lothar still caught the tension anyway.
That day, the female inquisitor brought the young man into an empty compartment of the shuttle. Cool air. Metal underfoot. Cold bleeding up into the knees.
“Alright, kid,” Wilt said. “Today we try something different.”
The young man winced.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Deal with it,” she said, nodding at the floor. “Sit.”
He slid down against the bulkhead, his back protesting.
“We’re going to hook your awareness into the star chart and the ship,” Wilt said. “Don’t tell me you forgot that too.”
“If I remembered, would I be letting you torture me for fun?”
A quick smile, almost amused.
“You’ll thank me later.”
“For beating me every day?”
“It’s called sparring.”
“To me it looks like you’re taking your anger about Graff out on the nearest target.”
Wilt’s gaze sharpened.
“Stop whining, my lady. Or get over here.”
Mockery on the surface, warning underneath.
Lothar breathed out through his nose.
“Fine. What do I do?”
Wilt stepped forward until she was right in front of him.
“Close your eyes. First, feel yourself. As you are. No noise. No thoughts. Then the ship. Don’t rush. And don’t be afraid of what you see.”
“Great advice,” Lothar muttered. “Don’t be afraid.”
“Do it.”
He closed his eyes.
At first it was simple. Quiet inside his skull. Ache in muscle. Warm blood under skin. A steady heartbeat. That level made sense.
Then came the step beyond.
Reaching for the ship the way the exercise demanded.
Small things arrived first: the faint tremor of the hull, a distant electronic chirp, mild heat in wiring behind panels. It felt like standing inside a huge animal and sensing breath move through ribs and organs.
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Then something slammed into his mind.
Not words. Not images. A roar.
For a heartbeat, a picture flared behind his eyes: an enormous dragon, deep azure, bound in chains. It thrashed, straining for an opening, but the chains held. It stared straight at him the way a blade looks at a crack in armor.
He jerked, mouth opening to scream, and in that same instant fire filled everything.
It burst from the dragon’s jaws, and for a sick second it felt like his body would split from the inside out.
His eyes snapped open.
Breath came hard, like a sprint. Sweat slicked his forehead. His hands shook in his lap.
Wilt leaned closer.
“What was that?”
Lothar gave no answer.
“Like an echo?” the female inquisitor asked. “Did you see something?”
He almost spoke. Almost.
If the truth landed, it would not be handled gently. A clean ending would be safer than a risk.
Lothar swallowed.
“I need a break,” he said. “And something to read. There’s no point forcing it. I overheated.”
Wilt studied him in silence for a few seconds.
“Fine,” she said. “Tomorrow we continue.”
Lothar got up and went back to his cabin. Every step sent pain up his spine. The door closed, and the wall became something to stare at while he tried to decide whether the vision had been real.
Wilt went to the station. She needed anything: an address, a rumor, a loose thread. Something with Adam Graff’s name tied to it.
Lothar pulled an old tablet from a locker. The screen was scratched, the letters sometimes jittered, but it worked well enough.
No fairy tales. He needed rules, even broken ones.
The text was blunt.
Dragons were sealed in the Nest. The Nest was not a place or a planet. It was a separate dimension. It birthed dragons and fed on their energy. When that energy built past a threshold, a new dragon was born. Over and over, a closed loop.
Lord dragons could steal power from the Nest. Not all at once, piece by piece. Like a thief palming coins so the owner would not notice immediately.
But there was a cost.
If a lord dragon took too much, the gate between the world and the Nest stayed open longer than it should. Then a dragon could slip back through.
Not out.
In.
Into a body. Into a mind. Into a soul.
Lothar leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.
So that was what had happened in the bar.
The roar came back. The flash of blue. The chains.
So the dragon had entered him in the moment Graff forced a way into his head.
And Wilt’s strike had only helped. The mind splitting open, defenses dropping, the door swinging wide.
He reread the paragraph, and the tablet creaked under his grip.
One question remained.
Who had put the dragon in chains?
The first thought was Graff. It fit. Graff had been inside his mind. Graff held the chains. Graff walked away calm, like everything was going according to plan.
But certainty did not follow.
If Graff could simply shove the dragon back into the Nest, he would have. Leaving something like that coiled inside another person was a risk.
Lothar set the tablet down and shut his eyes again.
Carefully, like stepping onto thin ice, he went inward.
At first: silence.
Then pressure.
And there it was.
Azure. Enormous. Beautiful in a way that made fear feel like awe with teeth. Chains stretched from the dark and held it tight. The dragon breathed slowly, as if all the time in the universe belonged to it.
Its eyes opened.
Understanding arrived cold and clear. This was not his space. He was not the owner here.
He was the container.
He tried to step closer in his mind. Tried to speak. Tried to understand what it was, what it wanted.
The dragon lifted its head and bellowed.
The sound threw him back like a physical blow.
His eyes flew open. Air came in sharp. His chest burned as if struck. He sat on the bunk, damp with sweat, his palms icy.
“Perfect,” Lothar murmured. “Can’t even talk.”
No answer came.
Tell Wilt? No.
Ask Graff? Ridiculous.
So he thought. Alone.
A couple hours later, Goodman and the female inquisitor returned. The captain looked more exhausted than usual. Wilt carried a slim folder and a single plastic token.
“I’ve got a lead,” she said. “Planet Nozer. Same system as Ypsilon. Three hours by shuttle.”
Goodman did not argue. The station had too many people who remembered debts and inspections.
They boarded fast. Launch came faster.
Silence held the cabin. Lothar sat by the port and watched emptiness slide past. He could feel the chains inside. The presence sat heavy, like a stone lodged behind his ribs.
Three hours later, Nozer filled the screen. A dark planet with a thin rim of atmosphere, faint city lights scattered like sparse embers across the night side.
The shuttle pierced the cloud layer and began its descent.
Almost at once, the cockpit alarm shrieked.
Military craft appeared outside, several of them, fast. They burst out of the clouds and closed in, circling the shuttle.
“What the hell,” Goodman breathed.
Norcutt was already on her feet.
“Don’t shoot first!” she shouted at the pilot.
Too late.
Something flared below, a white hot flash that stabbed the eyes. Then a dull, brutal thump rolled through the hull. The shuttle jolted like it had hit a rail at speed.
Goodman grabbed the console.
“They’ve got us painted!”
A second explosion boomed closer.
And the young man understood, with the calm clarity that comes right before panic.
Nozer wasn’t expecting them.
Nozer was waiting for them.
