The Milhares Saberes did not feel, at least not in any way a common mortal could hope to understand. Within the vast expanses of its mind, a thousand souls, stolen memories and echoes of the dead jostled for attention, a cacophony of ghosts screaming across the eons. But these remnants served little purpose other than to heighten the beast's insatiable hunger. For nearly a century it had been contained, bound by the trickery of man, slowly starving but unable to find the release of death due to its own immortality. But immortality alone did not prevent decay, and over the century of isolation its great scaly body, once a mountain of muscle and shining scales, had wasted away until it was little more than a shadow of what it had once been. A skeletal monster consumed by its own body.

The minds it had consumed over its long life spanned the very history of the world. There were memories from a time before the mountains had been shaped, from before the first oceans had pooled in the cooling pits of the earth. Now, the minds were part of something new. An eternal companion to the relentless god of Death. The minds felt fear; they felt the cold horror of their own extinction. But the Milhares Saberes did not share the emotions of its victims, merely possessed them.

The Milhares Saberes had become a custodian of a thousand deaths, and the knowledge of those souls had been drawn from the souls and become an integral part of its own terrifying intellect. It knew the secrets of the world’s making, the architecture of the deep earth, and the pathetic jealousy of the human heart.

It did not feel humor, but something like satisfaction pulsed through its being as it regarded the proud Inquisitor Ash through Filip’s borrowed eyes. The Milhares Saberes watched the man’s feeble attempts to bind a strength he could never truly comprehend. Ash was a creature of shadows and secrets, a master of a dying empire, and he truly believed he could leash a force that had seen the birth of suns.

The Milhares Saberes felt a burning desire to add Ash's mind to its legion, to peel back the layers of his cunning and archive his secrets alongside the rest. This man would know the deeds of the world that had happened since its own imprisonment, and it hungered for the memories. It could feel Filip’s lips twisting, the boy’s face contorting into a mask of primal hunger that mirrored the dragon’s own. The boy had no chance, he was little more than an ant facing a centuries-old demon that had spent a thousand lifetimes bending the will of kings. There had been no chance of resistance.

Through Filip’s ears, the demon heard the frantic whispering of a scholar nearby. The air in the room was thick with the scent of bitter incense and arrogant men.

"The risks are too great," the scholar hissed. "The boy is not responding like the old books say he should. Everything we're seeing, it doesn't match any of the accounts. That leaves two options. Either all of our reports are wrong, or he is possessed. Do we dare take the risk? We don’t need another threat to Klejot. Not now. We must kill him now.."

The Milhares Saberes turned Filip’s eyes toward the man who had spoken. The arcane scholar’s breath caught and he looked away, unable to meet Filip’s gaze. The man had not expected the movement, had not thought that Filip could hear his conversation. Still, the beast did not speak through Filip’s vocal cords yet, it did not aim to frighten, instead, it let the worthless youth grunt and moan between clenched teeth. This boy was not something to fear, was not something to kill. In truth the Milhares Saberes did not care if the vessel lived or died. If this body broke, it would find another. But there was a visceral amusement in the arrogance of these mortals, to think they could kill what they had already freed. Even now, across the continent, the dragon had broken free of the place of torment where it had been trapped and was consuming the small coastal towns it had found in its wake, sparing nothing that moved, be it animal or man. Its gaping maw added hundreds of new minds to its own, a fate worse than the frost, for those minds would now watch from within the dragon’s own eyes as it tore their world down.

"You forget yourself, Hadrien. I will not abide sniveling cowards in the face of our greatest triumph. I did not ask for your opinion, nor do I value it. This is how we secure lasting power," Inquisitor Ash snapped. He stepped closer to the bed now, his face filled with the worthless human emotions that the Milhares Saberes had seen on a thousand faces throughout the years. "Casam has hoarded the power away for long enough. With the Emperor Claurin ailing and Marchand lost to the mob, we do not have the luxury of refusal. Whatever deal they struck, it will go to the grave with him. We have a horde of mongrels from the Southlands marching and laying waste to our southern borders, and with the loss of Marchand we can’t afford to lose those fields and docks. But if we can’t get word to Commander Orin then we are left with what few armies we have in Klejnot and the surrounding districts. Against the forces arrayed against us, that will not be enough. Without help we need either a god, or we will need a grave."

Casam.

The name brought an insatiable fury to the beast. Within the dragon’s mind, the thousand souls shrank back, fearful even in their eternal, frozen sleep. Casam had not hoarded the dragon's power; The King of the Northmen had tricked it, used his arcane magics and the lure of a false feast to lead the Milhares Saberes into a barren wasteland, and with his illusions had trapped it in the ice where it had wandered for a century, unable to find its way out without the anchor of a mortal bond.

For a moment, the Milhares Saberes lost its vision in Klejnot, a rare anger burning so hot it could not focus on the boy. Its consciousness snapped back to its real body, miles away in the crashing surf of the northern coast. The dragon was in the midst of shattering a fisherman's boat, its massive claws rending wood and bone with equal ease. The beast roared, a sound that shook the waves and sent a shockwave through the freezing water. Men and women on the shore clutched their ears, blood leaking from their noses and mouths as they fell to the blood slicked ice.

The dragon flapped its massive front wings in a mad explosion of power, the downdraft sending a hurricane of ice that knocked a fisherman's hut flat in an instant. The screams of those crushed within were short and pained, but even the sweet sound of those screams could not sate the beast's blind fury.

Casam. Casam. The name rocked the beast to its core, fueling a hatred that surpassed even its hunger. It lashed out, massive, spiked tail impaling a man as he tried to scramble over the rocks. The dragon didn't even look at him; it simply flicked the corpse into the sea.

Blue breath shot from the dragon’s maw, the raw, untamed essence of primordial frost. Another group of humans fell still, their skin turning blue as every liquid within them turned to ice. The dragon smashed its claw down upon a frozen woman, and she shattered into a thousand bloody, crystalline pieces that glittered in the twilight. Still the beast found no comfort in the slaughter.

The dragon threw itself forward into the ocean, all four of its massive wings lifting it upward in a sudden rush of freezing air. It would consume the world, and it would spread destruction until it found a mind that could locate Casam. It would have its revenge on him and his entire lineage, and then it would feast until the sun went dark on the entire human race.

Back in Ash’s Sanctum, Filip lay gasping against the bed. The leather straps creaked as his muscles spasmed. For a fleeting, agonizing second, the beast’s grip loosened, and Filip’s mind was his own. He took a sobbing breath, searching the faces of the men around him, looking for anyone who could save him from the torment. How he wished he had stayed home, what a fool he had been to seek a future in Marchand. He saw firelight, old books, and grim faces. But none of the faces offered him aid, no one sought to comfort him. He wanted to scream, wanted to tell them that the monster wasn't being tamed. In a moment of desperation he even wanted them to kill him before the dragon’s will crushed him back into a corner of his own body. But no words came, and his mouth flapped uselessly as his own mind rebelled against him.

"The last rites you performed brought him back," Ash muttered to the lead scholar. "Repeat them, as many times as it takes. I believe we have finally found our lever to its control."

Filip’s tongue moved as he tried once more to rally forth words, or a scream, but it was no use. Filip could feel the beast’s presence as it returned, could feel the mental cage tightening as the Milhares Saberes assumed command of his extremities.

The fear in Filip’s eyes vanished, replaced by a calm lucidity. Filip fought, but it was no use. He could feel his arms tuning to the dragon's will, his spine bending as it forced the boy to nod. Then it claimed his voice, and he spoke with a confidence that was not his own, tone smooth and chillingly calm.

"I’ve brought it under control," Filip said.

The lie was simple, but it was exactly what Inquisitor Ash needed to hear. The scholars looked at one another, relieved, their faces breaking into tentative, foolish smiles. They believed they had mastered a god and now held the means to save their worthless Empire.

Filip’s mind railed against the darkness, clawing at the walls of the dragon’s consciousness, but it was like a bird beating its wings against a mountain. Their thoughts were joined now, and Filip was aware of the beast as it watched Ash, studying the man who called himself a Lord of Secrets, and Filip could now feel the desperate hunger for Ash and the information it could obtain from him.

The Milhares Saberes would play the part of the tamed weapon for a time. It would wait, and it would watch, and it would use the Inquisitor’s own network to find the path to King Casam’s hidden refuges in the Northern expanses. And then, when the time was right, it would add Ash’s mind to the thousand, and then his Empire would learn that some gods were never meant to be awakened.