Kova

Kova was young. But she wasn’t stupid.

She knew what to say and do in order to survive. She also knew how to recognise danger, like the- the being in front of her.

She stared. It stared back. It didn’t seem to want to harm her.

She licked her lips nervously. Her voice was wary and weak, but absolutely famished. “Are- are you a… a Vessel?”

A slow grin stretched across its face, evil and gnarly and yet, without even a hint of deceit in its face. “Well, I don’t know. Would you like to find out?”

Kova was always taught about the Vessels, the ways to vanquish them or capture them. It wasn’t exactly known what they were, but her clan called them Vessels, for they were beings born from the Shade who forcibly merged with the souls of dragons, creating something else. They were weakest towards Shadow dragons, which was why her clan pledged fealty to the Shadowbinder to aid them in their vanquishment.

But Kova didn’t have any strength to kill the maybe-Vessel in front of her, and when a hand stretched out to her, with her world having turned into nothing but ash? She grasped the hand of Salvation, and didn’t look back.