Chapter Text
The sun had long since dipped below the horizon, casting the peaks of Fiore in twilight shadow. But the mountains near Sabertooth's guild hall burned anyway—crimson-orange flames dancing in wild spirals along the treetops, the air thick with smoke and magic.
A guard, half-bored and quarter-drunk, stumbled from his post toward the commotion. At first he thought it was a rogue wyvern, or maybe some fool summoning gone wrong.
What he found was... smaller.
Two children. One was growling.
The boy couldn't have been older than ten, barefoot, shirtless, his hair a tangled mess of pink ash, his canines flashing in the firelight as he stood crouched before the unconscious girl. He was dirty, wild-eyed, and breathing in short, sharp pants like a cornered animal. The girl—tiny, blue-haired, barely older than a toddler—was crumpled in the grass behind him, clinging to a tattered blanket that smelled faintly of smoke and cinnamon and something else.
Like singed copper wiring and sunbaked stone, the stink of a terrarium that’s been left too long in the sun—reptile musk and heat-baked scales and the faintest trace of blood.
The moment the guard stepped forward, the boy let out a low snarl. Not like a child pretending to be scary—like a predator about to bite.
“Oi! Get Jiemma!” the man barked, backing away, eyes never leaving the child who had just lit a bush on fire with his breath.
Inside the guild, Sabertooth itself stirred. Minerva Orland, all of seven years old and already dressed like a debutante at a funeral, watched with narrowed eyes as the double doors creaked open and her father strode through—cloak flowing, expression unreadable.
She followed.
Outside, the forest clearing had gone quiet save for the crackle of flames and the shallow, wet breathing of the little girl.
“What is this?” Jiemma asked, voice low and disapproving.
“Dragon slayers,” came the guard’s hoarse reply. “I don’t know how, but I can feel it.”
Jiemma’s eyes narrowed.
The boy met his gaze, not backing down. His lips curled back over his teeth, daring him. Daring anyone.
Minerva tilted her head, her eyes now on the girl.
“She’s dying,” she said plainly. “Can’t you see that?”
“She’s weak,” Jiemma growled. “They both are. Untrained. Half-starved. They won’t survive the night without intervention.”
He meant it like a judgment. A reason to walk away.
But the pink-haired boy surged to his feet, fists clenched, legs shaking—but he stood all the same. "You ain't takin' her," he rasped, voice hoarse and cracked from smoke and dehydration. “She’s mine.”
Jiemma studied him for a long moment.
Then he laughed.
A cold, humorless thing.
“Is that so? Then prove it.”
Minerva didn’t understand the rules of the game her father played—not yet—but she knew what came next. Sabertooth didn’t take in strays. It took in weapons.
But as the boy staggered forward, swaying but unyielding, she saw it. Not defiance. Not arrogance.
Fury.
He didn’t want to win. He wanted to kill.
Jiemma smiled.
“Welcome to Sabertooth.”