Lorath had always been the weakest of the Nine Free Cities. During more than a decade of extreme weather, its fragile foundations gave way, and it fell into ruin on its own.
The few thousand survivors had escaped disaster only because Ishys, Queen of the Rhoynar, had brought them to Norvos and resettled them during the extreme weather.
So when the extreme weather ended, the people of Lorath, already accustomed to their new lives, stayed in the Kingdom of the Rhoynar rather than returning home. With that, Lorath of the Nine Free Cities was officially no more.
Ozarion-the fifth son of Holy Flame Emperor Danyla-was a true prodigy born amid thunder, with five hatchling dragons accompanying his birth. But to protect him, Danyla had decisively taken all five hatchlings away and sent him to Braavos to be raised by his biological father.
Yet a prodigy was still a prodigy. At just twelve years old, Ozarion had followed the call of his blood across the frozen Shivering Sea and found a wild Thunder Great Dragon-Sol.
This unusual Great Dragon, with two short, tyrannosaur-like claws growing from his chest, had reached a hundred meters in size before he was even twenty under Ozarion's devoted care.
Sol's rapid growth had everything to do with his excellent diet. After the extreme weather ended, enormous numbers of giant magical creatures had appeared in the waters around the Shivering Sea.
Every day, Ozarion rode his Great Dragon through the skies over the Shivering Sea, hunting countless magical creatures.
Not long after Danyla's death, Ozarion had discovered that a pack of gigantic sea monsters had occupied abandoned Lorath.
And their leader was a bizarre, hundred-meter beast with a golden ring on its head.
Ozarion recognized it immediately. It had to be the monster his mother had told