Character Appendices
Where they were before the dragon died. One background chapter for each of the main cast, each ending at the moment they walk into the story.
Optional reading. These sit outside the chapter sequence and the community vote — nothing here changes what happens next, and nothing here gives away what the story is still keeping close.
Ember-born fire sorcerer
Caelin Thorne
The Language in His Sleep
A noble’s son who spoke a dragon’s language at a feast and was sent down the road for it — and has been hearing something under the mountains ever since.
5 min read · Enters the story in Chapter 1, Act I — three days out of Ashford.
Half-elf relic hunter
Virella “Vex” Sunshadow
Page Seventy-Three
Her mother’s last journal stops mid-word on page seventy-three. Vex has read it four hundred times, and followed its last rumour to a dying dragon.
5 min read · Enters the story in Chapter 1, Act III — on the crater’s glass ridge.
Copper dwarf artificer
Thornik Bramblebrew
Right Twice
For thirty years Deepstone Hold laughed at his grandfather’s blood-written journal — until the night every instrument in the Hold pointed at Thornwick.
4 min read · Enters the story in Chapter 2, Act I — over the crater’s north rim.
Paladin of the Silver Dawn
Serana Valeblade
Two Voices at Dawn
For fifteen years her goddess answered in one clear voice. The night the dragon died, the answer came in two.
5 min read · Enters the story in Chapter 2, Act II — at the crater’s edge.
Druid of the Green
Elowen of Sylvaran Grove
The Student of Endings
The druid who studied endings until her circle called it wrong, walking alone toward the wound that is killing the forest.
5 min read · Enters the story in Chapter 3, Act I — under the dying oaks.
Soldier of a fallen empire
Durgan
Not Yet
His empire fell, he checks his hand for blood every morning, and something has set a hook in him and started to pull.
2 min read · Enters the story in Chapter 3, Act II — by the fire in the drake-cut cave.
Warlock and collector of secrets
Nyxara
Such Pretty Math
A court secret-keeper with borrowed power and a mirror-coin that frosts from the inside, following the oldest sum in a children’s rhyme.
5 min read · Enters the story in Chapter 4, Act II — between two wind-carved pillars.