Pteranodon

While the great beasts thundered across the plains below, Pteranodon soared.

Its wings — membranes of skin stretched over elongated fingers — spread

wider than any bird that would follow, catching thermals that lifted it above

the world without a single flap. From up there, the Dominion looked

different. The violence, the noise, the endless cycle of predator and prey

— all of it shrank to patterns viewed from a height where nothing could

reach and nothing mattered except the wind. Pteranodon was not the fiercest

creature of its age. It was not the largest. It was the one with the best

view. It watched the great herds migrate. It watched the hunters stalk. It

watched the world turn through seasons that none of the creatures below

would ever live long enough to count. And when the sky fell and fire

consumed the age, Pteranodon was the first to see it coming — a light on

the horizon, growing brighter, growing closer, and no wings wide enough

to outfly it.