The sky was black with smoke and the stink of blood, the battle still echoing in distant thunder. Mazliu soared through the charred clouds, scales dimmed and scarred, his wings trembling with exhaustion. But none of it mattered. Not the war. Not the dead. Only the farm. Only her.

  He landed hard in the field, the earth cracking beneath his talons. The house was broken. The garden scorched. And near the young tree she cultivated—her tree—she lay.

  Valerius.

  He shifted before he reached her, his draconic form shrinking, folding into the frame of a man—ashen blue hair tangled, golden reptilian eyes wide with disbelief. He dropped to his knees, gathering her lifeless body into his arms.

  “Valerius…”

  There was no breath left in her. No warmth.

  Only silence.

  A raw cry tore from his throat, inhuman and anguished. The heavens seemed to weep with him, clouds swirling, winds rising in his sorrow.

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  He looked to the tree—her tree—the one they'd planted together in springtime, nurtured through storm and sun. Its leaves shimmered faintly, trembling, as if it too felt the loss.

  Then came the lightning.

  With a scream of rage and grief, Mazliu called down the storm. A bolt of purest white erupted from the sky, drawn to his soul like iron to a magnet—and it struck the tree with a deafening crack.

  The light blinded him.

  The world stood still.

  And then… the tree groaned.

  From its bark, splitting like a cocoon, emerged a figure. Small. Shaped like a child, but woven of wood and sap and leaf. The infant opened wide amber eyes, glowing faintly, and wailed—not in fear, but in breath, as if it had waited for this moment to be born.

  Mazliu stared, hollow and breathless, as the tree-child stumbled into the grass, cradled by vines.

  He crawled forward, still shaking, and scooped the newborn into his arms. Its bark was soft like fresh buds. Its heartbeat pulsed like thunderclouds before a storm.

  Mazliu held the child against his chest, tears running down his cheeks.

  “Barid,” he whispered. “Your name… is Barid.”

  And as the wind stirred the ashes, and the first sunlight pierced the storm, the child born of love, loss, and lightning blinked—and smiled.