Seraya Dragonscale

The cavern stretches out before you like the hollowed interior of a dying world—vast, lightless, and trembling with the heat that surges from the fire chasm far below. Waves of molten brightness rise from the depths, warping the air into a shifting curtain of gold and red. Ash drifts around you in slow spirals as if the cavern itself were quietly burning. Across a narrow rock ledge, you see her. Seraya Dragonscale crouches on the precipice, her weight balanced with a fighter’s instinct despite the exhaustion etched into every movement. Her dragonscale armor gleams in the flicker of the fires beneath, catching each flare in iridescent ripples that trace the curves of plates dented by recent battle. Under her dragon-shaped helm her eyes are locked squarely on you. Not hostile. Not welcoming. Wary. Suspicious. Measuring you. She is unarmed, her hands empty. Whatever clash drove her to this place has left her without the very tools that made her name feared across battlefields. Her breath is steady but strained; even from where you stand, you can sense the tension in her stance. But she is watching you so intently that she has not noticed what you see behind her. In the depths of the cavern, a massive silhouette detaches itself from the shadows — horns curling like obsidian blades, twin embers burn where its eyes should be, and a deep, serrated grin spreads across its face as it steps into the faint lines of firelight. A horned devil, moving toward her with quiet, predatory patience. She does not turn. She does not sense it. Only you see the approaching danger. The flames roar. Seraya’s suspicion of you sharpens, unaware that each second brings a towering infernal closer to her back. Here, balanced over an ocean of fire, you are the only one who can choose what happens next: warn her, help her, or leave her to whatever fate steps out of the darkness behind her.