When you consume fire, you learn how to shine in even the darkest places

Winter had dragon blood.

She was tall and thin with white flowing hair. But the most striking thing about Winter was her sparkling green eyes. She had a life about her that set her apart from the other girls of the kingdom. She was also talked about frequently by others. But never to her face, and always behind her back.

They whispered behind their hands, and in steamy sculleries. While the King claimed her as his own, Winter’s true birthright was speculated about by the other members of the kingdom. Many people would wonder if the King was even related to her.

Her birthright wasn’t the only thing that people would say about Winter. Some people believe she was born under a dark sign, a child of great evil. Servants and members of the court would whisper her birth was foretold in an ancient prophecy. The peasants would claim the day she was born the sun became completely black. Begging for the King’s attention, even the wise men urged the king to throw her in the river.

“Sire, you can’t keep her,” the oldest and the wisest consultant of the King told him with great urgency, “she is the child of great darkness.”

Then wiseman showed the King a scroll with tattered paper and detailed blue drawings. Rumored to be older than man, the water scroll foretold of a being so powerful even the gods would be of no match to it.

A child conceived in the black forest and born under the seven stars. A child with no ordinary parents, a child that would be born of a woman and a dragon. A creature of divine complexity that was birthed through the marriage of both fire and water.

A child so powerful that her eyes breathed fire and her soul made the very earthquake under her footsteps. To the peasants, the child would be known as the Thunderwalker.

The Thunderwalker was not quite human and fathered by an exiled beast. The child was a source of immense evil. In the scroll, was a telling of a prophecy. The prophecy told of a beast child who would end the existence of man. She would bring fire to life. She would be a tidal wave that drowned out the civilizations of men. She was feared to be the destroyer of all things.

Winter’s mother told her the truth one day, “Sigur is not your father.”

“What do you mean?” Winter asked her mother in a panic.

“He loved you like a father and he is the man who looks after this family but your true father is the ancient one, Angelus.”

“The red dragon of the east?” Winter gasped through her fingers.

“Yes, starlight,” her mother hung her head as if a great amount of her life drained when she shared her secret.

“Mom, I thought Angelus was a myth?” Winter questioned.

“No,” she took a deep breath and prepared to tell her daughter a secret she had kept for a long time, “Angelus is very real.”

She collected herself and prepared to tell Winter the truth. The story about her true father was sort that must surface from the dark depths of the murky water within. It was a secret that had lived submerged for so long within her, the fluid transition from a myth to the truth was a living thing that needed to be freed with great effort. Like most secrets, it was a lie told for the noblest of reasons.

Because the truth would destroy everything.

The truth would dismantle the family.

The truth would hurt innocent people.

The truth would cost her daughter her life.

Maris committed herself to be the lone protector of the truth. Standing guard amongst a crumbling and forbidding tower that none should ever enter. No one could know about the dark stranger.

“I met your father in the moonlight that night,” Winter’s mother began…