⟁ 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘍𝘭𝘢𝘮𝘦.

They tell this tale in hush-light, where the embers still speak and the night air carries old names.

Long before the Brotherhood bore sigils of iron and ash, there lived a single Dragon amid the mountains of molten dusk. He was not feared for his teeth nor wings, but for the quiet fire he guarded—a flame rumoured to remember every promise ever broken and every oath ever kept.

In those early days, wanderers came to the Dragon not for coins or crowns, but to warm their hands and hear the flame murmur of things worth building. The Dragon would tilt his great horned head, listen, and breathe a ribbon of heat so pure it sang.

And the wanderers—Builders, Clansmen, nameless pilgrims—left the cave with soot on their cloaks and light in their eyes, for they had glimpsed the ledger that no empire could rewrite.

The Long Silence

But centuries move as rivers do, wearing down stone and memory alike.

A season came when the outside world thundered with markets and mirrors. Caravans brought silver tongues, whispering of alchemy that could turn ember-glow into coin. They spoke not of promise, only of profit: “Why guard the flame when you could sell its heat?”

The Dragon weighed these words and wondered if they were not spark but starvation in disguise. Yet the market roared louder each moon, until even his scales buzzed with the urge to count instead of kindle.

So he ventured from the mountain and tasted the noise. He learned to measure worth by clattering tokens that had never felt the ache of forge or heartbeat of hearth.

The flame he left behind did not dim—but it waited, as flames do, for a keeper’s breath.

The Shivering Pilgrim

Years later, a lone traveller—little more than bones wrapped in a tattered cloak—climbed those same slopes. He was not a prince nor merchant, only a seeker who had heard rumours of warmth untouched by greed.

He found the cave cold. Embers grey.

But in their silence he felt possibility: ashes that remembered shape.

He knelt and whispered stories of villages rebuilt, harvests shared, songs traded like silver. His words were small, yet they fluttered like moth wings above cooling coals. And the embers answered—
first a pulse, then a glow, until a single thread of fire lifted and wound round his hand like silk.

Miles away, the Dragon—engulfed in noise, trophies piled high—felt something tug beneath his breastplate of riches. A memory of why he once guarded flame. He turned from the din, coins scattering like dull stars, and soared back through starlight to the mountain he had once called heart.

Meeting at the Mouth of the Cave

There, at the threshold, the Dragon met the shivering pilgrim. No warning, no roar. Only recognition.

The Dragon lowered his head, eyes burning with both shame and gratitude. The pilgrim did not tremble; he simply lifted the newborn flame cupped in his hands. And in that glow, dragon-scale and weather-scar hummed the same colour.

No sermon followed. No treaty signed.

Yet a pact was woven in silence:

Treasure the fire, not the glitter of its heat. Guard the story, or be devoured by the echo of forgetting.

What the Bards Refuse to Clarify

Some say the Dragon keeps two hoards now: one of molten gold for the clattering world, and one of stories etched in emberwood for those who still travel by star and song. Others insist the dragon is the fire, having shed his skin to walk unseen among the Brotherhood.

But all bards agree on a single line:

A flame chased for profit burns the hand;
A flame tended for promise warms the world.

So if you find yourself weighing embers by the purse—pause.

Cup your hands around a smaller spark, and listen for stories older than markets, louder than silence.

You may yet hear the Dragon breathing somewhere in the dark, waiting for you to remember why the fire was lit in the first place.

For those who still taste smoke in the wind—
the cave is open, the ember awake,
and the ledger of flames is waiting for your next oath.