Ember of the Lowest Wing

In a kingdom that measures worth by bloodline and awakened power, the stables sit at the very bottom. There, Tarin, a servant boy with no lineage and no future anyone expects, spends his days doing work nobles never notice. He is used to being overlooked. Then he finds the runt: a dragon hatchling so small and sickly that handlers have written it off and mockingly named it the Lowest Wing. Tarin cannot bring himself to walk past it. He shares his rations, keeps it warm through the cold nights, and talks to it the way he once wished someone would talk to him. The hatchling begins to follow him, and when the stablehands mock him for the bond, Tarin refuses to give it up. Then the change begins. The ash-gray scales take on a dark sheen, the crooked wings straighten, and the creature grows fast enough to shake the courtyard. The kingdom's great clans take notice. A military dynasty offers gold and titles, a cultivator sect watches from the rafters, and a noble family sends assassins disguised as merchants. Each wants the dragon, and none care what happens to the boy who raised it. When Tarin refuses to hand it over, the pressure grows. His wages are cut, his one friend in the stables is beaten, and the first attack comes at night. The dragon meets the intruders with a roar, and Tarin's blood on its scales makes its eyes blaze. The clans will not stop coming. What follows is not a rise to glory. The dragon grows unpredictably, and each surge of power leaves it weakened. Tarin must learn its moods, scavenge forgotten texts, and beg a retired beast-warden for training, each lesson costing him sleep, dignity, and the quiet life he once accepted. The story's central question is whether Tarin can protect the first being that ever chose him without becoming the kind of person the clans are. The first arc ends with Tarin stepping through a gate into a far greater world, with the dragon beside him and its wings finally unfolded.

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