The gates of Qohor closed behind them without ceremony.
No horns. No banners fluttering. No cheering crowds. Just iron hinges groaning shut and the slow echo of marching boots over stone.
Aurion didn't look back.
He sat atop a sleek black courser, clad not in resplendent armor but darkened riding leather and a single silver cloak. His breastplate bore no sigil. He carried no sword.
The standard-bearer behind him held aloft the only mark of command: a banner of grey fire stitched onto black, the old symbol of House Vatraxen remade for a foreign war.
Ahead of them lay the forest line—the dense, old eastern wood that marked the border between civilization and chaos. Qohor's walls had kept it at bay for centuries, but Aurion knew better. Walls didn't hold back fate. They only slowed it.
Seven thousand legionaries followed him.
They marched in blocks of five hundred, each commanded by a centurion selected not for heritage, but for clarity of voice and steel of will. Their armor gleamed with fresh oil, and the rectangular shields bore no adornment beyond the black ram of Qohor.
They moved in silence. That, at least, Aurion appreciated.
By the second day, the trees swallowed them.
The forest east of Qohor was old and slow. Sunlight filtered through twisted canopies in narrow shafts, and the ground was rich with damp leaves and sleeping roots. Sound behaved differently here. Even the clink of armor seemed swallowed.
Aurion rode near the front with his senior command cohort — General Khettos Vhar, two tribunes, and his personal scribe.
They reached the first waystone at dusk — an ancient, moss-covered slab that once marked an old Valyrian road, now buried beneath the forest's hunger.
They camped in silence. Fires were lit low. Watch rotations were triple-checked. Qohorik discipline demanded it. Aurion neither encouraged nor disrupted the process.
He observed.
A commander should know the shape of his men before he tried to bend it.
That night, he stood beside a low fire, sketching crude formations into the earth with the tip of a branch.
"You're quiet, for a dragonlord."
The voice came from behind — Tribune Sarro Rhaem, an aging officer with pale skin, a scarred mouth, and eyes like worn slate.
Aurion didn't look up.
"I lead by clarity, not thunder."
Rhaem sniffed. "The Dothraki don't believe in clarity."
"They will."
The tribune stepped closer. "You should let me ride ahead with the scouts tomorrow. Draw their attention, maybe bait them into a small clash."
"No," Aurion said.
"They expect a show of strength."
Aurion looked up.
"They expect a fool. I won't satisfy them."
Rhaem grunted, half-respectful.
"And the men?" he asked.
"They'll follow. For now."
"And when the dying starts?"
Aurion stood. "That's when the real loyalty begins."
On the third day, they cleared the forest.
The terrain beyond changed quickly: rolling grasslands, shallow gullies, dry riverbeds. The Dothraki Sea hadn't reached this far west yet, but the wind smelled of it — dust, blood, distant hooves.
At midday, they found the village.
Or what had been one.
Burned to the stone foundations. Bodies impaled on spears, drying like canvas in the sun. Livestock gone. Wells fouled with ash.
Khettos rode beside Aurion in silence.
"No tracks," he murmured.
"They weren't trying to hide."
"They want us to see."
Aurion nodded.
He dismounted. Walked through the remains of the central hall. The roof had collapsed. Fire-stone clung to the beams — the Dothraki's favored method of clearing timber fast.
He knelt.
Picked up a charred child's doll, blackened beyond recognition.
Then dropped it.
That night, around the central fire, the officers gathered.
Twenty centurions. Khettos. Rhaem. Two supply marshals. All watched Aurion, waiting for instruction.
He let them wait.
Then he looked to the scribe. "Read the day's movement."
The scribe spoke evenly.
"Thirty-four leagues marched. Twelve under tree cover, remainder in grassland. Camp established in a six-segment grid. All units reported readiness. No injuries. No sightings. No stragglers."
Aurion nodded.
"Enemy?"
"Presumed shadowing us. Scouting. Testing response time."
Khettos cleared his throat. "Still no riders. No sign of bloodriders."
"They're studying us," Aurion said. "We'll give them a test tomorrow."
Murmurs.
One centurion, bold-faced and too young, asked, "An ambush?"
Aurion shook his head. "A feint. We'll simulate disorder. Collapse a flank. Invite them in."
Tribune Rhaem folded his arms. "Dangerous."
Aurion met his gaze. "Yes."
Silence fell.
Khettos gave a small nod.
"We'll ride at second dawn."
They struck at dawn on the fourth day.
Aurion led a detachment of twelve hundred into the dry basin two miles north of their main line — spears drawn, flanks deliberately loose. Dust clouds masked their movement.
The Dothraki came like knives.
Fast. Lean. Painted with chalk and dried blood. Maybe three hundred. More than scouts — less than a full attack.
They came screaming.
But they didn't know the formation was fake.
Aurion watched from the high ridge, Liraes circling silently in the clouds above.
As the Dothraki charged, Qohorik spears suddenly closed ranks. Javelins flew. Net-hooks were thrown. Shields locked.
The screamers crashed into a wall that did not break.
Half fell before they could turn.
The rest ran.
Aurion gave no pursuit.
Let them run.
Let them tell the story.
That night, morale shifted.
The legion camp buzzed with cold purpose. There was no cheering — not the way lesser armies would. But the centurions walked with straightened backs. The soldiers sharpened weapons that hadn't dulled.
Rhaem approached Aurion again at dusk.
"You're earning their silence."
Aurion smiled faintly. "Silence is underrated."
"They'll bleed for you."
"They'll live for me first."
At the edge of camp, Liraes lay curled beside a watchtower mound, wings tucked close, eyes half-closed but unblinking.
Aurion approached her alone.
She didn't stir.
He leaned against her side, the heat of her body chasing the cold from his bones.
"They think they understand command," he whispered. "But they don't."
The dragon didn't answer.
Didn't need to.
They were one soul, fractured by fire, stitched by fate.
And tomorrow, the grass would burn again.
The storm didn't come from the sky.
It came from the east.
By the sixth day, the scouts returned bloodied. One without an arm. One without a horse. Their mouths caked with dust. Their words clipped by fear.
"Over ten thousand riders," one rasped. "Marked with red paint. Three banners. A minor khal—Khal Thoro. But they're not probing anymore. They're coming."
Aurion stood beneath the command awning, sunlight slashing across the war map. The plains they camped on were long and shallow, scattered with thornweed and ancient roadstones — useless cover.
He studied the terrain in silence.
Khettos Vhar waited. Rhaem leaned in.
"You've baited them," Khettos said quietly.
"No," Aurion replied. "They would have come regardless. Now, they come in the open."
Rhaem crossed his arms. "We have seven thousand."
"They have ten."
"And speed."
Aurion looked up, green eyes unreadable.
"They're not faster than fire."
At dawn, the Qohorik legions assembled in a crescent formation atop the Vale of Dust — a slight rise flanked by thorned ridges and narrow clefts that would collapse cavalry momentum if they weren't careful.
Aurion placed two thousand men at the center. Three thousand held the flanks. The last two thousand waited hidden, dug into the gully under command of Khettos.
Banners were furled. Horns silent.
No boasts. No drums.
Only waiting.
The sun climbed. The dust rose.
And then they came.
The Dothraki didn't march.
They didn't fan out or signal.
They simply appeared — cresting the eastern ridge like a wave of bronze and screaming bone.
Ten thousand strong, hair braided with bells and blade-oil. Painted horses. Curved arakhs. Faces smeared in white chalk and dried blood.
At their center rode Khal Thoro — bare-chested, flame-scarred, riding a black stallion armored in crimson scales. His mouth opened in a roar that rolled across the field like war itself.
The Dothraki charged.
They didn't hesitate.
No caution. No testing.
They moved as one — fast, lean, thunderous. Arakhs flashing in sunfire, horses snorting blood-mist.
Aurion waited.
His officers did not.
Khettos shouted down the line. Rhaem flinched.
Then—
"Hold the line!" Aurion's voice cut like cold steel.
The Qohorik shields stayed locked.
Pila were raised.
Then — thrown.
A thousand spears arced into the charging screamers. Dozens fell. Horses shrieked. The line thundered forward regardless.
And then—
Impact.
The Dothraki hit the front ranks like a hammer of wind and steel.
Shields buckled. Men fell. Arakhs found throats.
But the line did not break.
Aurion stood behind the second wave, flanked by officers shouting orders and runners relaying every motion of the flanks. His expression did not shift.
The Dothraki pressed harder.
More joined the charge, trying to flank.
Aurion raised one hand.
A signal.
From the rear gully, Khettos's hidden cohort surged upward.
Two thousand fresh spears crashed into the Dothraki rear flank.
The screamers faltered.
Horns blew now — short and sharp.
Order pulsed through the Qohorik ranks.
Rhaem's cohort curled in from the left, locking the screamers into a bloody wedge.
Still, they fought.
Savage. Wild.
Two legionaries dragged a centurion from under a dead horse. Another was disemboweled trying to retrieve a banner. Arrows rained from mounted archers along the ridge.
It was chaos.
Aurion watched.
Then looked upward.
Liraes flew high.
Circling.
Waiting.
She had not joined the initial engagement. That was planned. A dragon was not a hammer to swing recklessly.
She was the final word.
Aurion lifted his arm.
Two fingers raised.
Far above, silver wings folded.
She fell.
The sky shrieked.
Liraes dropped like a spear — flames curling in her throat, golden eyes narrowed. She split the air like judgment, trailing heat and wind.
The first burst of fire caught the rightmost Dothraki flank — horses screamed as the blaze swallowed them whole, a line of living flame licking across dry grass.
The second gout of flame followed an arcing path, separating the central mass of screamers from their remaining archers.
Panic followed.
They had seen dragons before.
But never one that waited.
Never one that killed without roaring.
Khal Thoro saw the tide shift.
His scream turned to fury.
He charged through the flames, killing two of his own riders in his blind push.
He reached the shield wall.
Shattered it.
Aurion dismounted.
He walked through the chaos — untouched, unafraid. He passed fallen bodies, burning banners, cloven helms.
Thoro saw him.
He dismounted too.
The khal was younger than Aurion expected. Maybe twenty. His muscles were roped with scars, his face smeared in fresh ash. His arakh was twin-forged.
Aurion drew no weapon.
Thoro charged.
The clash was brief.
The arakh flashed once.
Aurion stepped aside.
Thoro turned, fast, fast—
But not fast enough.
Aurion's hand caught his wrist. His knee struck the khal's leg. The arakh dropped.
He grabbed Thoro's face with both hands.
And whispered a word only dragons knew.
Flame surged between his palms — not from breath, but blood. Not fire, but will.
Thoro's scream became smoke.
His body collapsed.
When the fighting ended, the plains were scorched.
Over six thousand Dothraki lay dead.
Four hundred legionaries. Gone.
The cost had been real.
But the line had held.
Aurion stood atop a broken rise, blood on his boots, hands blackened with fire.
Liraes landed beside him, folding her wings.
Rhaem approached, limping, helmet dented.
"They're routed," he said.
"No," Aurion replied.
"They're broken."
At sunset, the bodies were burned.
Aurion did not speak to the men.
He stood beside the flames, watching the smoke rise into the purple sky.
Khettos stepped beside him.
"They'll remember this," the general said.
Aurion nodded.
"I want the wounded doubled in ration. The dead named. The survivors recorded."
"And the next move?"
Aurion looked east.
"We ride harder. We strike faster."
He paused.
"They'll think today was the end."
He turned.
"It was only the opening."