The cold came first.

  It was not the gentle chill of winter mornings or the bite of an autumn wind, but rather the deep, bone-soaking gnawing of old stone that hadn’t known the touch of warmth in many a year. It pressed against her skin, her cheek, and her bare legs. She became aware of the texture beneath her: rough, uneven. It was gritty with something that might have been sand or dust. The air smelt wrong. It was old and stale, with an undertone of dampness.

  She opened her eyes.

  Darkness swallowed everything except for a faint, sickly phosphorescence clinging to the ceiling far above. The glow was pale green, barely enough to see by, but it revealed the truth of where she lay. Bones surrounded her. Large ribcages arched overhead, skeletal fingers curled toward nothing, and odd skulls gaped with empty sockets that were far too large to be human. They filled the cavern floor in heaps and scattered piles, picked clean and bleached white by time. Some were small, child-sized. Others were huge and misshapen.

  Her breath caught in her throat.

  She sat up slowly, and her body felt strange. It was too light. Too small. Her arms were stick-thin and covered in something that caught the dim glow. Scales. The scales, tiny and overlapping in a dull charcoal grey, felt rough to the touch when she rubbed her palms together. Her hands ended in stubby, clawish fingers, sharp but fragile-looking, and her fingers were longer than they should have been. She looked down at herself and found more scales covering her bare legs, her flat chest, and her narrow torso. A tail, thin and whip-like, curled against her thigh.

  She wasn't human anymore.

  This realisation should have terrified her. Maybe it did, somewhere deep down, but the panic felt distant. Muted. She remembered dying. She remembered the screech of tires, the flash of headlights, and her sudden weightlessness before impact.

  Then nothing.

  Then this.

  A soft chime rang in her mind, clear and melodic despite the oppressive silence of the cave.

  Words appeared in the air before her once more, glowing faintly blue and hovering just at eye level. They formed neat lines, crisp and easy to read.

  She stared at the words, her breath shallow. Barjuchne. The name felt heavy and unfamiliar, yet it settled into her mind without resistance. She didn't feel like a dragon. She felt small and cold and surrounded by the remains of everyone who had tried before her. She was more like some kind of… lizard thing.

  Four hundred thirty-six failures.

  The words vanished, replaced by new ones that burnt brighter, outlined in harsh red.

  What?

  Her stomach dropped.

  Twenty-four hours. She had twenty-four hours to find a princess, or she would die. Again. Her claws dug into the stone beneath her palms, scraping against bone fragments that crumbled under the pressure. The timer ticked down in the corner of her vision.

  …Maybe dying again wouldn’t be so bad? She’s clearly died before and here she is now, right? The thought did little to ease her innate, natural panic. What if this reincarnation was a fluke? What if she died for good this time? It’s not something she was eager to test.

  She forced herself to breathe slowly. Panic wouldn't help. Panic would kill her faster than the timer would.

  Think.

  Where the hell is she going to find a princess, of all things? She’s never even seen a princess before, not even in her old life. They didn’t seem like something you can just grab at the next corner.

  She was small. Weak. She found herself alone in a cave filled with corpses. She didn't know where she was, what world this was, or how to find a princess in less than a day. But she had instincts now, didn't she? Dragon instincts. She could feel them coiling in her chest, urging her to move, to hunt. She has a strange desire to… claim things, like a conqueror with a flag ready to be planted literally anywhere. Her stomach growled and the hunger was unlike anything she'd felt before. It wasn't just food she craved.

  She needed to hoard.

  The thought came unbidden but most definitely certain. She needed treasure. She needed to take territory. She needed to grow.

  And, of course, she needed a princess. At least one. Maybe a few. She’ll see how it goes.

  The dragon girl stood on unsteady legs, her tail lashing behind her for balance. With a slight grey glow leaking in from the outside, the cave entrance yawned ahead. Daylight. She stumbled toward it, her clawed feet scraping against stone and bone, and she emerged into a world she didn't recognise.

  She was near the top of a mountain plateau, the cave’s mouth looking out over a clearing below that she had to climb down toward.

  Now, lower on the mountain’s terraced terrain, trees rose around her, tall and thick-trunked, their canopy blotting out most of the sky. The air was warmer here than in the cave, thick with the smell of moss and rotting leaves. Birds called in the distance. The forest stretched endlessly in every direction, dense and tangled and utterly alien.

  She had no idea where to go.

  So she ran at a light jog, deciding to set the pace.

  Her legs carried her faster than she expected, her small body darting between trees with an ease that felt instinctive. She didn't tire quickly. Her lungs burnt, but the ache was bearable, and her muscles responded without hesitation. She was built for this. She was designed to be mobile, to hunt, and to survive.

  A princess. The word conjured images of castles, gowns, and crowns—things she had no hope of finding in the middle of a forest, right? She needed civilisation. A town. A road. Anything that might lead her to people, to royalty, to someone she could kidnap before the timer ran out.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Regarding the actual matter of then kidnapping said princess with this strange, impish kobold's body. Well. That would be a problem for when she got there.

  But instead of traces of humanity, she found rocks.

  Very, very pretty rocks. They were just normal rocks, yes. But they sparked a light inside of her tiny little draconic heart and, even with time pressing down on her, she just had to stop and collect at least a few of them. Her instincts drove her to do so, overpowering her sense of logic and rationality.

  The first one caught her eye because it glittered. A shard of quartz, half-buried in the dirt near a stream, catching the dappled sunlight and throwing it back in pale rainbows. She stopped mid-stride, her gaze locking onto it. Her chest tightened. Her claws flexed.

  She wanted it.

  The urge was overwhelming, irrational. It was impossible to ignore. She dropped to her knees and dug the stone free, cradling it in her palms. It was smooth and cool and beautiful, and holding it made something inside her settle. Just a little. Just enough.

  She tucked it into the crook of her arm and kept running.

  More rocks followed. A chunk of granite streaked with gold veins. A smooth river stone, black and polished by water. A cluster of mica, flaking under her touch, shimmered too beautifully to be left behind. She gathered them all, clutching them against her chest, her arms growing heavier with each addition. The hunger of her heart didn't fade, but it eased. Slightly.

  As for her hunger, she managed to satiate it by catching a little river fish. It was easier than she expected. Her reflexes are fast and her claws, despite being little, are very sharp. She essentially just snatched a fish out of the riverbank and ate it like that.

  She was surprised to find herself unfazed by the idea of eating raw fish. The lingering human remnant of her thought that she would be disgusted. But her animal side was stronger, and she tore through it without hesitation.

  The sun climbed higher. The timer began to tick down, indicating that she had already used up nearly seven of her available hours, and there was still no princess in sight.

  She had been running for hours, her arms full of rocks, and she still hadn't seen a single person.

  A low growl froze her in place.

  The wolf emerged from the underbrush ahead, lean and grey and bristling with aggression. Its lips pulled back from yellowed teeth, ears flat against its skull. It was easily twice her size, muscled and scarred and clearly unafraid.

  She stared at it.

  It stared back.

  Her mouth opened, and a sound came out that she didn't recognise. She let out a low, guttural snarl that vibrated in her chest and rattled her teeth. Her lips pulled back from her own sharp fangs, her tail lashing behind her. She dropped into a crouch, her claws scraping the dirt, and the growl deepened. Her rocks scattered to the ground as she bared her teeth at it.

  The wolf's ears flicked. It whimpered. Then it turned and bolted into the trees, tail tucked, leaving her alone with her pile of rocks and her pounding heart.

  She blinked.

  That… worked?

  She didn't have time to think about it. The timer was still counting down, and she still didn't have a princess.

  Quickly, Barjuchne gathered her best rocks and hurried onwards.

  The sun began to sink toward the horizon, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink. Her legs ached. Her arms were full of stones she refused to leave behind. The forest showed no signs of ending, no roads, no villages, no castles with princesses waiting to be claimed.

  She was done for. She hoped she would be allowed to take her rocks with her in whatever life came next.

  Panic clawed at her throat.

  Her foot caught on a root, and she stumbled, her precious stones scattering across the ground. She cursed, her vision blurring with frustrated tears.

  Then she saw it.

  An anthill. The massive anthill, nearly as tall as she was, was constructed from dirt and pine needles and was crawling with workers. They swarmed over the surface in organised chaos, carrying food, tending to the structure, and moving with a single-minded purpose.

  She stared. The gears in her mind turned. An idea had come to her. It was… ridiculous. But desperate times do, indeed, call for desperate measures.

  Ants have a queen, right? That’s how they structure their societies. And where there are queens…

  The thought was insane. Desperate. Utterly ridiculous.

  But the timer read 0:00:33, and she was out of options.

  Barjuchne dove for the mound, her claws easily tearing through it.

  The ants swarmed her immediately, biting at her hands, her arms, and her face. She ignored them. Her scales protected her from the worst of it, and the pain was distant and unimportant. She tore through the dirt with her small, sharp claws, digging deeper, scattering workers and soldiers alike. The ants stung harder, flooding over her arms as she burrowed elbow-deep into the mound in a frenzy.

  Her fingers closed around something soft, fat, and wriggling as she found a particularly bulbous, round ant in the center of it all. The Queen. And next to the ant queen were many attendants in waiting. She grabbed the first one she saw, listening to her heart’s feelings about which one was the best one to snatch.

  She wasn’t sure how, but somehow, she just knew.

  Barjuchne pulled the ant princess free, holding her up to the fading light. The creature was smaller and paler compared to the others. Workers clung to her, frantic and protective, but they fell away as the dragon girl lifted the specimen higher.

  "Does this count?!" she shouted to the empty sky, her voice hoarse and desperate.

  The timer hit zero.

  Her breath froze in her lungs.

  Then the window appeared.

  She laughed. The sound was half-sob, shaky and breathless, but she laughed.

  A new window replaced the first, offering her a choice.

  She didn't hesitate. She chose strength. Right now, she was much smaller than she remembered being as a human and it made her feel very vulnerable.

  A blinding glow filled the air. Her torso and lower body ignited with white, energetic light that blinded her vision with its intensity. Heat flooded her body, sudden and overwhelming. Her bones cracked, lengthening, and thickening. Her muscles burnt and swelled, and her scales hardened, darkening from dull grey to a deep, polished charcoal.

  She grew.

  When the transformation finished, she stood taller and broader, her limbs still lean but corded with new muscle. She looked down at the ant princess still clutched in her now larger palm, then at the scattered eggs back down inside the ruined mound. There were strange thoughts in her head that made little sense, instinctual things.

  Content with her bounty, the dragon girl turned back toward the cave, stealing the ant princess away.

  "You're mine now," she said quietly.

  The captured ant princess had little to say in response. Perhaps she was simply too breathless from being stolen away by her dashing captor. Or perhaps she was just an ant.

  Who could really say?

  The cave felt different when Barjuchne returned.

  She could feel the space now, sense its boundaries, and when she focused her intentions and thoughts, the stone responded.

  A new window appeared.

  She set the ant princess down gently where she’d find her again and turned her attention to the rough stone walls. With a thought, the surface smoothed. With another, a small alcove formed, perfectly sized for the captive. She lined it with softer dirt, placed the ‘princess’ inside, and stepped back.

  Then, she proudly set down all her precious, beautiful, grubby river rocks in an arrangement. The sight of them made her heart glow with what, quite honestly, might have been love. The sight of the shiny rocks made her draconic heart flutter.

  It wasn't much. But it was hers.

  Another window materialised.

  Barjuchne looked around the cave, at the bones piled in the corners, at the faint glow of phosphorescent moss clinging to the ceiling. There were hundreds of old skeletons here. She understood it now.

  They had all been here and failed. They had all tried to live this life she’s now been put in charge of.

  They had all died trying to complete these asinine quests, hadn’t they?

  Barjuchne's gaze swept across the scattered remains one more time, more slowly. Four hundred and thirty-six failures, the system had told her. She believed it. The bones were everywhere, heaped in drifts against the walls, crushed flat beneath each other in places where the weight of centuries had pressed them down. Dragon bones, mostly. She recognised the shapes well enough, even if the particulars of her own anatomy still felt strange and new.

  But one thing didn't belong.

  She almost missed it. It sat wedged between the curve of a broken rib and a crumbled section of cave wall, half-buried under bone dust. Small. Impossibly small for this place. She reached down and pinched it between two claws, holding it up toward the pale light that crept through the cave entrance.

  It was carved. That much was clear even through the grime. The thing was no larger than her thumbnail, fashioned from some pale wood that had hardened over time to something closer to stone, and the carving on its surface was extraordinarily fine. The spirals, tight and geometric, looped into each other with a precision that no human hand could have achieved at this scale. The grooves were too delicate, too exact. Whatever made this piece had very small hands and a great deal of patience.

  She turned it over once. Then again.

  Her instincts offered her nothing useful. It didn't read as prey, or predator, or threat. It was simply old. Old in a way that her new dragon senses registered as a low, distant pressure, the same mundanely interesting feeling as standing next to a wall that had been standing for a thousand years. She couldn't name the feeling, so she set it aside and catalogued it the only way that felt natural.

  She added it to the hoard for now.

  Her gaze drifted to the cave entrance, to the darkening sky beyond.

  "...Where am I supposed to find treasure?" she muttered to herself, her thin, underdeveloped serpentine tail swaying from one side to the other. She comprehended the frequency with which others must have posed this question, precisely where she stands at this moment.

  The forest offered no answer, nor did her captured princess. Not that a powerful dragon like herself would listen to the counsel of her possessions anyway.

  Barjuchne laughed sadly to herself at the sarcastic thought but then inadvertently let out a small roar, a puff of smoke coming out from her nostrils. Embarrassed, she covered her mouth with a scaled hand.

  What was that?

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