The fires were dying.
Not all of them — some still hissed in shallow pits where bodies were stacked, flame licking at the sky with low hunger. But most were coals now. The smoke rose in gentle spirals. Thin. Tired.
Aurion walked alone between the pyres.
He wore no armor. His cloak hung unfastened over his shoulders, the hem trailing ash as he passed between lines of stretcher-bearers and supply wagons. No herald followed. No guard shadowed him.
He did not speak.
The legionaries gave him space without instruction. Not from fear. From recognition.
He had led. He had bled.
That was enough.
The battlefield had changed in the light of morning.
Where the Dothraki had crashed against shield walls, the ground was churned to black mud. Blood pooled in quiet depressions, already darkening with flies. Shattered arakhs lay beside broken spears. A few horses wandered loose, wild-eyed, blood-matted, untethered by command.
The sky was overcast, but the wind had stilled. The smoke did not rise in plumes — it hung. As if waiting for something.
Aurion passed a line of wounded.
Some lay on the grass, their faces white, breath shallow.
Some clutched their swords, not willing to let go even in sleep.
Others… wouldn't wake.
He paused beside a young legionary — no older than sixteen, face pale, stomach wrapped in blood-soaked linen.
A healer glanced up and shook her head.
"Too deep," she said softly. "He won't see another dusk."
Aurion knelt.
The boy's eyes fluttered open.
For a moment, he focused.
Then widened.
"My lord…" he breathed.
Aurion reached out, took the boy's hand.
"What is your name?"
"Varas… of the Sixth."
"You fought well, Varas."
The boy blinked. "Did… did we win?"
"Yes."
"Will… will they come again?"
Aurion's voice was quiet.
"Yes."
Varas smiled faintly. "Good."
And then he was gone.
He stood.
The healer moved to cover the body, but Aurion raised a hand.
"Not yet," he said. "Let him have the air a while longer."
The woman bowed and stepped back.
Aurion turned, gazed eastward.
The horizon was distant. Blurred by haze.
But the wind had not returned.
It was as if the world itself was holding its breath.
Later that night, the camp lay quiet.
No drills. No speeches. The wounded slept. The dead had been burned.
Liraes lay on the far edge of camp, coiled like a moonlit serpent atop a rise of rock. Her silver scales reflected the low fires, and her eyes shimmered gold, half-lidded but always aware.
Aurion approached her without sound.
She shifted as he neared, unfurling one wing in slow acknowledgment.
He sat beside her forelimb, resting his back against her scales.
They didn't speak. She didn't need to.
For a long time, they sat together.
The night sky above was vast and cloud-scattered, the stars dimmed by the lingering smoke. But some broke through.
Aurion traced one with his eyes, then another.
He did not look at her when he spoke.
"In Cannor, the fields we burned turned green the next year. The ash fed them. The rain cleansed the stones."
Liraes did not stir.
"But this land… I don't think it will forget. Or forgive."
Her tail curled slightly — a soundless gesture of memory.
Aurion closed his eyes.
He wasn't tired. But something in him had quieted.
"His name was Varas," he murmured. "He asked if we won. Then he asked if they'd come again. I told him yes."
He opened his eyes.
"That seemed to make him happy."
Far below, a legion scribe was recording the names of the dead into a long vellum scroll. Beside him, a steward sharpened a quill over a box of torn armbands — identifiers for the fallen. No one gave orders. No one raised their voice.
The silence had become holy.
At the second hour before dawn, Aurion left Liraes and returned to his tent.
He did not sleep.
He sat at the central table, staring at the map spread across its surface.
He traced the route east — marking the next valley, the river crossing, the grasslands beyond.
But he wasn't seeing terrain.
He was seeing bones.
Old bones. Ancient ones. Castann's.
He leaned back, fingers templed.
Why?
Why again?
What was he meant to build that hadn't already collapsed?
The flap opened.
Rhaem entered, unbidden but not unwelcome.
He said nothing at first, only poured two cups of wine and set one before Aurion.
Then he sat.
Together, they drank.
"You buried them well," Rhaem said after a while.
"I burned them."
"That's all any of us get."
Aurion nodded.
"You'll want to move soon," the tribune continued. "Two days. Maybe three. The khalasar will regroup. They'll send a real khal next."
"I know."
"You'll have fewer men."
"I know."
Rhaem watched him for a moment.
"You don't mourn."
Aurion didn't reply.
"I do," Rhaem added. "Every one. But you — you just carry it."
Aurion looked up.
"No," he said quietly. "I become it."
They sat in silence.
The wine turned warm.
And outside, the smoke still hung in the sky.
Waiting.
The council convened under canvas.
The pavilion was a temporary structure — a wide central chamber of stretched hide, reinforced with timber poles and bordered by braziers burning low. Maps were pinned along the inner walls, and a slate of burnished steel served as the command table.
Aurion arrived last.
When he entered, the voices stopped.
Not from fear.
From gravity.
He nodded once to Khettos and Rhaem, who stood at opposite ends of the room. Half a dozen centurions flanked them, along with two new figures: a tall man in red silks and a woman wrapped in grey furs with sun-bleached skin and eyes like polished jet.
Foreigners.
Observers.
He took his place at the head of the table without ceremony.
"Report," he said.
Khettos spoke first.
"We've identified two hundred wounded beyond repair. Three hundred lightly wounded, still fit to march. Four hundred dead."
Aurion's jaw didn't move. "Burials?"
"Complete. All burned."
He nodded. "Continue."
"The cavalry line fractured on first contact. The center held. Rhaem's flank maneuver was clean."
Aurion turned to Rhaem.
"You lost fewer than expected."
"I aimed to exceed them."
A flicker of a smile ghosted Aurion's mouth.
It passed.
He turned his eyes to the woman in grey.
"You're not Qohorik."
"I'm not," she said. Her voice was low and cracked with wind and dust. "I am Vasa. Of the River Bones. My people served Volantis until the fire drove them west."
Aurion regarded her. "Why are you here?"
"To watch," she said. "And to tell what I see."
He gestured to the map. "What do you see?"
She stepped forward.
"An army that should have broken and didn't. Men who obey silence. A dragon that burns without roaring."
She turned to him. "I see a shape we thought extinct."
The others didn't speak.
Aurion did.
"You're not the only one watching."
The man in red silks stepped forward next. His hair was oiled and tied, his skin scented with myrrh and lemon. He bowed low.
"Lorith Phael, emissary of Magister Osyran of Lys."
Aurion studied him. "You are not what I expected from Lys."
Lorith smiled. "I am not here for pleasure."
"What then?"
"Observation. Possibility. Alliance."
Aurion said nothing.
Lorith took that as permission to continue.
"The Free Cities stir. The fall of Valyria left a hole no one has filled. Until now."
Aurion raised a brow. "I haven't filled anything. I've marched east and burned a khal."
"And you did so with silence and a dragon," Lorith replied. "It's not what you do. It's how."
Rhaem leaned forward.
"What do the Free Cities want?"
"Safety," Lorith said. "Then trade. Then control."
Aurion looked between them.
"They'll get one. And not the one they want."
Lorith bowed again.
"Then we watch more closely."
After the emissaries were dismissed, the remaining officers stood quietly.
Khettos shifted his stance.
"You've changed them."
Aurion didn't look up from the map.
"Not yet."
"They don't joke anymore."
"Good."
"They've started calling you something."
Aurion looked up.
"What?"
Khettos hesitated.
"They say… 'the Flame That Walks.'"
Rhaem scoffed softly.
Aurion folded the map.
"I don't walk. I build."
That evening, as the wind stirred ash over the low ridges, Aurion sat outside his tent, writing.
Not letters. Not orders.
Just words.
Names. Shapes. Thoughts.
He had written "Wheel" then crossed it out.
Written "Spire" and circled it twice.
Then, a voice.
"You scare them."
It was Vasa.
She stood at the edge of the firelight.
Aurion didn't answer immediately.
"I'm not here to comfort them."
"No. But fear leads to worship."
He looked up.
"And worship leads to decay."
Vasa stepped closer.
"What do you want?"
He folded the parchment.
"I want a spine that doesn't break. And a fire that doesn't eat itself."
She nodded, once.
Then left.
Later, Rhaem entered the tent.
No salute. No posture. Just presence.
"You're changing," he said.
Aurion turned.
"Explain."
"You used to speak like a soldier."
"And now?"
"Now you speak like something older."
Aurion thought of Castann.
Of Cannor.
Of the long march from one empire to the memory of another.
He met Rhaem's gaze.
"I'm tired of building things that fall."
Rhaem sat across from him.
"Then stop building kingdoms."
Aurion raised a brow.
"Build order," Rhaem said. "Not crowns. Not palaces. Just the bones that others can't break."
The wind picked up outside.
It carried the scent of horses. Of dry grass. Of something shifting.
A scout arrived at dawn.
Dusty, bloodied, exhausted.
He collapsed to one knee and spoke four words.
"They're coming," he gasped.
Aurion stepped into the light.
"How many?"
The scout looked up.
"Fifty thousand."