The first light of dawn didn't bring the slow crawl of a mountain morning. It brought a thunderclap.

  Kael jolted awake, his hand instinctively snapping to the hilt of his collapsed glaive. Beside him, the two Howlers were already on their feet, their charcoal fur bristling as they scanned the horizon. A second later, a massive BOOM echoed through the canyon, rattling the rocks and sending a flock of mountain crows into a frantic spiral.

  "What was that?" Kael muttered, shaking the sleep from his head. He looked toward the roots of the Aether-Oak. The moss was empty. The Zephyrix Drake was gone.

  Panic flared in his chest, but as he scrambled to the edge of the cliff, he saw it.

  Down on the long, flat plateau of the mountain’s edge—a natural "drag strip" of smooth basalt—a streak of teal and silver was blurring across the landscape. The Drake wasn't limping. It wasn't even walking. It was a silhouette of pure kinetic energy.

  As Kael watched, the Drake tucked its head, its feathered crest flattening against its neck. A visible cone of distorted air formed around its chest. Then, with a sound like a physical punch to the gut, the air fractured.

  CRACK.

  A white vapor ring exploded behind the beast as it shattered the sound barrier. The shockwave hit the cliffside seconds later, a wall of pressurized wind that nearly took Kael off his feet.

  "Mach 1..." Kael breathed, his eyes wide in absolute awe. He’d seen high-performance engines hit those speeds on a closed track, but seeing a living creature do it with nothing but muscle and wind was something else entirely. "He’s not just fast. He’s a supersonic interceptor."

  Kael began to move down the slope, his two Howler guards flanking him with wary, low-slung strides. He kept his eyes locked on the teal streak. The Drake had noticed him. It banked in a massive, sweeping arc that pulled enough G-force to crush a normal rider, and then it leveled out.

  Stolen story; please report.

  It was heading straight for him.

  Kael froze. From this distance, the Drake looked like a shimmering needle darting through the air. It wasn't slowing down. 100 yards... 50 yards... 20 yards. The sound was a deafening roar of displaced atmosphere.

  The Howlers snarled, dropping into defensive stances, but Kael just stood there. He knew physics. At that speed, if the Drake hit him, there wouldn't be enough of him left to bury. He squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the impact of several tons of dragon-flesh hitting him at a thousand feet per second.

  The wind hit him first. A violent, crushing pressure slammed into his chest, knocking the air from his lungs and flipping him backward over his heels. He hit the dirt hard, his head spinning as the world turned into a blur of dust and noise.

  Silence followed. Sudden, heavy silence.

  Kael groaned, his back throbbing from the fall. He squinted his eyes open, expecting to see wreckage. Instead, he saw a pair of emerald-green eyes staring down at him.

  The Drake was standing perfectly still, its snout inches from Kael’s face. It hadn't touched him; it had simply bled off its velocity with impossible precision, using the air pressure itself to "brake."

  Before Kael could even grunt in protest, a long, wet tongue swiped across his face.

  "Ugh—stop! Stop it!" Kael pushed himself up, wiping the slime from his forehead. He winced, his ribs aching from the wind-slam. "I told you to stay off the leg, you lunatic! You’re going to—"

  He stopped mid-sentence. He looked down at the Drake’s hind leg. The deep, jagged gash from the Howlers was gone. In its place was a faint, silver scar, already beginning to fade into the scales.

  "How?" Kael whispered, reaching out to touch the warm, vibrating skin. "That medicine was barely a grade-one salve. It shouldn't have done more than stop the bleeding."

  The Drake let out a triumphant, high-frequency trill, its body humming with a surplus of energy. It pranced around Kael, its movements so light it barely seemed to touch the ground.

  Kael sat back on the dirt, watching the "Ghost" vibrate with life. He realized then that he wasn't just dealing with a fast animal. The Drake's metabolism was tied to the static in the air—it didn't just run on the wind; it was fueled by it.

  "Great," Kael said, finally picking himself up and brushing off the dust. "You’re a supersonic jet with a self-repairing hull. This is going to be one hell of a season."