Three nights later, the museum shook.
Not a lot.
Not enough for the seismographs at the university two miles away to ping.
Not enough for the board members in their townhouse beds to feel anything but a vague sense of unease that they attributed to spicy dinner.
But enough for every object in the medieval wing to hum, just a fraction louder.
Enough for the hair on Isla’s arms to stand on end.
She was on late shift in the lab, paperwork spread around her like a paper nest, when the tremor rolled through.
The glassware on the drying rack rattled.
The lights flickered.
The scale in drawer B-14 pulsed.
Isla froze.
“Okay,” she said aloud to the empty room. “That’s new.”
Her phone buzzed before she could decide whether to investigate or hide under the table.
Tim: *Coal room. Now.*
Her heart ratcheted up.
She shoved her notes into a chaotic pile, flicked off the task lamp, and jogged down the corridor, sneakers squeaking faintly on linoleum.
The closer she got to the sub-basement stairwell, the thicker the air felt.
Like walking into a sauna.
Or a storm.
Her thumb burned.
She took the stairs two at a time, ignoring her knee’s protest.
The door to the old foundation corridor was ajar.
Heat spilled out.
“Not great,” she muttered, pushing it open.
The coal room’s usual dimness was broken by flickering, greenish light.
Cael stood with his back to the door, scaled.
Fully.
Not the hybrid, in-between sense she’d had in dreams.
Not hints of ridges under human skin.
All dragon.
He filled the room, shoulders hunched to fit under the low ceiling, tail coiled tight, wings furled as much as they could be.
His scales were a deep, dark bronze, edged with glowing green along the seams. The rune-scars that had traced his ribs in human form now spanned his flanks, vivid and bright, like molten metal poured into old wounds.
The reclaimed pieces of his hoard hummed around him, vibrating on the floor.
The crown hovered an inch off the tarp, spinning slowly.
In front of him, in the air, a fracture glowed.
A crack, like someone had taken a knife to reality.
It pulsed with sickly light.
Whatever lay beyond it was… wrong.
Not just dark.
Corridor-dark.
Absence-dark.
Isla’s stomach lurched.
“Don’t come closer,” Tim said sharply from her left.
She jumped.
He stood half in the doorway, half in front of her, one arm out as if to hold her back physically if needed.
Sweat beaded his forehead.
His eyes never left the crack.
“What—” she choked. “What is that?”
“The thing,” Jay said faintly from behind Tim, his face pale in the weird light. “In the cracks.”
On the other side of the fracture, something moved.
Not in shapes she understood.
More like… flows.
Edges.
It probed at the crack the way a tongue might test a chipped tooth.
Every time it slid along the glowing line, the crown flared brighter.
“Cael?” Isla said, her voice trembling.
His massive head shifted.
One golden eye fixed on her.
The sight of it punched the breath from her lungs.
This was not the almost-human gaze she’d gotten used to.
This was dragon.
Ancient, alien, full of heat and calculation.
Smoke curled from his nostrils.
“Stay back,” his voice rumbled, layered—part physical growl, part mental echo.
She took a half step forward.
Tim’s hand closed around her forearm.
“Don’t,” he hissed. “He’s barely holding it.”
“Barely holding *what*?” she demanded, eyes locked on the crack.
“The door,” Cael said. “It pushes. I push back. You get… earthquakes.”
His tail lashed once, the movement sending a shower of old coal dust from the far wall.
The crack widened a fraction of an inch.
The whatever-it-was on the other side surged, pressuring.
An oily wave of wrongness rolled across the room, making Isla’s skin crawl.
“Shit,” Jay whispered. “Shitshitshit.”
“What does it *want*?” Isla asked through her teeth, every part of her screaming to run and stay and *help* all at once.
Cael bared his teeth.
The sight of his fangs—each one as long as her forearm, curved and gleaming—should have sent her running.
It didn’t.
“It wants *in*,” he snarled.
The crack bowed inward.
Heat spiked.
The crown flared, a wild, steady light cutting against the sickly other.
The bond between Isla and the scar on her thumb snapped taut.
Pain shot up her arm.
She gasped.
The thing in the crack *noticed*.
It recoiled from the crown’s light and slid along the fissure toward her awareness.
Cold.
Sharp.
Curious.
“Isla,” Cael’s voice thundered in her head. “Shield.”
“How?” she choked. “I don’t—”
“Hold to me,” he growled. “Not it. Remember my scales under your hand. The hoard under your feet. The heat. *Me.*”
Her cheeks flamed even in the stifling air.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
In her mind, she reached.
The coal room’s heat.
The crown’s hum.
More than that—
The feel of his chest under her palms in the Hammond, hot and hard.
The sound of his laugh.
The way he’d cradled her thumb and kissed the scar without thinking.
The way he’d said *be careful* like it was a command and a plea.
She grabbed onto those, stubbornly.
The cold presence slid closer, tasting the edges of the bond.
It felt… nasty.
Not malevolent, exactly.
Hungry.
Opportunistic.
Like mold.
“You can’t have this,” she thought fiercely at it, surprising herself.
The scar on her thumb blazed.
The line of light along her skin flared in her mind’s eye, connecting to the scale in the drawer, to the crown, to the runes in Cael’s hide.
The thing hissed.
Literally.
The sound reverberated in her skull.
Then it *pushed*.
The crack in reality surged open another hair.
Cael roared.
The sound rattled the old stones.
Tim winced, hands flying to his ears.
Jay swore vividly.
Fire licked along the edges of the crack.
Not the thing’s.
Cael’s.
He poured heat into the gap, into the pushing edges.
For a second, the world turned into a tug-of-war between three forces:
The crack-thing, pressing.
Isla, anchoring.
Cael, burning.
Her knees buckled.
Tim caught her.
“Hey,” he shouted over the roar. “Easy, Reyes. Breathe.”
She dragged in a breath.
Her lungs felt full of smoke.
“More,” Cael snarled.
She didn’t know if he meant more anchoring, more memory, more *him*.
She gave all of it.
Her mind flashed again—this time, unbidden images from the crown:
That woman, laughing with the crown askew.
Her hand on Cael’s snout, unafraid.
Dark curls escaping a messy knot.
Ink on her fingers.
For a heartbeat, the face overlapped with Isla’s.
Their reflections in the crown’s polished gold merged.
Not the same woman.
But similar.
A rhyme, not a repeat.
The crack-thing recoiled.
The light from the scar seared it.
Cael seized the moment.
He hurled his will into the fissure.
Fire and gold and rage and *mine*.
The crack shrieked.
The sound had no place in human ears.
Isla clapped her hands over her head and squeezed her eyes shut tighter.
When she risked opening them again, the fracture was thinner.
The oily presence retreated, hissing.
It felt like someone scraping a knife along her nerves as it withdrew.
The crack sealed with a final, reluctant flicker.
The light went out.
The crown dropped to the tarp with a dull thunk.
Silence crashed down.
Not real silence.
The hum of the dehumidifiers.
Tim’s ragged breathing.
Jay’s quiet, disbelieving curse.
Cael’s massive body shuddering, coal dust raining off his scales.
Isla sagged against Tim, legs useless.
Her thumb throbbed in time with her heartbeat.
The room stank of scorched stone and… something else.
Like rotted leaves under snow.
“Is it… gone?” she whispered.
Cael turned his head slowly, massive neck muscles rippling.
His eyes, still glowing faintly, locked on her.
“For now,” he said.
His voice was hoarse.
She’d never heard a dragon sound hoarse.
“How many more… ‘for nows’ do we get?” Jay asked weakly.
Cael’s huge shoulders rose and fell.
“Depends how stubborn it is,” he said.
He took a slow, deliberate breath.
With visible effort, he let the dragon-shape go.
Isla watched in horrified fascination as his body folded inward, mass condensing, scales melting into skin.
It wasn’t seamless.
For a second, he seemed both at once—scale and flesh overlaid.
Then he was just… Cael.
Kneeling on the floor, bare-chested, sweat gleaming on his skin, breathing hard.
His hair was damp, sticking to his temples.
The rune-scars across his ribs flickered, then dimmed.
He looked older.
Tired.
“Okay,” Jay said, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. “Okay. Cool. So we almost had a portal to Eldritch Horror Land in our coal room. And we slammed it shut with the power of fire, trauma, and unresolved hoard feelings. Ten out of ten, would not recommend as a relaxation technique.”
Tim blew out a breath, scrubbing a hand over his face.
“I’m adding ‘dragon quake drills’ to the emergency manual,” he muttered. “Right after ‘do not taunt the mummy.’”
Isla’s legs finally remembered how to work.
She lurched forward.
Cael watched her come, something wary and raw in his gaze.
“You should not be so close,” he rasped. “In case it—”
She dropped to her knees in front of him and grabbed his face with both hands.
“Don’t you *dare*,” she said, voice shaking, “tell me where I should be right now.”
His eyes widened.
Heat flared under her palms.
“You could have been pulled through,” he growled. “Dragged. I would have had to choose between letting it take you or burning you with it.”
“And yet,” she said, anger and terror tangling in her chest, “here we are. Together. Not in some crack-hell. Because we held.”
He stared at her.
Then, slowly, his hands came up.
He wrapped them around her wrists—gently, not prying her off, just… holding.
“You anchored,” he said quietly.
“I tried,” she said.
“You did,” he insisted. “I felt it. You burned it. It does not like you, curator.”
“Good,” she said, throat thick. “The feeling’s mutual.”
He huffed out a ragged laugh.
His gaze dropped briefly to her mouth.
She was suddenly, acutely aware of how close they were.
Her hands on his face.
His hands on her wrists.
His bare chest inches from her cardigan.
The coal room hot and humming around them.
Her heart pounded.
Not just from adrenaline.
She swallowed.
“We can’t keep doing this,” she whispered.
“Doing what?” he asked, voice low.
“Standing on the edge of… whatever *that* was,” she said, gesturing weakly toward where the crack had been. “Relying on panic and improvisation and… and…” She gestured between them. “This. We need a plan.”
He smiled crookedly.
“Plans are your domain,” he said. “I bring fire. You bring… schedules.”
“Don’t mock my schedules,” she said. “They keep your scales un-singed.”
He sobered.
A muscle jumped in his jaw.
“I did not know it would try so soon,” he said.
“What is it?” she asked. “Really.”
He exhaled slowly.
“I do not know its… name,” he said.
Her stomach dipped.
“But you know… *something,*” she pressed.
He nodded once.
“When dragons first learned to hoard,” he said, voice taking on a rhythmic, story-telling cadence, “we learned how to… bind. To anchor. Our kind are… too much. Left wild, we burned ourselves and everything around us. We needed… weights. Things to pin us to the world.”
“Objects,” Isla murmured. “Gold. Gems. Weapons.”
He nodded.
“Not all chose the same,” he said. “My eldest sister—” His face flickered. “She hoarded… knowledge. Scrolls. Spoken tales. Names. She said the right word at the right time could change a mountain faster than fire.”
“Smart,” Isla said softly.
“She was,” he said. “My youngest brother hoarded… storms. Wind in jars. Lightning caught in glass. He died… spectacularly.”
Her heart clenched.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He shrugged one shoulder, but the motion was tight.
“Old hurts,” he said. “Before humans built cities over our bones. Before…” His hand twitched toward his runes. “Before spells and circles.”
He dragged his focus back.
“We were not the only ones who learned to bind,” he went on. “There are… other things. Older than dragons. Older than humans. Older than your saints’ stories. They like cracks. They like edges. Places where one thing becomes another.”
Her skin prickled.
“Liminal spaces,” she said.
He nodded.
“When dragons bind to hoards,” he said, “we make… paths. Between ourselves and the things. Between the things and each other. Those paths run through the same places those… others like.”
“Like the tunnels you used,” she said. “To get to the Hammond.”
His mouth twisted.
“Yes,” he said. “Useful. Dangerous. Your… Magic Tapeworm.” He nodded toward Jay without looking.
Jay squeaked. “He heard me.”
“It rides those paths,” Cael said. “Feeds on what leaks. On old spells. On untended bonds. It is not… evil.” He made a face at the word. “It is… hungry.”
“Like you,” Isla said quietly.
His gaze snapped to her.
Heat flared.
“Not like me,” he said. “I hunger for what is mine. It hungers for *everything.*”
She swallowed.
“How do we stop it?” she asked.
He looked at the crown.
“At first, we keep it from widening the cracks,” he said. “Hold. Push. Burn. But that will not be enough. It will find other seams. Other cities. Other sleeping spells.”
“I hate that sentence,” Jay muttered.
“Later,” Cael said, eyes still on Isla, “we find where it is strongest. And we cut it there.”
“Like… a root,” she said.
He nodded.
“Yes,” he said.
Tim, who had been unnervingly quiet, finally spoke up.
“Any chance that ‘where it is strongest’ is somewhere *not* under our city?” he asked.
Cael considered.
“Maybe,” he said.
Tim sighed.
“Of course,” he said. “We never get the easy bosses.”
Isla’s mind whirred.
“You said others… learned to bind,” she said. “Old wizards. Sorcerers. People like the one who cursed you. Could this… thing… be tied to them? To their circles?”
“Perhaps,” Cael said. “Your blood sorcerer anchored my sleep to his line. When it ended, the leash snapped. The magic that held me… bled. This thing sniffs that. Follows the trail.”
“So we’re dealing with magical fallout from a three-hundred-year-old curse,” Jay summarized. “Plus capitalism. Plus colonialism. Plus an eldritch hoovering entity. Cool.”
“Don’t forget the board,” Isla added.
They all groaned.
Cael blinked.
“Board,” he repeated.
“Humans with money,” Tim said. “Less powerful than eldritch horrors, more annoying.”
Cael nodded slowly.
“Yes,” he said. “I have met their type.”
Isla sat back on her heels, exhaustion rolling over her in a wave.
“We can’t handle this alone,” she said quietly.
Tim stiffened.
“You want to bring in the city?” he asked. “The Feds? The Vatican?”
She shook her head quickly.
“No,” she said. “I mean… we need more *knowledge*. Records. Stories. Someone must have written about this. Even if they called it something else. Demon, djinn, the darkness between. We have to… research.”
“Now you’re speaking my language,” Jay said, perking up slightly.
She looked at Cael.
“And you have your sister’s stories,” she said. “Even if they’re only in your head.”
He flinched.
“I have some,” he said slowly. “Not all. She did not trust me with everything. She knew I… burned too hot.”
“You burn just right,” she said, then blinked, startled at herself.
His gaze sharpened.
Heat coiled in the room again, different from dragonfire.
Tim cleared his throat.
“Okay,” he said briskly. “Homework assignments. Isla, you hit the archives. See what’s been written, officially and unofficially, about weirdness under this city. Old newspapers. Monastery records. Grandma ghost stories.”
She nodded.
“I’ll ask my dad about Abuela’s notebooks,” she said. “If she ever wrote those stories down.”
“Jay,” Tim went on, “you dig into the Hammond’s sensors. See if their temperature anomaly matches tonight’s quake. Cross-reference with any other institutions sitting on Schmiedler garbage.”
“On it,” Jay said, fingers already tapping on an invisible keyboard. “Also going to make a spreadsheet titled ‘Cursed Shit and Where We Suspect It Is.’”
“Delightful,” Tim said dryly.
He looked at Cael.
“And you,” he said. “Rest. You look like you wrestled a volcano.”
“I have wrestled a volcano,” Cael said. “It was more… cooperative.”
Isla snorted.
“Seriously,” Tim said. “Whatever this thing is, it’s not done. And you can’t fight it if you burn yourself out now.”
Cael’s jaw worked.
He didn’t like being told to rest.
He did not like it enough that he looked… amused.
“You sound like my sister,” he said again, softer.
“That a compliment?” Tim asked.
“Yes,” Cael said simply.
Something flickered between them—respect, recognition, something older.
Isla’s chest tightened.
She pushed herself to her feet.
Her legs wobbled.
Cael shot a hand out, steadying her.
“Easy,” he said.
She batted his hand away halfheartedly.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’ve had worse.”
He gave her a look.
“Liar,” he said.
Her lips twitched.
“Go to sleep,” she told him. “Dragon’s orders.”
He huffed.
“You order me?” he asked, amused and… something else.
She met his gaze, exhaustion making her reckless.
“Equal partners,” she said. “Remember? We share the providing.”
His eyes darkened.
“Then I will… obey,” he said, the word tasting strange and oddly satisfying in his mouth.
Heat crawled up her neck.
“Good,” she said, voice a little too breathless. “I’ll… be in the archives. With the safe, boring ghosts.”
He snorted.
“Nothing in your life is safe anymore,” he said.
She didn’t argue.
She turned and left the coal room, the echo of his words following her up the stairs.
***
The archives after midnight felt different from the sub-basement.
Less pressure.
More… watching.
Boxes loomed in the half-dark, their labels whispering centuries.
Isla sat at the big central table, a stack of old bound volumes in front of her: city council minutes from the 1800s, parish records, a leather notebook with “E. Reyes” scrawled in looping handwriting on the inside cover.
Her father had rummaged it out of an old trunk in the back room of the house and pressed it into her hands before she left.
“Your abuela’s,” he’d said, eyes soft. “She’d be proud you’re reading her stories instead of the city’s nonsense.”
The nonsense in question was the municipal report on “Subterranean Stability During Urban Development,” which lay open beside it, full of soil samples and boring charts.
She alternated between the two.
Abuela’s notebook was in Spanish and English, interwoven.
Odds and ends.
Prayers.
Recipes.
Gossip.
And, threaded through, stories.
*El dragón bajo San Bartolomé.*
The dragon under St. Bartholomew.
Isla’s breath caught.
She leaned closer.
*Mi madre said the soldiers at the fort heard roars when the fog rolled in. They drank to forget. The priests said it was the devil, chained in the earth for his pride. The old women said it was a guardian, angry that its gold had been stolen for the king.*
Her finger traced the faded ink.
*In 1724, the ground shook. The well cracked. They said a wizard came from the mountains, with eyes like coals and hands like ice. He went down into the tunnels with the colonel and did not come back until the bells rang three times. After that, no more roars. Only silence. Too much silence. The old women said he put the dragon to sleep, but not kindly. They said he tied the dragon’s dreams to his own blood, like a rosary knot. They said when his line ended, the dragon would wake angry.*
Goosebumps prickled along Isla’s arms.
Abuela had written this in 1968.
Before Isla.
Before the museum.
Before the Schmiedler bequest.
She swallowed hard.
“Abuela, you absolute witch,” she whispered.
She read on.
*They warned their daughters: do not marry men with eyes like coals. Do not trust priests who talk too sweet. Do not take gold from strange hands. Stories, mija. Stories to keep us safe. But underneath, something true. Always something true.*
Her throat tightened.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “I’m seeing that.”
She flipped to the next story.
Another mention of tremors.
Of cracks in the church floor.
Of candles blowing out.
Of whispers in the confessional.
She cross-referenced dates with the municipal reports.
Seismic anomalies.
Subsidence near the old fort site.
“Patterns,” she murmured.
Her thumb ached.
She flexed it absently.
The scale in drawer B-14 pulsed, faint and steady.
She glanced down the aisle toward it.
“Later,” she told it. “One dragon at a time.”
She turned back to Abuela’s notebook.
A later entry caught her eye.
*Some say the dragon is evil. Some say he is just angry. I say: do not poke sleeping things. But if he wakes… treat him like a neighbor. Bring offerings. Do not steal his dishes. And if your granddaughter is stubborn enough to work under his feet, light a candle for her.*
Her breath hitched.
“Abuela,” she whispered, voice breaking.
Had she known?
Not literally.
But on that deep, story-knowing level.
Isla sniffed and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
“Next right move,” she whispered.
“Find more.”
She dug into the city records.
Newspaper clippings from the 1800s.
*A Mysterious Tremor Startles Worshippers at St. Bart’s.*
*Rumors of Strange Noises Under the Old Municipal Building Dismissed by Authorities.*
*Local Woman Claims to Hear “Breathing” Beneath Her Floorboards.*
She scribbled notes on a legal pad, arrows and dates and exclamation marks.
Somewhere between an 1873 “earthquake” and a 1932 “gas line incident,” her phone buzzed.
She checked without thinking.
*You are tired,* Cael’s mind-voice said.
She snorted.
*You’re supposed to be resting,* she thought back.
*I am,* he said. *Watching the cracks. They are… quiet. For now.*
She hesitated.
Then, impulsively, she sent him a photo: Abuela’s notebook open to the dragon story, her finger pointing at the looping words.
There was a pause.
Then, surprisingly, a chuckle in her head.
*Your grandmother had sharp eyes,* he said.
“You have no idea,” she whispered aloud.
*She was wrong about one thing,* he added.
Her brows knit.
*What?*
*She said “do not poke sleeping things,”* he said. *I am… glad you did.*
Warmth spread through her chest.
Dangerous.
Stupid.
Thrilling.
*You’re welcome,* she thought.
The scale in the drawer pulsed in time with the words.
Deeper under her feet, in the coal room, the crown hummed.
The cracks in the foundation stayed, for the moment, sealed.
But the thing in them had retreated, not vanished.
It slid through the dark between cities, tasting for other leashes snapped, other spells broken, other bonds left untended.
It was hungry.
It had noticed a new flavor.
Human.
Dragon.
Entwined.
Interesting.
***
End of Chapter Ten.
---