DRAGONSTONE 264 AC
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AEMON'S POV
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Dragonstone was a place of stone and storm—old as the dragons that once ruled its skies and as fierce as the sea clawed endlessly at its jagged cliffs.
The island itself rose from the narrow sea like the scaled back of some ancient leviathan, dark and brooding. Winds tore over its volcanic peaks, howling through narrow passes and tumbling down craggy slopes before crashing into the restless waves below. The sea never slept here. It pounded the black rock with tireless fury, its roar a constant, living heartbeat that pulsed through the bones of the island.
Above it all, perched like a dragon on its hoard, stood the fortress.
Dragonstone.
Its towers curled like the necks of serpents, dark spires shaped by Valyrian hands long before the Doom. Black stone, smooth and cold as glass, rose high into the misty sky, its walls a twisted blend of art and intimidation. Scales, wings, claws—carved into every archway, every buttress. This was no simple castle of man's making. It was an older, stranger. A place where stone remembered fire.
The winds howled around Dragonstone, their cries echoing through the ancient halls like the ghosts of dragons long gone. The castle itself felt alive—its black stone walls heavy with history, its spiralling towers clawing at the sky as though still yearning for fire.
In the war room, where the famed Painted Table stretched out in all its vast, battle-scarred glory, I sat in the high-backed chair, my tiny legs dangling over the side. The table's map—etched in swirling greens, browns, and blues—sprawled beneath me, a perfect replica of Westeros, every river and castle laid bare. My fingers traced the coasts absently, the cool wood smooth under my touch.
The Game of Thrones lay bare beneath my hands.
The chamber smelled of salt and dust, with a lingering trace of smoke from the iron braziers that burned low in their sconces. Heavy stone walls, carved with the coiling forms of dragons, trapped the cold within. Only the great arched windows broke the monotony of stone, opening to the endless grey sky and the churning sea far below.
This had been my world for two years.
Two years away from the whispers of the Red Keep. From the scheming lords with their heavy silks and hollow smiles. Two years away from the cold weight of the Iron Throne and the eyes that always watched in King's Landing.
Here, on Dragonstone, there were no lords. No power struggles. No court games.
Only the sea. The stone. The storm.
And me.
I liked the quiet. The solitude. There was a kind of honesty in it.
Dragonstone wasn't warm. It wasn't kind. But it was old, older than the Iron Throne, older than my family's fall and rise. It was the first seat of House Targaryen in Westeros, the last outpost of Valyria before the Doom swept it away. And I could feel it—deep in the stone. The weight of history. The fire still smouldered in its bones.
When the storms came, rattling the high towers and flinging salt spray against the windows, it was easy to imagine the dragons that once ruled here—huge, black-winged shapes soaring above the sea, their shadows stretching across the waves.
They were gone now. But Dragonstone remembered.
Below me, far beneath the Painted Table, were the crypts.
The resting place of kings, queens, princes, and dragons—bone and ash buried together in the dark stone womb of the island. I had gone there once, months ago, torchlight flickering against the high-vaulted ceilings, the air thick with dust and the strange, heavy stillness that only old death carries.
I had seen the tombs. The effigies of my ancestors were carved in basalt and obsidian, their dragon stone faces frozen in the stillness of death. Maegor the Cruel, Baelon the Brave. Rhaenys, with the curve of Meraxes' wing behind her.
Their names echoed through me, strange and heavy.
This was theirs before it was mine. But in some strange way, Dragonstone felt more like home than the Red Keep ever had. The Red Keep was too loud, too filled with hands trying to shape me, bend me, claim me. Here, there was space. Space to think. To breathe.
And to feel alone.
The sea howled against the windows. A sudden gust rattled the iron lattice. I didn't flinch. I was used to it.
In the distance, I could just make out the plume of smoke rising from the Dragonmont—the ancient volcano that birthed this island. Steam curled from its jagged peak, a thin, white wisp against the heavy sky.
Outside, storm clouds massed like bruises over the horizon, their dark bellies heavy with rain that had yet to fall. The glass of the tall, narrow window was cool beneath my palm as I leaned into it, violet eyes watching the sky break open in slow flashes of lightning.
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Four years since the War.
I remembered every moment, every word, every death.
Jaehaerys—his face pale and thin as parchment, his hand cold when I touched it for the last time. I'd known it was coming. The signs had been there: the hollow coughs, the grey pallor in his skin, the way his voice thinned in his final months.
"I could've stopped it," I told the window, though it fogged beneath my breath and did not answer.
The thought still settled in my chest like a stone. No matter how many times I replayed it—his final days, the slow decline, the hollowing of his face—I couldn't stop the frustration from bubbling up. I had known. The future had unspooled before me, hints and whispers, and yet when the end came, I had been helpless.
Even with my knowledge of medicine, herbs, even poisons—none of it had mattered. I was still a boy. A helpless, voiceless boy.
Jaehaerys had grown tired in those final months. Not just in body, but in spirit. The crown—heavy enough to bend the strongest of men—had pressed down on him for three short years. Long enough for the weight to seep into his bones. Long enough for it to break him.
He spent his last months chasing shadows.
Or rather—legacies.
It consumed his thoughts. The ancestral blade of House Targaryen, the very symbol of conquest and rule, was lost since the Blackfyre Rebellions. It had last been seen in the hands of Maelys the Monstrous, the last Blackfyre pretender, before he fell in the Stepstones. But in the chaos of the battle, the sword vanished.
The hunt for Blackfyre had consumed him in those final years. The sword. The symbol. The cursed blade that had once belonged to Aegon the Conqueror himself. It was more than Valyrian steel—it was the weight of House Targaryen's pride and legacy, its bloodied history wrapped in obsidian metal.
"Blackfyre should return to House Targaryen," I had overheard him whisper once in the gardens of the Red Keep, his voice cracked and raw, the crown crooked on his thinning hair. "The realm... it needs its symbol. It needs strength. Without it, we're just ghosts in dragons' skin."
But Blackfyre was gone.
After Maelys the Monstrous fell on the blood-soaked fields of the Stepstones, the sword was nowhere to be found. He hadn't wielded it during his final battle—a choice that gnawed at Jaehaerys. Maelys had hidden it, or worse, passed it to another before his death.
Rumours swirled like vultures.
Some said the sword lay somewhere in the Stepstones, buried deep beneath mud and blood. Others whispered that Maelys had entrusted it to Ser Tybero, his closest ally, before the final charge. Tybero had escaped the battle unscathed, fleeing back across the sea, and had since risen to the title of Captain-General of the Golden Company.
Perhaps the blade sat somewhere in Essos now—deep in the vaults of the Free Cities, locked away behind gold and steel.
Or perhaps it was gone forever, lost to the sea.
But Jaehaerys couldn't let it go. He sent ravens in his last year, seeking any trace of the blade. Spies, sellswords, and maesters scoured the Stepstones, but all returned empty-handed. And with each failure, I saw the light in Jaehaerys dim a little more.
When the end came, it was quiet. Shaera held his hand as the final breath rattled from his lungs. No grand declarations, no Targaryen fury—just the sigh of a tired man who had carried too much for too long.
It was the crown that killed him. The weight of it. The endless doubts. The ghosts of Aegon's legacy whispered that he had done too little.
I remembered Shaera's scream the night he passed—a sound that had torn through the Red Keep like a blade. She had crumbled beneath her grief, the iron strength she once bore unravelling in a moment of raw, human pain.
Shaera had crumbled after his death. When she left King's Landing for Dragonstone, she took me with her, leaving the court and its poisonous whispers far behind. In her grief, she had withered, leaving only fragments of the fierce woman she had once been. Now, she drifted through the halls like a ghost, her strength flickering only when she looked at me.
I didn't mind. Dragonstone was quieter. It let me think.
The court grieved. Whispers filled the Red Keep: of Jaehaerys' short but stable reign, of what Aerys' rule would bring, of the crown passing to a man both brilliant and dangerous.
Aerys sat on the throne now—crowned with the heavy, gaudy crown of Aegon the Unworthy, a choice that spoke louder than any words. Of all the crowns in the vaults of the Red Keep—of all the symbols of Targaryen power—he had chosen that one.
Aegon the Unworthy's crown.
A jagged thing of red gold, heavy with rubies, gaudy and gleaming—a king's crown in the eyes of fools. But to anyone who knew the weight of history, it was a curse. Aegon IV, whose decadence had nearly destroyed the realm, had sired bastards by the dozen and then legitimized them all on his deathbed, giving rise to the Blackfyre Pretenders.
It was a crown soaked in ambition, treachery, and ruin.
And Aerys had picked it with a smile.
He had cleared out the old council, filled it with his friends, and placed Tywin Lannister in his Hand. Tywin—cold, calculating, dangerous. The realm was at peace, but it was a brittle peace, fragile as glass.
Aerys had plans—grandiose, impossible ones. Building a new Wall hundreds of miles north of the current one to extend his kingdom to the north, a mighty war fleet to bring the Titan to its knees after a dispute with the Iron Bank of Braavos, building a city of white marble on the south bank of the Blackwater Rush after complaining of the smell of King's Landing and building an underwater canal from the Rainwood in Stormsland to make the deserts of Dorne bloom.
But no action.
No movement.
Just words.
"Ambition without execution," I muttered.
The Red Keep had never felt colder than on the day Queen Shaera Targaryen chose exile over the gilded cage of court life. Jaehaerys was gone and with him, the last threads binding Shaera to King's Landing had snapped. Grief, like a storm tide, had broken her, leaving behind a woman hollowed by loss, her heart sealed beneath layers of sorrow.
Shaera found something close to peace—or perhaps it was simply isolation. She withdrew into her chambers, leaving behind the noise of court life. The courtiers and whisperers of King's Landing faded into distant memories.
"You remind me of him," Shaera whispered one evening, her fingers brushing my silver hair. "Of Jaehaerys… and the boy he used to be. Before the crown."
Shaera spent her days in the high towers overlooking the sea, her hands idle but her mind adrift. She rarely spoke, save for the soft songs she sang to me when she thought no one else could hear. Songs of Valyria, of dragons long dead, of a house that had weathered storm and fire but now felt cracked at its foundations.
It was in those moments—her voice raw, her fingers tracing idle patterns in my hair—that I felt the weight of her grief. She wasn't a queen here. She was a mother, a daughter, a widow of a kingdom that no longer needed her.
Dragonstone became our refuge. A place of stone and salt, where the winds howled louder than the whispers of the court. And though I was only a boy, with thoughts too old for my small body, I understood why she chose this exile.
Because some wounds can't be stitched closed—not by crowns, nor power, nor time.
And so, Dragonstone became our world—a lonely isle at the edge of the realm.
The storm still raged beyond the windows, but somewhere deep in Dragonstone's bones, I thought I felt warmth—faint like embers refusing to die.