Alicent chewed on her nails, eyes blankly staring at the untouched meal before her, whilst the dining hall lay silent.
No servants lingered here, nor were there any courtiers here to whisper.
Crueller yet...no children's voices rang through the high arches.
All that remained was an emptiness that threatened to devour Alicent whole.
Once, this hall had been alive.
Once, Viserys had laughed here tiredly…sincerely, raising a cup in her direction as though she were more than some mere duty, more than some obligation to attend to.
Now he lay hidden away in darkened chambers, skin clinging to bone, a ghost of the man she had married.
Absent.
Dying.
Now, her children no longer sat beside her.
Aegon drowned himself in wine and women.
Cassandra wallowed away in solitude, loneliness eating away at what little sanity remained in the girl.
Aemond spoke little, his pride masking all his thoughts, leaving a biting sense of unfamiliarity between them.
Even her grandson, Aegon's son, was left to cry himself to sleep. For the past few years, she had been the one to raise the boy due to his absent parents.
A fractured family.
An unravelled legacy.
When had it happened?
When had her life become this hollow…wretched thing?
Her chest rose and fell.
Up and down. Up and down.
She tried to quiet her thoughts.
She had always been good at that.
Good at swallowing anger.
Good at burying resentment.
Good at enduring.
Her father had taught her that.
A good daughter obeyed.
A good wife endured.
A good queen smiled.
So she had.
When her father placed her in Viserys' path like some toy, or rather a gift…she obeyed.
When she was praised for her virtue, and her childhood quietly slipped away…she endured.
But now, when all she held dear seemed to escape her grasp…she could not smile. Not any longer.
War had come now and promised to come again in due time if…no, when her husband should pass.
And it was her family standing in the fire.
"No…"
She tore her hands from her mouth and clenched them tight.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Blood stained the table like spilt wine.
She did not look down as the pain barely registered.
For years, she had lived in quiet agony. What was a little more?
Her blurred vision cleared. Something shifted inside her...something she had long denied.
"I cannot lose," she whispered. "I cannot…"
She pushed herself to her feet.
She had already lost too much.
Her youth was offered to duty.
Her love, sacrificed to politics.
Her friendship, murdered by ambition.
She would not be naïve again.
Not now.
Not ever.
Power.
Love.
Freedom.
She wanted them all.
Not the hollow version she had been given.
The real kind.
No more kneeling beside Viserys' bed, praying over a man who could no longer shield her.
No more obeying Otto's commands, traded like a coin in his endless game.
No more waiting helplessly while her children lived beneath the threat of exile, imprisonment, or death.
No more trusting promises.
No more hoping for mercy.
The only way forward…the only way to survive—
Was the Iron Throne.
Her breathing quickened.
Rhaenyra's voice echoed in her mind. That last conversation they had shared…
Alicent's gaze flicked toward the table before her.
It held the remnants of her meal, half-finished bread, untouched wine, a silver knife resting neatly beside the plate.
And…an odd contraption.
A mirror.
Not the delicate Myrish kind that filled the treasuries of great ladies.
This one was different.
The glass itself was thick and faintly tinted, its surface carrying the subtle smoky hue characteristic of Elyrian craft.
The rim encircling it was fashioned from copper, and Alicent knew well enough where such copper likely came from.
Meereen.
Or rather, it's mines.
Scraped and stripped by new rulers who had little reason to concern themselves with old traditions.
Still, as she stared at the mirror, her reflection gazed back as she noticed the changes in herself.
Time had begun to mark her face.
The smoothness of youth had softened, faint lines now tracing the corners of her eyes and mouth.
Her once vibrant auburn hair had dulled. As if all the joy and life had been stripped away.
Yet her expression was…strange.
An eerie smile lingered on her lips.
See.
Even her children, half a world away, had understood something she herself had taken far too long to grasp.
Power.
With power, no one dared take what rightfully belonged to you.
No one dared threaten your family.
No one dared decide your life for you, as some doll placed upon a lord's shelf to be moved and discarded at their whim.
No.
With power… the world learned to bow.
The Iron Throne.
With it, she would decide things for herself.
Not her father.
Not her husband.
Not her former friend.
Her.
Alicent straightened her back.
Blood still stained her fingers.
She did not wipe it away.
For the first time since girlhood, Alicent chose…herself.
***
Baelon and Helaena sat upon the cold stone floor amidst the ruins.
The rubble that had once cluttered the area had long since been pushed aside during their explorations, leaving a rough clearing between broken columns and cracked slabs of dirty grey stone.
Around them lay Old Valyria.
Even after days of searching its ruins, the place had never ceased to feel wrong.
Jagged silhouettes of broken towers loomed across the horizon like the teeth of some long-buried leviathan, while one of the Fourteen Flames spat faint threads of smoke into the dim sky.
No birds flew here.
No animals stirred among these lonely streets.
Yet for all its eerie desolation, the ruins had been generous. Excessively so.
Around the pair lay the fruits of their search.
Baelon had gathered an entire suit of Valyrian steel armour from the remains of a collapsed vault.
Even beneath layers of ash, the metal still gleamed with that distinctive dark ripple, light dancing across its surface like frozen waves.
Beside it rested several newly discovered weapons, curved blades, slender spears, and a pair of elegant daggers, all forged from the same impossibly rare steel.
Helaena had unearthed stranger things still.
Ancient trinkets of unknown purpose. Charred fragments of tablets etched with unknown glyphs.
Scroll cases that had miraculously survived the centuries, containing scattered pieces of forgotten spells and scraps of magical theory that the Valyrian mages once practised.
Baelon sighed contentedly.
Ah.
This was it.
Treasure in abundance.
Their journey to Old Valyria had proven far more fruitful than any of the lesser cities they had scoured before.
"Satisfied?" Helaena asked from nearby.
She sat cross-legged upon the ground, absently turning several peculiar trinkets over in her hands as she examined their strange shapes and inscriptions.
"Greatly so," Baelon grinned.
"Not only do we now possess our own hoard of treasures…we managed to carve out a piece of the world to call our own."
They had done it.
Baelon leaned back slightly and glanced toward the dim sky above.
From terrified children trapped within the suffocating walls of a castle prison…
To rulers of their own dominion.
The journey between those two points had been long, chaotic, and, gods forgive him, fun.
They had fled Westeros with little more than dragons and stubborn resolve. Crossed half the known world.
Wrestled cities from slavers and tyrants. Built alliances where none had existed. Burned enemies who refused to bend.
Step by step, the frightened children they once were had vanished.
In their place stood something else.
Something far stronger.
Now, all Baelon truly wanted was peace.
To return to Tolos.
To bury himself in the study of the spells and magical fragments they had gathered over the years.
To rule their growing realm with a steady hand. And perhaps, finally, begin a family in earnest.
Baelon gently bobbed his head from side to side as he imagined that future.
Whole.
Simple.
Happy.
Yet the thought of his father inevitably crept into his mind.
A faint guilt followed close behind.
While Baelon and Helaena had fled across the world chasing their freedom, Viserys had never once moved to punish them.
Instead, he had helped them.
Trade agreements between Westeros and Dragon's Bay had quietly reshaped the balance of the region.
Even when the Free Cities collapsed into chaos and rivalries, Dragon's Bay always possessed another powerful partner across the sea.
Their realm had grown prosperous from it.
Grain flowed outward from the Isles of Cedar in endless shipments. Elyrian glasswork and fine handicrafts fetched high prices in western markets. Tolosian slings and weapons were now widely sought by mercenary companies.
Copper from the mines of Meereen enriched their coffers further, while spices cultivated in New Ghis spread through trade routes across half the known world.
Even knowledge had become a commodity.
Freedmen from Astapor and Yunkai had brought with them crafts, sciences, and techniques long hoarded by the old slave masters.
Dragon's Bay had become more than a refuge.
It had become a true power.
Perhaps…he should return home soon.
There was little reason to avoid Westeros now.
No one there would dare trouble them.
In truth, aside from their father, Baelon and Helaena now stood above nearly every lord and ruler in the known world in both influence and power.
"It seems we'll have to hurry along," Baelon muttered as he rose to his feet, stuffing several of the recovered items into a travel sack.
"Did you say something?" Helaena tilted her head, eyeing him curiously.
"Just thinking we should finish exploring Valyria," Baelon replied.
His gaze had already settled on a quaint structure in the distance.
A temple.
Time and ash had worn it down, yet its structure remained largely intact.
Tall, angular walls rose from the cracked ground, their surfaces embedded with long strips of dull, weathered dragonglass that ran through it like veins.
Once those obsidian panels must have gleamed like mirrors beneath the light of the Fourteen Flames.
Now they were dulled and scratched, their edges chipped by centuries of neglect.
Still, the temple endured.
And Baelon had learned enough during their time here to know what such places often concealed.
"Just stay here for a moment," he said.
He strolled over to Helaena and ruffled her hair.
She immediately shot him an annoyed glare.
Baelon only grinned.
Helaena then followed his gaze toward the temple as understanding flickered in her eyes.
"You…" Helaena sounded almost helpless. "That has survived for centuries, and now you wish to shatter it out of curiosity? You truly do seem more like Vermithor by the day."
Baelon only shrugged.
"It's a derelict temple," he said lightly. "Who truly cares if it goes up in flames?"
With clear interest burning in his eyes, he stepped closer.
The great doors of the temple themselves had long since rotted away, leaving a yawning entrance that stared out across the ruined plain.
Baelon stopped several paces away.
His eyes shifted upward slightly.
The air here was wrong. Greatly so.
A faint shimmer danced before the temple, almost imperceptible unless one looked carefully.
Thin tendrils of pale vapour curled upward from cracks in the ground and from hidden vents within the temple's foundation.
Volcanic gases.
They lingered in the air in their pale forms, tempting him to light a flame in their presence.
Of course, Baelon had always been a kind soul and was glad to oblige.
"Still have to be careful though…" Baelon murmured as he raised a hand, and a small flame blossomed into existence in the distance.
The moment the fire touched the gas-laden air—
The world ignited.
FWOOMPH!
The small spark erupted into a violent surge of flame as the trapped gases caught at once.
Fire raced across the invisible currents like lightning through dry brush, roaring outward in a sudden wave of blazing heat.
Within a heartbeat, the temple's entrance was swallowed by fire.
Flames poured across the stone like liquid gold, licking along the dragonglass panels and curling through the hollow doorway.
The heat struck the ancient structure instantly, sending cracks snapping through weakened masonry as the temple groaned.
Stones that have been carved for longer than many empires shifted as the inferno surged through its interior chambers.
Baelon gritted his teeth. He seemed to have underestimated how quickly the fire would have spread.
With a sharp breath, he raised both hands.
His bond with Vermithor had deepened his command of fire far beyond the crude tricks he had once relied upon.
His arms trembled as he tried to contain the greedy flames that threatened to pounce outward still.
Then—
The roaring inferno trembled in place like some frightened child before it began to still.
The flames hung suspended in the air as though seized by an invisible hand.
Then, slowly, reluctantly, it began to shrink.
The blazing wave collapsed inward, dwindling to scattered tongues of fire before finally fading altogether.
All that remained was the bitter scent of ash and scorched stone drifting through the air. Thankfully, despite the chaos, the temple endured it all the same.
Truly, Valyrian architecture was a different beast altogether.
Baelon waited.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three.
Then—
Clack.
Clack-clack.
Krrrnk!
Deep within the temple, ancient mechanisms stirred to life. The sound of grinding gears and shifting stone echoed faintly through the structure as hidden cogs, dormant for centuries, began to turn once more.
"Thought as much…" Baelon nodded with smug satisfaction.
In the ruins of Valyria, many secrets had been sealed behind mechanisms like these.
And more often than not, Pyromancy was the key that awakened them.
Turning around, he waved Helaena over as his gaze returned to the temple.
The entrance loomed before him dark and silent.
The shadowed doorway seemed to swallow light itself, its depths stretching inward like the maws of a yawning dragon.
Within Baelon's chest, something stirred.
Anticipation.
Anticipation that something waited inside.
Something old.
Something patient.
Something that, somehow…was calling to him.
***
In the solemn darkness deep within the belly of Asshai, Seryon stood unmoving.
Deathly still.
To those unfamiliar with him, it might have appeared as though he were locked within some profound meditation. A mystic communing with the profound mysteries of the world.
But Seryon knew the truth.
He was simply afraid.
"It's here…" he murmured, closing his pale eyes. "...already upon us."
His voice barely stirred the heavy air.
"What path will this world take…?"
Despite the darkness pressing around him, the absence of light did not trouble his sight.
For even with his eyes shut, he could see.
Not the chamber around him. Something else. Somewhere else.
Fragmented visions then rushed past him in broken splendour.
A ruined temple standing alone amidst the broken bones of Valyria.
A pair of silver-haired children wandering through the corpse of a by-gone empire.
And...a strange book.
The visions came in jagged flashes, like reflections glimpsed upon shattered glass.
Warnings.
Prophecies.
Prayers whispered into an uncaring void.
Such things could only reach so far.
Seryon knew that better than most.
There were forces in the world that no prophecy could halt, no prayer could silence.
In the end, all he could do was place his hopes upon the pair half a world away.
Hope that they would resist the temptations of power.
Hope that they would not drown within the endless illusions that magic so eagerly offered.
Hope that whatever terrible things they uncovered in the ruins of Valyria…none of it would twist them into something that might one day bring ruin upon the world itself.