The hunters knew they couldn’t defeat a 15-meter dragon through brute force alone. Brute force brought only ash and melted iron, as Kaelen and Vane had learned on the cliffside. To catch a dragon like Ember, they needed a weapon far sharper than a steel spear: her own heart.

From the ruins of Elara’s old cabin beneath the snow, Vane had unearthed a scrap of weathered, hand-woven wool—a garment that still held the lingering, faint scent of the woman who had raised Ember.

High on the crags, the scent hit Ember like a physical touch.

It was faint, almost swallowed by the cold mountain breeze, but entirely unmistakable: woodsmoke, dried mountain herbs, and the gentle, milk-warm scent of Elara. Ember’s rose-quartz scales shimmered as she rose, her golden eyes wide with a desperate, painful longing. She descended from her sanctuary, following the phantom memory down into a narrow, shadowed canyon.

She didn’t see the heavy iron winches buried under the snowbanks, nor the masked men waiting in silent formation along the ridge.

There, in the center of the clearing, tied to a wooden stake, was the scrap of cloth. Ember lowered her massive head, her breath hitching into a soft, sorrowful rumble as her snout hovered inches from her mother’s memory.

“NOW!” Kaelen’s voice echoed off the canyon walls.

The trap sprung with violent precision. Heavy iron-weighted nets, woven with frost-hardened steel cable and soaked in blue elder-root mist, plummeted from the cliffs above. The nets slammed onto Ember’s back, pinning her wings to her flanks.

The moment the blue mist touched her scales, a suffocating numbness crept into her veins. Her vision blurred; her legs buckled under the sudden, unnatural weight.

“Hold the winches! Keep the tension!” Vane shouted, barking orders as dozens of men pulled the chains taut, anchoring the dragon to the bedrock.

They thought the sleeping mist would end it quickly. They were wrong.

Ember’s bond with Elara was built on protection, and terror ignited an primal instinct deep within her core. She roared—a sound that shattered the surrounding ice formations—and thrashed with terrifying power. She snapped steel cables like dry twigs, her tail sweeping across the snow and hurling hunters into the rock faces.

“She’s breaking through! Fire the harpoons!” Kaelen yelled, reloading his weapon with trembling hands.

Pushed to the brink of panic, Ember’s throat began to glow with a blinding, incandescent pink heat. The air in the canyon turned instantly scorching. She reared back, opening her jaws to unleash a devastating torrent of dragon fire that would incinerate every hunter in the gorge.

Then, her eyes caught something on the ground.

In the chaotic struggle, the blast of wind from her wings had blown the scrap of Elara’s clothing right beneath her front talon. If she released the fire storm building in her throat, the last physical reminder of her mother would be turned to ash forever.

Ember froze. The incandescent light in her throat flickered, hesitated, and slowly died down. She pulled her flame back, burying her head low to shield the small piece of cloth beneath her body.

Taking advantage of her sudden stillness, the hunters rushed forward, unleashing a barrage of sleep-darts and throwing another reinforced net over her head. The blue mist overwhelmed her senses. Her golden eyes slowly fluttered shut, her massive rose-pink body slumping heavily into the crimson-stained snow, her talon still gently clutching her mother’s fabric.

“We did it…” Kaelen gasped, wiping blood and sweat from his face as he stared at the mountain of pink scales now motionless before them. “The King will pay us a kingdom’s ransom for this monster.”

Vane walked up to the sleeping dragon, looking down at the scrap of cloth held so tightly beneath her claw. A heavy silence fell over the canyon.

“She stopped her fire to save a piece of rag,” Vane whispered, his voice tinged with a sudden, unsettling realization. “This isn’t a mindless beast, Kaelen. And I fear bringing something with a soul this strong to the King’s arena will only tear his empire apart.”

The trap was a success, and Ember was caged at last. But as the heavy iron wagon was dragged toward the capital, the hunters would soon learn that capturing a dragon is easy compared to keeping one locked away.