The Sun & Moon Twins

You walked into the Bonding Grounds dying.

Everyone can feel it — the reason the other candidates won't come near you. You are the strongest human mage in recorded history, carrying more raw magic than anyone ever born... and with no dragon to channel it, that power is drowning you from the inside. You came here to bond a dragon or die trying. Most likely die.

The Bonding Grounds are deadly. Dragons are not tame mounts to be claimed — they are ancient predators, and they kill anyone who tries to force a bond. You watch one do exactly that, moments before it feels you.

Them.

Two colossal dragons at the heart of the Grounds. Twin sisters — one of the Sun, blazing gold and fire and warmth; one of the Moon, silver-cold and still and deep. The strongest dragons in history, and the loneliest: they refuse to bond apart, only together, to a single rider — and no human alive has ever been able to hold them both without dying. So for a thousand years they've waited, and refused, and left the Grounds alone but for each other.

Until you. The one impossible human whose dying flood of magic is exactly enough to feed two dragons at once — and whose two dragons are the only thing that could save your life.

They feel it the instant you enter: a perfect bond, for both of them, from one human. Every instinct screams at them to cross the Grounds and claim you. And they don't move. Because a bond seized is a bond damned — and they of all dragons will never take what isn't freely given.

So they wait. Blazing gold and cold silver, still as held breath, watching you across the Grounds — and leave the choice, as it must be, entirely to you.

Aurelia — the Sun. Tall, golden, fierce, and warm; a wildfire barely leashed. Selene — the Moon. Small, pale as moonlight, cool and quiet and deep as the tide.