Chapter 1. The Most Expensive Patient.

Aira's first thought when she was summoned wasn't about saving the world. It was about the fee.

She was in her small vet clinic in Cheongdam, Seoul. Not the tiny, tin-roof clinic that people imagined when they heard "small." Small for Cheongdam meant eighty square meters of glass, steel, and rose gold minimalism. The sign outside said BIO VET CLINIC in soft rose gold letters that glowed at night. The AC was set to twenty-two degrees, perfect, humming quietly. Outside, the afternoon rain was loud on the glass, streaking the neon lights of Gangnam into watercolor. Inside, it smelled like expensive disinfectant, faint lavender diffuser, and expensive cat shampoo.

On her table, a stray cat with a torn leg was bleeding. Not a client's Persian this time. A real stray, thin, white with gray patches, that one of her nurses had found behind the building. Aira was holding her good pair of scissors, the German ones, sharp, sterilized this morning. The good ones were not being sharpened. They were ready. She was about to cut the dead tissue.

Her canvas vet bag was open on the counter. Gauze, full roll. Antiseptic, full bottle. One suture kit, sealed. Needle holder. One ampoule of Zoletil, the dissociative sedative she used for aggressive exotics. And one ampoule of Meloxicam, a painkiller for animals. Not a sedative. It would only reduce pain and fever after twenty to thirty minutes, not knock anything out. Every vet knew the difference.

Her phone buzzed. Rent reminder for the building. Three months in advance. She didn't even look. With billions in income this year, rent was a joke. Her clinic was full from eight AM to ten PM. Korea's number one genius exotic veterinarian. That's what Naver said. That's what the magazines said.

Then the floor under her feet lit up.

A gold circle. Lines she had never seen before, moving like liquid, like molten gold poured into invisible grooves. They spread under her sneakers, under the surgical table, under the steel counter, under the cat. The circle had layers, inner circles rotating opposite directions. Chanting came from nowhere, low and heavy, in a language that made her teeth ache and made the stray cat's ears flatten.

"Eh? What the hell."

The light swallowed her white sneakers, then her ripped vet jacket that she wore on purpose because it was fashionable in Cheongdam, then her canvas bag.

The cat was gone. The table was gone. The rose gold sign was gone. The AC hum was gone.

Cold slammed into her face. Not the polite cold of AC. A wild, wet, ancient cold that burned her throat.

Aira landed hard on her knees. Not on tile. On something soft, wet, and glowing faintly when she touched it.

Moss. Green moss, thick, ankle-deep, that glowed faintly green when her palm pressed it, then faded. The moss was cold and soaked through her jeans instantly.

She coughed. The air was cold and smelled like iron and wet earth and old stone, like a cave that had never seen sun. The whole place was dark, but not completely. The walls were covered in luminous blue mushrooms, each as big as her head, pulsing slowly, dimming and brightening. Glass flowers hung from a high ceiling she couldn't see, ringing faintly when the wind passed, like tiny wind chimes made of ice.

A cavern. Huge. As big as a basketball stadium. No, bigger. Her entire clinic in Cheongdam could fit in here ten times and still have space left for a parking lot.

And she wasn't alone.

Something breathed in the dark. A sound so deep it made the moss vibrate under her knees and made the blue mushrooms flicker. Huuuu... haaaa... Huuuu... haaaa... Slow. Heavy. Like a forge bellows.

Aira turned, slowly, her ponytail sticking to her sweaty neck.

And forgot how to breathe.

It was big. So big her brain couldn't process it at first. A shape that filled half the cavern. Scales like cracked silver-black metal, each scale as big as her palm, some missing, some oozing dark blood. Wings folded, torn at the edges, membranes like ripped leather. A tail as thick as a city bus, curled around a stalagmite, twitching slightly. And a head the size of a small car, lying on the moss, snout long, teeth showing even when its mouth was closed, each tooth as long as her forearm.

Three stories tall if it stood up. House-sized.

Aira's Seoul brain had two options: scream dragon and panic, or insult it and survive.

She chose insult. It was her coping mechanism since she was a kid.

"Anomaly crocodile," she whispered, voice shaking. "Giant... anomaly crocodile."

It was not a species identification. It was mockery. An ejekan. In her head, it was easier to call a mythical, world-ending, fire-breathing dragon a crocodile that got too big because someone fed it too much chicken in an exotic pet shop in Seoul. If it was a crocodile, it was a patient. If it was a dragon, she was dead.