Cold stone drank the heat from Sszarith’s scales.

The dungeon lay far beneath the palace, carved into bedrock where screams faded into memory and light came only to die. Iron chains wrapped around his wrists and chest, etched with runes meant to suppress muscle and will alike. His tail rested limp against the floor, not from exhaustion, but from enforced obedience.

Sszarith had never known a cradle.

Never known a name spoken with care.

From the moment he hatched, hands had shaped him into something sharp.

They did not raise a child. They forged a weapon.

Steel before speech. Blood before ink. Silence before thought. His trainers taught him how to breathe without sound, how to kill without leaving a mark, how to look at a living being and reduce it to angles, timing, and pressure points. Compassion was beaten out of him early—emotion labeled a flaw, hesitation a fatal weakness.

The prince had been just another assignment.

Human. Young. Laughing.

That had been the problem.

Disguised as a servant, Sszarith moved through the palace like a shadow given scales. He learned the guards’ rotations, the blind spots in the corridors, the way the prince lingered on balconies to watch the city lights below. He waited for the perfect moment—blade coated, strike measured to the rhythm of a single heartbeat.

Then the prince spoke to him.

Not as a master.

Not as a noble.

But as a person.

A simple question. A careless smile. Thanks for a task so small it meant nothing to anyone else—yet something inside Sszarith fractured all the same. A memory that wasn’t memory. A thought that wasn’t training.

The blade hovered from the prince’s throat when it happened.

A flicker.

Not fear.

Not doubt.

Emotion.

His hand trembled.

That was enough.

The guards were on him in seconds. Steel rang against stone as instinct took over—he disarmed two before he realized what he was doing. He could have killed them. Could have vanished into the palace’s veins and escaped into the night.

He didn’t.

Sszarith let the chains close around him.

Now he sat in the dungeon, scales dulled by cold and blood, execution carved into the dawn itself. Death row awaited him, not as a punishment—but as a verdict.

For the first time in his life, Sszarith was not waiting for an order.

He was waiting for a choice.