The sky was a bruised wound, weeping ash over a sea of red grass that rustled with the sound of dying men.
Daemon stood atop a mound of pale, nameless corpses. They knelt in their thousands before his boots, their faces blank as uncarved marble, their hands lifted in silent supplication as their flesh melted into gray dust. High above the plain, three great towers rose against the dark vault—one crowned in golden suns, one draped in a three-headed dragon of red silk, and one of white stone that ran like warm tallow as he watched.
He reached into his chest and drew forth a sword. The blade was dark as night and smoky as a funeral pyre, singing with a low, cold vibration that set his teeth on edge. Coiled tight around his right wrist was a silver viper with eyes of pale amethyst. Its needle-teeth grazed his pulse, whispering a single, endless word in an ancient tongue—a sound like dry leaves scraping over stone.
Daemon swung the shadow-blade. He did not touch the stone towers; he merely cut the air before them.
Where the edge passed, the world bled. A river of thick, boiling crimson burst from the earth, so vast and deep it swept away great fleets, noble heraldry, and iron crowns, turning the sea to white steam. The air grew hot enough to melt the copper in a man's purse. Cities burned beneath a black sail of smoke—walls of black basalt cracking like dry wood, spires tumbling into ash, thousands upon thousands of voices crying out his name until the sky rang with the roar of slaughter.
Then came the thunder.
It did not break from above; it rose from the red dirt beneath his heels. A shadow loomed behind him, vast as a mountain peak, smelling of ozone, sea-salt, and ancient gale. It bore no wings, yet it blotted out the stars, heavy and broad-shouldered, carrying the weight of a dark iron crown.
The shadow stepped into his back.
Daemon felt heavy, iron bones lock into his spine. He felt his frame warp and broaden, stretching his skin until it burned, pouring liquid lightning into his blood. His breath turned to ozone and scorched earth. When he opened his mouth to gasp, the sound that tore from his lungs was not a child's cry, nor the screech of a dragon, but the deafening roar of a tempest breaking against stone.
He looked down into the boiling river at his feet.
The reflection was no longer a boy, nor was it a dragon. It was a conqueror clad in black plate, stepping over the shattered ribs of the world. Whole realms burned within the stormy indigo of his eyes.
Daemon sat bolt upright in the dark, his bedsheets tangled about his limbs like cold, wet snakes.
He pulled in a ragged, terrified gulp of air, his lungs burning as if he had swallowed hot ash. Sweat dripped from his pale brow. He pressed his hands hard against his chest—fingers too fine yet to span a longsword's pommel, shaking as if frozen to the bone.
Across the bedchamber, Sela cowered against the marble wall, clutching her basin, her hazel eyes wide with dread in the moonlight. Daemon did not look at her. He stared out at the dark balcony overlooking Volantis, touching his throat. His bones were still light. His flesh was unbroken. But deep within his chest, beneath the trembling of a child, something heavy, dark, and tempestuous was pulsing in time with his heart—a storm waiting for its wind.