﻿Of all the great draconic lines,
none hides its origins so well as
the Reaper. Where the oldest fires
still burn beneath the earth,
older still are the bones that walk
within their ash.

The beast is skeletal, and it
carries the unmistakable shape of
a dragon, though its wings are torn
and withered. It breathes, as all
dragons must, but what it breathes
is not fire.

Not fire, but the souls of those it
has slain, which scholars believe
are gathered in its hollow chest
and given back to the air as pale
flame. Water will not quench it.
Those caught within do not burn so
much as wither.

Scholars once believed the Reaper
to be a curse laid upon a true
dragon. This is false. The Reapers
are the ancestors of the fire
dragons themselves, the first
branch of the lineage from which
every fire dragon since has sprung.

Let the reader be warned. The
Reaper does not distinguish between
the living and its own kind. A
hungry Reaper will hunt down and
kill other Reapers without
hesitation, and it counts their
bones no different than any other
spoil. Do not approach one, and do
not mistake its stillness for mercy.
