Heart of the Wyrm: A Love That Burns Eternal

The ancient wyrm Valdris had learned many truths in his eight centuries of existence, but none so bitter as this: immortality was a curse when love was mortal. He coiled his massive emerald form around the highest spire of his mountain fortress, watching the village of Rosehaven nestled in the valley below like a collection of glowing amber stones in the gathering twilight.

For three hundred years, he had dwelt in solitude, his heart as cold as the winter winds that howled through his cavern. The villagers below told stories of the terrible dragon who hoarded gold and breathed destruction, but they knew nothing of the deeper treasure he guarded, nor the flames that burned not in his throat, but in his chest—flames that had been extinguished long ago.

Valdris remembered Lyralei as clearly as if she had left his side yesterday, though the centuries had turned her mortal bones to dust. She had been the first to see past his fearsome exterior to the gentle soul beneath, the first to understand that his apparent cruelty stemmed from a desperate attempt to protect what he loved from the ravages of time. In those brief, shining years of their courtship and marriage, he had known happiness so pure it had transformed his very essence. The black scales of his youth had shifted to deep emerald, and where once his breath had brought only destruction, it had learned to kindle the gentle fires of hearth and home.

But mortals aged, and mortals died, and Valdris had watched his beloved fade like autumn leaves, powerless to stop time's relentless march. On the day Lyralei passed peacefully in their shared chamber, something within the dragon had broken so completely that he believed it could never be repaired. He had sealed himself away, allowing the legends of his ferocity to grow unchallenged, for what did it matter what humans thought of him when the only human whose opinion mattered was gone?

Now, as he gazed down at the village, something stirred in his ancient heart—a sensation so foreign after centuries of numbness that it took him long moments to recognize it. There, walking through the market square with a basket of herbs, was a young woman whose movements carried an echo of grace he had thought lost forever. Even from this great distance, something about her bearing, the tilt of her head, the gentle way she moved among the other villagers, whispered of Lyralei.