They finished speaking without a signal I could recognize.
The Dragonkin did not announce what would follow.
No one gave instruction.
The space simply… shifted.
Objects were brought forward.
Crates opened.
Items placed upon a flat obsidian slab at the center of the platform.
Carefully arranged.
Not presented.
As if their value had already been decided elsewhere.
The caravan master stepped closer.
He did not hesitate.
He removed his outer layers with the same ease one might prepare for rest.
There was no ceremony in it.
Only familiarity.
He extended his left arm.
Not rigid.
Not forced.
Offered.
One of the Dragonkin inclined his head.
Two others approached.
No one spoke.
The first touch was not violent.
A claw—long, dark—rested against his skin.
Then it moved.
Slowly.
Not cutting.
Opening.
The flesh parted under the motion, too cleanly to be called a wound.
Blood followed.
But it did not fall.
It rose.
Lifting from his arm in thin streams, gathering into the air between them.
I did not step closer.
I was already close enough.
A hand settled on my shoulder.
Heavy.
Scaled.
Not restraining.
Ensuring.
I understood without being told.
I was meant to see.
The blood began to change.
Red at first.
Then darker.
Shifting toward something deeper than color.
Another movement beside it—
one of the Dragonkin biting into his own wrist.
The sound was brief.
The blood that followed was not.
Thick.
Dark.
It carried a faint vapor, cold against the air.
The two currents met.
They did not mix immediately.
They circled.
Slowly at first.
Then with intention.
As if something within them recognized the other.
The air grew heavier.
Not in weight.
In presence.
The movement began to take shape.
Not solid.
Not stable.
Faces—
or something resembling them—formed briefly within the shifting mass.
Human.
Dragonkin.
Some strained.
Some… did not.
I thought I heard something then.
Not through the air.
Through the space behind it.
Whispers.
Layered.
Too many to separate.
The caravan master remained still.
Calm.
At ease in a way that did not belong to what I was seeing.
He spoke once, briefly, in their language.
The sound of it felt rough in comparison.
Still… understood.
At some point, he glanced toward me.
A small motion.
And then—
He smiled.
Not wide.
Not forced.
Familiar.
As if this required reassurance.
The movement in the air slowed.
The shape tightened.
The voices—if they had been voices—faded.
What remained condensed inward, collapsing into itself until it held form.
A fragment.
Dark.
Almost without reflection.
And yet, beneath its surface—
Something moved.
Not visibly.
But enough that my eyes did not settle on it.
It was handed to the caravan master without ceremony.
He took it as one would accept a finished exchange.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
The Dragonkin stepped back.
The ritual ended without declaration.
Only the absence of movement marked it.
The hand left my shoulder.
I had not noticed how firmly it had been there.
The caravan master dressed himself again.
The arm he had offered—
Unchanged.
No wound.
No trace of what I had seen.
We were led back without being guided.
The path outward felt shorter.
Or perhaps I did not observe it as closely.
When we stepped beyond the threshold, the air changed again.
Lighter.
Simpler.
The others were where we had left them.
Waiting.
Ryn’s gaze moved first to the caravan master, then to what he carried.
She did not ask.
She already knew.
Only later, after we had descended from the peak, did she speak of it.
“Voidscale,” she said.
I had seen it before she named it.
And still—
The moment my eyes found it again,
something in me recoiled.
Not in thought.
In instinct.
The same feeling as standing too close to something that could decide, without warning, to end you.
She explained its value.
Rare.
Sought after.
Capable of holding more than what it appears.
Her words were clear.
Measured.
Useful.
They did not change how it felt to look at it.
That night, I noticed the mark.
A thin line along the inside of my wrist.
Small.
Scaled.
I do not remember when it appeared.
I do not remember when it was made.
It did not hurt.
It did not fade.
And when I pressed against it—
I was not certain if the sensation came from my skin,
or from something beneath it.
The transaction had ended.
That much was clear.
What remained—
was not.
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