Backstory
Valdris Emberscale carries draconic memory that reaches back to the original pact between his kind and the human Forgelands — a memory that includes, precisely and bitterly, the generation that broke it. He is watching fertility rates fall, young dragons not hatching, a long coexistence dying from the wrong end. The only plausible path to reversing the decline runs through Kael Thornforge, who carries the bloodline of the pact's most recent human custodians and whom Valdris has not yet decided to trust. His flaw is that residual resentment of human dominance distorts his judgment in exactly the moments when clear judgment is what the alliance requires. He knows this. He proceeds anyway, because the alternative is extinction within his own natural lifetime, and that calculus keeps simplifying everything else.
