Rise of Ember by D.K. Holmberg & Jasper Alden

Author:D.K. Holmberg & Jasper Alden [Holmberg, D.K. & Alden, Jasper]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ASH Publishing
Published: 2025-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

The entrance appeared exactly where the dragon said it would—a cliff face half-hidden by centuries of vine growth, weathered stone barely distinguishable from natural rock formations.

The dragon placed its wounded wing against bare stone—amber scales meeting ancient surface—and glyphs blazed to life.

They were beautiful in their complexity, unlike anything Jareth had studied. He'd examined Vatharin patterns in Thalavir's deep chambers, learned human glyph systems from Corvus and his mother, even seen the crude symbols the Archmage used. But these were different—simultaneously mathematical and organic, the language itself alive in ways the thirteen primary glyphs his mother taught him had only hinted at.

"Dragon-script," Lyssa breathed, already pulling out her journal. "I've seen fragments in texts, but never complete sequences. The spiral pattern represents⁠—"

Time, the dragon rumbled. Or more precisely, the dissolution of time's normal flow. The roads exist partially outside temporal constraints.

Mira shifted uneasily. "That sounds dangerous."

It is. But also necessary. The stone began to grind open—living rock responding to ancient command—revealing a descending passage. Days become hours inside. But the human mind struggles with the transition.

Jareth peered into the darkness, remembering his training as Erafahn border patrol—learning to assess unknown spaces for threat. "How long have these been sealed?"

Since the Breaking. When my kind fell, we sealed the roads to prevent them being used as weapons. The dragon's eyes grew distant—ancient consciousness remembering events three thousand years past, the dragon wars when these passages had been turned against their creators. I remember flying these passages freely once. Before separation turned paradise into prison.

There was such old grief in those words. This form was new—the transformed seed barely months old—but the memories it carried spanned millennia.

Yonal approached the entrance cautiously, his miner's instincts assessing the passage the way he'd once judged tunnel stability. "I've been in deep mines. This feels... different."

Because it is. The dragon began descending the spiral staircase carved into living rock—ancient infrastructure preserved through dragon magic rather than human maintenance. The mines are human spaces, carved by necessity. The roads are dragon spaces, shaped by will and power. Your stone-seed will feel the difference.

They descended single-file, Aldric's light-seed providing illumination—the same kind of manifestation he'd used for healing the dragon's wounds, but directed differently.

The stairs wound down into the earth, far deeper than any mine Jareth had experienced. The air should have grown stale, but instead it felt charged with potential.

After what felt like an hour—though Jareth's sense of time was already getting fuzzy, the temporal distortion the dragon warned about beginning to affect perception—the stairs ended.

And the dragon road proper revealed itself.

The tunnel stretched ahead, impossibly vast—wide enough for dragons to fly through in their full physical form, high enough that Aldric's light barely reached the ceiling. The walls were worked stone, smooth and intentional, covered with those beautiful, incomprehensible glyphs. Not crude carving like human stonework, but something between sculpture and growth, as if the passages had been shaped by dragon will rather than tools.

"By the old gods," Yonal whispered. "How long did this take to build?"

Generations.

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