Where Dragons Reign

Previously

…Silence descended upon Oakhaven, a heavy, stunned silence broken only by the ragged breaths of the villagers. They looked at me, their eyes wide with a mixture of fear and awe, as if I were suddenly a stranger in their midst. I felt it too, the change within me. The unease was still there, but it was now laced with a dawning understanding. The world I thought I knew had fractured, revealing something ancient and powerful beneath. And I, Lyra, the quiet girl from Oakhaven, was somehow at its center. The dragon’s shield had not only protected us from Malakor’s immediate threat, but it had also, irrevocably, shielded me from my own ignorance.