The news of the First Batch had swept across the kingdom. The citizens mourned the deaths of the first hundred of the thousand. Their grief was raw, visible in every corner of the streets and homes. Yet the King did not mourn. He did not pause the machinery of his ambition. Instead, he redoubled it.
In the high, ivory halls of the Grand Nursery, the cycle became an assembly line. New women were brought in; previous ones were recycled. The womb had ceased to be a vessel of life—it had become a forge that was never allowed to cool.
Day by day, Drakovitch visited them, seeding the next generation with the clinical precision of a farmer planting crops. Every nightfall, a new batch climbed to Tiamat's nest to undergo the Dragonrite. And every dawn, the result was the same—a merciless, agonizing silence.
