Each winter, Sera climbed the mountain and carried home one coal from the dragon's mouth. It kept every village hearth burning until spring. In payment, the dragon took a single memory from each household. People surrendered first kisses, childhood games, the faces of distant cousins—small warmth for greater warmth.
The choosing happened in the meeting hall. Families wrote memories on slips of paper and pretended the offerings were equal. The wealthy surrendered the taste of a foreign wine or the name of a horse. Poorer households, already stripped of trifles, gave birthdays and lullabies. Sera's father had traded so much that he kept labels on every cupboard and wore a wooden tag around his neck bearing his own name. Still, when the first snow came, he placed another blank slip before her.
That year the coal burned blue. Children stared at their parents as strangers, and the baker forgot why bread must rise. While preparing for the next climb, Sera found a glass scale half buried beside the mountain path. Touching it showed her mother teaching her to braid hair—a morning Sera had not known was missing. By the time she fastened her winter boots, she understood that the village had not been choosing memories at all. The fire took whatever warmth it could reach, while the little papers merely made the theft feel voluntary.
After forty winters the village was prosperous and hollow. Parents did not recognize grown children. Songs ended after one verse. Sera's father forgot her name while thanking her for the fire. She climbed the mountain to end the bargain and found the dragon surrounded by glowing glass scales, each containing a stolen memory. The beast was not hoarding them. It was keeping them safe from the fire, which consumed remembrance wherever it burned.
The dragon admitted it had accepted the bargain because humans kept returning. Its own flame was a wound from an older war, and giving it away eased the burning for a season. Sera could have taken back every scale then, but the coal would follow them and devour the memories again. She chose instead to bring home the truth. The dragon gave her one cold black scale as proof and, for the first time in forty years, allowed its fire to die.
Sera returned carrying no coal. The villagers faced winter with axes, blankets, and fear. Many demanded the old bargain, but her father—unable to name her yet unwilling to lose more—stood beside her. They shared homes, rationed wood, and learned one another again through stories written down before sleep.
In spring the dragon descended and shattered its glass scales over the village. Memories fell like warm rain. Not all returned to their owners; strangers woke carrying pieces of one another's lives. The village never borrowed dragonfire again. They kept one communal hearth and fed it ordinary wood, along with a rule carved above the stone: nothing that burns the past can truly keep you warm.