SHADOWWING

The Watcher of Ashfall

Long before the reaches were named, Shadowwing kept the high ridges where ash falls instead of snow. Its eyes burn the colour of embers not yet extinguished — the only warning a trespasser receives before the sky above them goes dark with wing.

Scholars who study the drake's shed scales note a strange property: ash never settles on grey stone, yet the stone near Shadowwing's roost is always coated in fine grey dust, as though the mountain itself were the one moulting.