The chamber was dark, as Qohorik chambers often were—deliberately so. Here, light was considered a thing to be rationed, not embraced. Flickering lanterns cast warped shadows against the obsidian walls, while an incense brazier guttered at the room's center, bleeding smoke that clung to the senses like memory. The scent was supposed to calm. It did not.
Aurion sat cross-legged on the woven mat, eyes closed. He had not moved in hours, but his mind wandered far. Not in dream. In calculation.
He was alone.
Not by accident.
The retainers, those gifted to him by Qohor's council, had long since learned not to enter uninvited. They feared him now. Not because of power—he had shown them none—but because he hadn't. And in Qohor, a man who claimed to be a Dragonlord and yet made no show of it was something to be feared.
Aurion opened his eyes.
The chamber did not change, but he had. That was the truth that none in this city knew—not the council of Three, nor the blacksmiths who whispered Valyrian steel secrets through thick doors, nor the spies who believed they watched him unseen.
He was not Aurion.
He was Castann.
Or had been.
The memories were not entirely intact. Death, it turned out, was not a clean cut. There were pieces missing. Names, faces, dates—they flickered like failing torches. But the shape of it remained: the wars, the banners, the empire. His empire.
Gone.
And now here he sat in a dead world where the gods had gone silent, and men whispered of fire falling from the sky.
The Doom, they called it.
Aurion—no, he—had not seen it. But he had felt it. The moment his lungs first drew breath in this new body, there had been a sensation like inhaling molten stone. As if the world itself had been screaming.
Qohor had survived. Not by virtue, but by distance. The Freehold's fall had not flattened the city, but it had shaken its soul. The old traders were cautious now. The slave-lords pretended piety. And the smiths—always the smiths—worked harder, as if steel alone could protect them.
Fools.
A knock came at the door—soft, hesitant.
He did not speak.
The door opened anyway.
"Forgive me, my lord." A girl entered, perhaps fourteen, garbed in the muted greys of a servant not trusted with livery. She kept her head bowed. "The council requests your presence. They say… the Dothraki have crossed the river."
He said nothing at first. Not because he was surprised. Because he was not.
Of course the horse-lords had crossed. The moment Valyria fell, the great silence stretched across the grasslands like a wound. The Dothraki, like any beast, sensed it.
"Send word I will attend them within the hour."
The girl bowed and retreated without a sound.
Aurion stood slowly. The body was not yet strong. Twenty eight years of life before awakening had left it soft. But it would harden. In time, all things did.
He moved to the far end of the chamber and drew back the curtain. The city spread below—its black towers rising like jagged teeth, its outer wall encircling them like a collar of obsidian. Beyond that, forest. Endless, breathing, ancient.
Qohor had survived Valyria.
It would not survive him.
He dressed simply: high boots, dark breeches, a tunic of storm-grey with a silver clasp in the shape of a flame. No crown. No rings. No sword.
Power unspoken was the most dangerous kind.
The Council of Three met in the High Hall. It was a domed chamber of bloodstone and smoke-glass, carved centuries ago by Ghiscari prisoners. Aurion had studied its symmetry once—there were flaws. Subtle misalignments. Symbolic of the city itself.
The three sat beneath the mirrored arch.
The merchant. The priest. The general.
Always three. Never four. They believed in balance.
Aurion stepped into the circle of light cast by the high flame, and silence fell.
"My lord Aurion," said the priest, voice smooth as cooled wax. "The horsemen move."
"I am aware."
"Will you lead your soldiers to repel them?"
A question with no answer. A trap.
He smiled faintly.
"I have no soldiers," he said. "You denied me those, remember?"
The general—an aging man named Rhalys, with scars he had not earned—shifted uneasily.
"Only until your intentions were clear."
"And now?"
The priest folded his hands. "Now, we are ready to listen."
Aurion let the silence stretch.
Good. Let them sweat. Let them guess.
This was the first lesson of rule, one the Targaryens had never quite mastered: uncertainty is a more effective crown than gold.
He studied each face, measuring.
"The Dothraki will burn your outer farms. Your guards will fail to hold the gates. You will retreat behind your wall, and for a time, you will survive."
He stepped forward.
"But not forever."
The merchant narrowed his eyes. "Then what do you propose?"
"I will give you a future. Not safety. Not comfort. Future. But I will not share power with those who cannot even hold their own borders."
"Then you would rule?"
He looked at them. Truly looked.
And answered.
"Yes."
They did not kill him.
They should have.
But they would not—not yet.
Instead, they gave him a house. A title. No soldiers, but watchers in the guise of servants. They thought him arrogant. They thought they had time.
He spent his days reading.
Qohor's libraries were disorganized, half-censored, and largely ornamental. But among the scrolls of trade treaties and slave ledgers, he found pieces. Accounts of the Rhoynar wars. Fragmented maps of the Shadow Lands. A ruined ledger from old Valyria—charred, but legible.
Most importantly: the names of cities.
Pentos. Norvos. Volantis. Lys.
He memorized them.
Not as places.
As opportunities.
Each city bore a different shape. Different disease. Pentos was ruled by fear, Norvos by rigid theocracy. Lys bathed in decadence. Volantis hungered for empire but lacked the teeth.
He made predictions.
Pentos would fall within a generation—too reliant on outside coin.✧ Norvos would erupt—suppressed fervor never stayed caged. Lys would stagnate, until disease or rebellion cracked its pleasure-palaces from within. Volantis… Volantis would be the first to kneel.
Were these predictions true?
He did not know.
But prediction was not about truth.
It was about direction.
At night, he studied the stars.
He remembered a time when they meant something. When the heavens were mapped not for beauty, but for war. In Cannor, he had built an empire guided by sky-charts and omens read in shadow.
Here, the stars were wrong.
Not entirely. But wrong.
As if the world had shifted just enough to unsettle the old anchors.
The Valyrians had followed comets. Fire-trails across the night sky. They thought dragons answered to celestial fire. He doubted that. But they believed it—and belief could be useful.
There were whispers of surviving eggs. Of dragonsteel buried beneath collapsed hills. He had not confirmed them. But he did not doubt they were real.
The question was not if he would find them.
Only when.
He did not sleep.
He never had—not fully.
Even in the old life, rest was fleeting. Rulers did not dream. They planned.
And yet, that night, he did dream.
In the dream, he stood before a gate of black stone and red fire. On the other side, a voice called him—not with sound, but with heat. It was not Valyrian. It was not human. But it knew him.
It whispered not his name, but his role.
Breaker. Binder. Reforger.
He woke with a start, breath sharp, hands burning.
When he looked down, he saw a circle of ash beneath his chair.
He did not smile.
He did not panic.
He rose and poured water over the stone.
It hissed.
Another lesson remembered: Some fires must be hidden until the smoke no longer matters.
The corridors beneath Qohor's Citadel of Steel had the breath of a forge long abandoned — a heavy warmth that settled into the stone and whispered of things once shaped in fire and left forgotten.
Aurion knew the way.
Two guards trailed behind him, their torches painting smears of orange across dark walls. The flame did not bother him.
The fire had always known him.
They passed sigils carved into basalt: black rams, burning wheels, and coiled serpents. Symbols of Qohor's past — once feared, now ornamental.
They reached the final gate: a great iron arch over a sealed tunnel, warded with glyphs etched in silver. The guards hesitated, their footfalls slowing.
Aurion stepped forward and raised his hand.
The gate did not open immediately.
It recognized him first.
The glyphs flared — soft gold light rippling from one to the next in silent acknowledgement.
Then the metal groaned inward.
Heat poured out, dense and slow.
The chamber within was not a natural cavern. It had been cut, shaped with precision and reverence, likely by Valyrian masons centuries before the Doom. Blackstone arches framed the room like ribs, and from the center, glowing vents spilled faint threads of smoke and steam.
Upon that cracked obsidian floor, she waited.
Liraes.
His dragon.
Silver-scaled, long-limbed, leaner than the great brutes the Freehold had once bred for war, but no less deadly. Her wings rested at her sides like folded blades, and her long tail curled with controlled tension. The gold of her eyes shimmered beneath the glow of the fire vents.
She did not roar.
She watched.
Aurion stopped six paces from her and breathed her in — the scent of ash, smoke, hot iron, and the cold-tinged wind of high flight.
It had been twenty-one years since they first bonded — in the fire sanctum of House Vatraxen, on the shores of the Smoking Sea. He'd been six years old. The dragon had been distant then, withdrawn from the world after the death of his grandfather, Rhaezon Vatraxen.
But when Castann — reborn into the boy Aurion — had stood before her, there had been no fear. Only recognition.
It had taken three days and two near-deaths.
But she had accepted him.
And now…
Liraes rose.
Her wing joints creaked softly, and her claws clicked against the floor as she approached. A low growl — not threatening, but resonant — filled the chamber like thunder buried beneath earth.
Aurion met her gaze.
"You remember."
The words felt strange on his tongue. He hadn't spoken to her since the Doom. Since their desperate flight from Valyria, from death, from gods.
Her head lowered until her snout hovered before his chest.
He placed a hand against her scale — rough, warm, alive.
"I thought I would forget you," he whispered. "But you were never mine to forget."
The bond surged — not as fire, but clarity.
Memories bled back. Flying over the Smoking Sea. Watching fire-chariots descend upon cannibal fleets. Liraes catching a bull wyvern mid-air above the Green Straits. Her fury. Her grace.
His voice steadied.
"We go to war again, old girl. But not for Valyria. Not this time."
She growled, exhaling a breath laced with heat.
Agreement.
Later, after the dragon returned to her slumber, Aurion emerged into the upper levels of the Citadel. The warmth of the chamber lingered in his bones, a weight and comfort both. He walked alone — until he reached the war gallery.
There, General Khettos Vhar waited beside a map table of ironwood and oilskin.
"Seven thousand," Aurion said. No preamble. "I will take the First and Second Legions. Others remains to guard the city."
Khettos folded his arms. His armor bore new engraving — a Qohorik ram locked in battle with a mounted horseman. Fresh work. He was already bracing for war.
"You'll march east? Directly?"
"Yes."
"The Dothraki have over forty thousand screamers in that region. They've burned three towns. They do not break unless you kill the bloodriders and the Khal."
"And I will," Aurion said.
Khettos exhaled through his nose. "Your dragon changes the odds. But not the logistics."
Aurion raised a brow.
"Supplies," Khettos said. "Grain, salted meat, steel-tipped spears, hide for tents, tar for nightfire."
"Already arranged," Aurion replied.
Khettos squinted. "With whom?"
Couple hours earlier...
Dhalmor Vez wore six rings on his left hand, five on his right, and at least three facial expressions at all times. The one he wore now was a mix of mild amusement and mild fear — the face of a man who'd just realized he'd sold grain to a firestorm.
"You'll receive ten percent of spoils," Aurion said, "plus sole rights to all captured livestock from this campaign."
Dhalmor blinked. "And what if the Dothraki retreat without battle?"
"They won't."
"How do you know?"
"I understand momentum," Aurion said. "And hunger."
Dhalmor nodded slowly. "You've requisitioned thirty wagons, two hundred oxen, and one full forge-wain. Add five more. You'll need them."
Aurion inclined his head — not low, but enough.
The next day
The Qohorik legions formed in four squares across the stone yard, their torches blazing in coordinated arcs. Shields gleamed, spears upright, helms polished. These were not sellswords, nor conscripts. These were legionaries — drilled since adolescence, loyal to city and law.
Aurion stood at the platform with Khettos beside him.
"Your officers await," the general said.
Aurion nodded.
He descended the platform — not to stand above them, but among them. A circle of fifty officers stood awaiting him, each marked by a crimson sash of command. Their faces were stern, uncertain.
"I am not your lord," he said. His voice carried, low and even.
"I do not ask your fealty. Only your discipline. You march not for gold, not for Qohor, but for the idea that the Dothraki will not have this world without cost."
He turned slowly, letting each man meet his gaze.
"You will bleed. Some of you will die. But those who remain will have marched beneath a banner of purpose, not reaction."
He stepped back. Lifted his hand.
From above, the signal horn sounded.
The gates of Qohor opened.
And the legion began to march.
Seven thousand strong.
And somewhere above, circling in the smoke-stained sky, Liraes watched — her silver wings spread wide, a fire older than prophecy stirring in her chest.