A boy's frozen fingers slipped on the icy rock, and he nearly fell off the mountain. He caught himself and kept climbing. At the top he crawled into a black cave that smelled of old smoke. Deep inside, one huge yellow eye slid open. "Go away, child," the dragon rumbled. "Please," the boy gasped. "The Ashen Legion is coming. They burn my village at sunrise. You're the last dragon. You have to fight them." The eye narrowed. "I don't fight. Not anymore."

The boy didn't leave. He sat in the cave mouth, wrapped his thin arms around his knees, and talked. He told the dragon his little sister's name. He told it about the bread his mother baked. He talked all night, his voice cracking. The dragon listened, silent. Near dawn, something old and heavy stirred in its chest. It hadn't felt it in three hundred years.

At first light the dragon stood and shook three hundred years of dust off its wings. "Climb on my back," it told the boy. "Hold the spike at my neck and don't let go." The boy scrambled up. The dragon walked to the cliff edge, looked down at the army crossing the valley far below, and made a low sound that might have been fear or a laugh. Then it jumped.

But fire alone wasn't enough. The Legion had hundreds of archers, and they loosed as one. Arrows found the soft places under the dragon's wing. It cried out and fought to stay up, carrying the boy back over the ridge to safety before it sank to the ground. "We saved no one," it whispered. The boy held its huge head and wept.