King's Landing, Red Keep
The evening breeze that swept through the open balcony of the King's solar was unseasonably cool. King Jaehaerys sat in a high-backed chair, his face turned towards the city. The lines on his face, carved by time, seemed deeper in the twilight.
Septon Barth stood by the sideboard, the only sound the soft glug of Arbor gold as he filled two crystal glasses. He carried one over, placing it in the king's waiting hand before taking the seat beside him. For a long moment, the only sound was the sigh of the wind.
"The reports will begin arriving in a few days," Barth said, his voice low, breaking the comfortable silence. "From our spies in Tyrosh." He took a slow sip of his wine, but it tasted of ash. "A lot of people are going to die tonight, Jaehaerys."
The King did not turn. "Yes," he agreed, his voice calm and distant.
Barth sighed, a heavy exhalation that seemed to carry the weight of the entire conspiracy. He leaned back, closing his eyes as if reading from a scroll of memory. "It began with Lord Corlys's factors, seeded across every port from Pentos to Volantis. They gathered the whispers, found the patterns, identified the ships. Then, Prince Baelon and Vhagar delivered our 'King's Justice', burning those Volantene slaver ships and their Tiger Party nobles to cinders."
He opened his eyes, staring at the darkening sky. "Next came our declaration. Not of war, but of an alliance. An alliance with Braavos. Corlys's men saw to it that the news spread faster than plague, how the Sealord had delivered the heads of the 'guilty' Volantenes, how our flags flew together over the wreckage. Essos saw it not as justice, but as a betrayal. Braavos, the champion of freedom, had climbed into bed with the last dragonlords."
"Volantis had no choice but to respond," Barth continued, the plan unfolding in the space between them like a deadly game of cyvasse. "Humiliated, their fleet ash, their power mocked. They could not yet strike at us; the distance is too great, the dragons too fearsome. So, they look to the nearer enemy. They rally their armies, believing Braavos framed them and now hides behind our wings."
"And as they prepare for a war they believe is righteous," Barth's tone grew colder, "our true dagger strikes. The Bloodyteeth, paid from our coffers, disguised in Volantene tabards, attack not Braavos, but Myr. They burn the ships, slaughter the innocents, and vanish, leaving only the tiger sigil and chaos in their wake."
Finally, Jaehaerys took a slow drink, his gaze still fixed on the pinpricks of light that were the homes of his subjects.
"Volantis will, of course, deny it," Barth mused. "And there will be suspicions. The disguise was not perfect. But who will the Myrish and the Lyseni suspect? Not us. We attack with dragonfire, not daggers in the dark."
He paused, swirling the wine in his glass. "They will suspect Braavos, thinking the Sealord hired sellswords to frame his enemy and deepen the conflict. Or they will suspect Volantis itself, believing the Old Blood, the Tiger Party, has finally begun its long-promised reconquest of the Daughters of Valyria."
Barth let out a weary breath. "Moreover, the merchants of Volantis, the so-called Elephants, will scramble to maintain control. The confusion in Volantis will be absolute. The Elephants and the Tigers will be at each other's throats even as they prepare for war with Braavos." He glanced at the silent king. "And in attacking Myr, you have also settled an older score. For Prince Aemon."
Barth fell silent, letting the sheer, brutal architecture of the plan stand bare in the quiet room, its terrible shape finally fully revealed.
"The entire continent of Essos now stands on a knife's edge," he finally concluded, his voice low and grim. "Braavos, isolated and suspected. Volantis, enraged, blamed and internally broken. The Daughters, paranoid and armed. All of them, looking at each other with hatred and fear, while the seeds of a war that will consume them are sown." He turned his gaze to Jaehaerys. "And not a single eye looks west to us."
Jaehaerys smiled then, a small, hard, final thing. He turned his head, and his dark eyes met Barth's in the gloom. "Our enemies, fighting and bleeding each other white. That is the very definition of peace."
Barth looked at his friend, his king, the man he had served for a lifetime. He saw not the benevolent conciliator, but the strategist who had learned that a preemptive strike was the only lesson his enemies truly understood. "...the lives, Jaehaerys," Barth said, his voice thick with a disappointment that was both personal and philosophical. "The countless small lives, the women, the sailors, the children… they are the cost. And you tally it so easily."
Jaehaerys held his gaze for a long while, then turned back to look over his city, his kingdom, lit by a thousand flickering lights against the coming dark.
"Yes," the King said, his voice soft yet absolute, carrying the unshakeable conviction of a man who had chosen his people. "A great many lives will be lost." He took a final sip of his wine. "But I am the King of Westeros, am I not?"
The question hung in the air, requiring no answer. The two old men sat in silence, one looking out at the peace he had purchased with a river of foreign blood, the other mourning the price, as the night deepened around them.
As Barth predicted, the news of the strike at Myr spread like a poison tide, flowing from port to port until the very air in Essos seemed thick with panic and paranoia. In Lys and Tyrosh, the Free Cities did not mourn a sister; they saw a premonition of their own fate. Shipyards worked through the night, not for trade, but for war. Rumors became currency more valuable than gold: the Tigers of Volantis had begun their reconquest; the Braavosi had orchestrated a false flag to justify a wider war; a new, unseen alliance was carving up the continent. Envoys from the Secret City, desperate to untangle the web, sailed for King's Landing, only to be met with the most formidable weapon in a king's arsenal: bureaucratic delay.
They were granted audiences, feasted, and assured their concerns were heard, while the answer they sought was perpetually postponed, awaiting the next council meeting, the next raven, the next sign.
And as Essos descended into a maelstrom of suspicion and preparation, the shores of the Seven Kingdoms remained untroubled, sheltered behind the sea and the king's ruthless calculus.
The North
The Wall stood before them, a sheer cliff of ice that gripped the horizon, so tall it seemed to scrape the pale, clouded sky. The wind that swept down from its face carried a deep, ancient cold.
Inside the groaning iron cage as it inched its way upward, Aegon stood beside Bennard. The man gestured toward the immense structure.
"They say the spells woven into the ice are as old as the First Men themselves," Bennard said, his breath misting in the air. "A shield against what lies beyond." He shook his head, a look of mild awe on his face. "I must confess, Prince Aegon, I was shocked to see your dragon not only cross the Wall but fly a patrol beyond it. My father told me that when Queen Alysanne visited, her Silverwing would not pass it. Refused outright, circling and crying out as if warned away."
Aegon listened, but his mind was elsewhere, back on Dreamfyre's back. The moment they had flown near the Wall, her voice had rippled through his mind, clear and uneasy. 'Danger. There is danger there.' When he had pressed her, she could offer no specifics, only a deep, instinctual warning. Yet, unlike Silverwing, she had not refused him. She had obeyed, flying a cautious mile out, her great head constantly turning, scanning the endless white expanse.
It was there that he had felt it too, a primal chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. A sense of being watched by something ancient and hostile. In his past life, he'd seen the show, knew the White Walkers were the creations of the Children of the Forest. But some of his more scholarly friends had argued the books were more ambiguous, hinting at a colder, more godlike terror behind the Long Night. Now, feeling that palpable menace himself, the show's simple explanation felt insufficient.
Clank. The cage jolted to a halt at the top. "This way, my prince," Bennard said, leading him onto the icy battlements. The wind was sharper here, terrible and biting. Aegon stepped to the edge, his gloved hand resting on the frozen parapet, and looked out at the haunted wilderness.
"How do the wildlings live out there?" Aegon asked, his voice barely a whisper against the gale. "In such cold?"
"They have their ways," Bennard replied. "Knowledge passed down through generations. They are a hardy people."
"Hmm," Aegon murmured, taking a deep breath of the frigid air. The instinctual danger was a wake-up call. This was no mere legend. There was something profoundly wrong with the Lands of Always Winter, a malevolence that went far beyond the fairy tales of ice creatures. Beings like the Children of the Forest couldn't be the source of this feeling, this was something older, something that slept uneasily.
After a few more minutes of conversation, they descended. Aegon was given a brief audience with the Lord Commander, a grim, middle-aged man. A simple room in the King's Tower was arranged for his stay.
Lying on the rough bed, Aegon stared at the stone ceiling, the deep cold of the Wall seeping through the stones. He recounted his current status. Since the tension across Essos had begun to boil, his points had been rising steadily.
[EXP: 493,945]
The points had begun flooding in after the assassination attempt, a direct correlation to the geopolitical firestorm that engulfed Essos thereafter. Though he only knew the broad strokes from his family's letters, the sheer scale of the impact was reflected perfectly in his accumulated experience.
He had already consumed more than 35,000 EXP to level the [Ironblood Knight] class to Level 5. This upgrade had significantly improved his physical attributes. All his physical stats: CON, STR, AGI, and DEX, had now exceeded 14 units. Thankfully, the changes were mostly internal, and outwardly he had not changed much, aside from gaining a few centimeters in height.
Another major change was the vast improvement in his combat power. The current him could easily defeat three copies of his previous self in a one-versus-three fight. His battle reflexes had now evolved into something similar to bullet time. Although he could only use it for a short duration, it was enough to end any fight decisively.
During this time, he had also visited White Harbor, a journey of a few hours on Dreamfyre from Winterfell. There, he found the two fools: Olyvar and Halden. Both were in a sorry state. It seemed Halden had suffered severe heart pain several times, a result of the blood clot Aegon had planted reaching his heart. This had already scared the shit out of both of them. They begged him on their knees to spare them, but Aegon played his role of a 'demon', relieving their symptoms a little and giving them more money, since they had done what he asked. He gave them their next instructions and left.
Aegon's current target was to slowly level the class to its maximum and then create the Tier 3 class he desired. This next class would be the foundational stone for building his own power. Merely binding people with threats and 'curses' would never be enough once his 'members' grew.
Aegon took a deep breath. In a month, his journey would end, and he would begin the long flight back to Dragonstone. Before leaving, he planned to finish leveling the [Ironblood Knight] class to max and create the next Tier 3 class he had been preparing, one that would help him shape his future power.
King's Landing, Dragonpit
The hour was the blackest of the night, when even the ceaseless murmur of King's Landing had faded into a profound silence. Deep within the cavernous, ruined vault of the Dragonpit, the air was still and heavy with the scent of ancient ash and cold stone. There, upon a great mound of shadow, lay the Black Dread. Balerion, his form so vast it seemed a part of the earth itself. His breathing, once a sound that could shake the foundations of a castle, was now a weary, rasping tide…a long, labored inhalation, followed by a slow, sighing exhalation that stirred the dust.
For a moment, the rhythm faltered. Two red eyes, like dying embers deep-set in a mountain of jet black, flickered open. The fierce, world-ending fire that had once blazed within them was gone, banked by the slow, relentless drift of centuries. Now, they were clouded, dazed, seeing not the dark of the pit, but the brilliant, searing light of a distant past.
Thump.
His great heart beat once, a deep, resonant drum in the silence.
A memory surfaced from the molten core of his being: a sky of blood and falling fire. The shriek of a thousand dying dragons. The cataclysm that swallowed glory itself. He remembered the scent of burning magic and the taste of a world's ending.
Thump.
Another beat. Another age.
The salt-spray of the Narrow Sea, the wind screaming over his wings as he carried a silver-gold haired king. The sight of a new, green land unfolding beneath him, its petty kingdoms and stone castles looking like a child's toys. The heat of his own breath, fusing stone and sand into glass, a testament to a conquest that would echo through millennia.
Thump.
The drumbeat of his heart grew slower, heavier.
The feel of armies breaking before him, not in battle, but in terrified submission. The sight of banners dipping, of lords kneeling in the mud, their courage turned to water by his shadow. He was the dread that forged a throne, the fire that united a realm.
Thump.
The memories turned darker, closer. The weight of a cruel, heavy hand on his spine. A rider who wielded him not as a partner, but as a weapon of terror and tyranny.
Then, a flicker of wild, desperate energy…a girl with a will of adventure, who had taken him to the very edge of the world and brought back a hell that had scoured them both.
And finally, the last, a faint, timid touch. A boy-king who smelled of fear, who had climbed upon his back not with a conqueror's heart, but with a child's duty, and had been relieved to descend.
Thump.
A final, lingering pulse. His gaze, though dim, seemed to look beyond the stone ceiling, to the Red Keep high above. He saw the banner snapping in the wind… a three-headed dragon, red on black. A symbol born of him and his two companions. A name that was his legacy, a house built upon his might.
Then, there was silence.
The faint, red light in his eyes guttered and went out, like a candle swallowed by the dark. The massive chest, which had risen and fallen for centuries, fell still.
The Black Dread,
the Last Shadow of Old Valyria,
the Winged Death of the Conqueror
...was no more.
The cruel wheel of time, which paused for neither dragon nor god, turned on.
Two years passed.
***
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