The morning light that filtered through the high, arched windows of the nursery felt different sharper, as if the world had been scrubbed clean while he slept.
Daemon sat up, the silk sheets sliding off his small frame. Despite the grueling mental marathon of the previous night, he felt an uncanny sense of rejuvenation. His three-year-old body, usually a heavy anchor of physical limitation, pulsed with a strange, humming vitality. It was as if the exhaustion had burned away the last remnants of his infant lethargy, leaving behind something lean and tempered.
A translucent screen flickered at the edge of his vision, responding to his intent.
[Floor 2 Progress: 42%]
The heavy oak door creaked open. Viserra stepped in, uncharacteristically silent. She carried a tray laden with thick oat porridge, swirls of golden honey, and a bowl of clotted cream. She didn't offer her usual biting wit. Instead, she set the tray down and watched him, her violet eyes tracking the way he moved with a precision that no toddler should possess.
"You look... refreshed, little gargoyle," she murmured, her voice laced with a growing, quiet unease. "Almost as if you've spent the night feasting rather than sleeping. Eat. The King has been asking for you since the first bell."
That made Daemon look up. The game was moving faster than anticipated.
Viserra met his gaze fully this time, her eyes searching for a crack in the porcelain mask. "There was a raven this morning," she added. "From the Vale."
A pause.
"They didn't say much to the staff. Only that it was… urgent."
Daemon held her gaze for a moment longer than necessary, his violet eyes reflecting the cold light of the windows. He didn't look like a child hearing of an urgent raven. He looked like a grandmaster seeing a predicted move on a chessboard.
He nodded once. "I'll go when I'm finished."
Viserra didn't move. She seemed rooted to the spot by the sheer wrongness of his composure. "You're not even curious?" she asked, her voice tinged with a hint of disbelief.
"I already know why I'm being summoned."
The answer landed with a dull thud in the quiet room. It was too certain. Too calm. It bypassed the natural curiosity of a child and went straight to the cold reality of the Architect.
Viserra pushed off the bedpost slowly, her movements uncharacteristically stiff. "…Right," she said, though the word carried no conviction.
She turned toward the door, her silk skirts whispering against the stone. She stopped at the threshold, glancing back over her shoulder. For a fleeting second, the mask she wore the one of the untouchable, mocking princess slipped. Beneath it was something raw. Instinct.
"Daemon," she said quietly.
He looked at her.
She hesitated, her fingers gripping the edge of the doorframe. "…Try not to unsettle him too much."
A faint pause.
"Or at least," she added, a hint of her usual sharpness returning like a defensive shield, "leave some of his certainty intact. He's rather fond of it."
The door closed behind her with a soft, final click.
Daemon sat in the renewed silence, the warmth of the porridge fading in his hands. He didn't rush. He didn't panic. He resumed eating, his movements slow and deliberate.
The Small Council chamber was a vacuum of sound, its air heavy with the scent of old parchment and the cold, metallic tang of the morning. The long, carved table of blackened oak stood empty of its usual lords, leaving only the Old King and the obsidian pillar that seemed to anchor the room's very shadows.
Jaehaerys I Targaryen stood beside the central pedestal, his hand hovering inches from the glass candle. The relic had been stripped of its secrecy and hauled into the light. The King did not turn when Daemon entered; his eyes were wide, fixed on the stone with a hunger Daemon had rarely seen.
"A raven came from the Eyrie at dawn," Jaehaerys said, his voice breathless, humming with a rare, frantic energy. "Lord Arryn writes of a miracle, Daemon. He claims Daella was brought to tears in the afternoon, insisting she heard your voice clear as a bell within her locked solar."
The King turned then, his face illuminated by a sudden, boyish brilliance. He looked at Daemon not as a judge, but as a fellow traveler at the edge of a map.
"Tell me," Jaehaerys whispered, leaning in. "Did it truly wake? Did you truly reach across the clouds to find her?"
"It did, Your grace," Daemon said, his voice steady. "The flame manifested. White and stable. I sought the Vale, and the glass gave it to me."
Jaehaerys laughed a sharp, exhilarated sound that echoed off the vaulted ceiling. "The Archmaesters spend their lives bleeding for a single spark and find only cold stone."
He paced a small circle around the pedestal, his fingers twitching. "I must see it. I must know the shape of this power, Daemon. Light it now. Show me what the Maesters say is impossible."
Daemon stepped toward the pedestal.
He reached out and touched the jagged base of the candle.
A ripple moved across the surface of the black glass, turning the solid stone into something that resembled dark, disturbed water. Then, with a sound like a silver bell struck in a deep well, the wickless tip ignited.
A needle of white flame, pale and cold as a winter star, pierced the gloom of the chamber. It did not flicker. It did not cast a shadow.
"Gods," Jaehaerys breathed, stepping back, his face washed in the ghostly emerald tint of the flame. "It is... beautiful."
As the flame steadied, the air in the room seemed to thin. The shadows at the corners of the chamber didn't just recede; they were replaced. The surface of the glass began to swirl, and then, the image solidified.
It was not the Vale this time. The candle responded to the proximity of the King's own heart.
The image showed the Godswood of the Red Keep. Beneath the spreading canopy of a weirwood, Queen Alysanne sat on a stone bench. She looked vibrant, the morning sun catching the pearls in her hair. Beside her stood their daughters, their voices muffled but their laughter visible in the way their shoulders shook. Alysanne was speaking, her expression one of rare, unburdened peace as she gestured toward the flowering hedges.
Jaehaerys froze. He reached out a trembling hand toward the vision in the glass, his fingers stopping just shy of the flame.
"Alysanne," he whispered, his voice thick with wonder. "I can see the color of her gown. I can see the wind in the leaves."
He looked at Daemon, his eyes shimmering with a terrifying, newfound awe. "You haven't just lit a candle, boy. You've bridged the world. This... this changes everything."
The King stood transfixed by the sight of his family in the garden, watching the silent play of his life through the black glass, unaware that the boy beside him was already looking far beyond the castle walls.
"A message, Daemon," the King said, quieter now. Not softer just more deliberate. "If you can reach her… can you speak? Send words as easily as sight?"
Daemon didn't answer immediately.
That hollow ache returned, faint but unmistakable, coiling low in his body a physical tax for reaching across the realm. It was the biological price of the Tower's influence, a drain that porridge alone could not quickly fix.
He shook his head. "Not yet."
Jaehaerys watched him closely, his violet eyes unblinking. "Not yet… or not at all?"
"Not yet," Daemon repeated, his voice steady. "Last night was… costly. I could look. I could reach. But shaping a voice…" He paused, choosing precision over pride. "…that requires more than I can sustain."
The King's gaze sharpened, the scholar within him giving way to the sovereign. "And the cost?"
Daemon's eyes flicked briefly to the table at the far end of the room empty now, save for crumbs and a smear of honey from a morning snack. "It draws from me," he said. "Not just thought. Not just will." A small pause. "My body feels it. Afterward."
Jaehaerys exhaled slowly through his nose, considering that. "So the hunger was not indulgence," he murmured, a realization dawning on him. "It was… consequence."
Daemon said nothing. He simply stood there, a three-year-old vessel containing an ancient, architectural focus.
A faint, knowing smile touched the King's lips a rare moment of grandfatherly warmth in a room built for cold decrees. "I did wonder," he admitted. "You ate like a boy who hadn't seen food in a fortnight. Your mother was ready to summon three maesters before dessert."
A brief flicker of amusement passed between them then faded, swallowed by the gravity of the glass candle between them. The King straightened, the moment of levity gone as quickly as it had surfaced.
"And its reach?" he asked. "Is there a limit? Or could you look as easily to the Wall as to the Vale?"
"It's not distance," he said quietly.
Jaehaerys didn't interrupt. He waited, allowing the silence to act as a bridge.
"It's… familiarity."
A beat.
"I can find places I've stood in," Daemon continued, his voice calm and detached. "People I've been close to. Anything else is… indistinct. Like searching for a shape in fog."
The King's eyes narrowed slightly, mapping the tactical landscape of that statement. "So it requires… a connection."
"Yes."
"What kind?"
Daemon hesitated for the briefest moment, his mind flickering back to the silver-blue thread he had seen stretching toward the Eyrie. "Presence," he said. "Memory. Something of me left behind… or something of them I can follow."
Silence settled again, but this time, it was heavier. More dangerous. Jaehaerys folded his arms slowly, his gaze drifting to the dark glass as he processed the potential of a prince who could plant a "seed" of visibility in every corner of the world.
"A tether," he said under his breath.
Daemon didn't confirm it. He didn't need to. The structural logic was plain to them both.
The King nodded once, as if a private conclusion had just solidified into a command. "Then that can be arranged."
That drew Daemon's eyes back to him.
Jaehaerys met his gaze evenly, the King of the Seven Kingdoms looking at the Architect of its future. "A prince does not remain confined to one castle forever," he said. "You will travel. In time." A pause. "And when you do… you will leave more than footprints behind."
Daemon held his gaze, silent. Understanding. He saw the path the Old King was laying out a tour of the realm that would double as the weaving of a spider's web.
"Cover it."
Daemon stepped forward without hesitation. As the heavy, light-dampening silk fell over the candle, the room seemed to exhale like something vast and watching had just been forced to close its eyes.
The silence that followed the shrouding of the candle was absolute, a thick, velvet quiet that felt heavy in the lungs. Jaehaerys remained still for a moment, his hand resting on the edge of the council table, his mind clearly mapping out a future where his grandson was not just a prince, but a living eye seated at the heart of the realm.
"Go," the King said, his voice returning to its usual granite calm. "Eat. Rest. Your mother will be fretting, and I have no desire to explain to Alyssa why her son looks like he's fought a war in his sleep."
Daemon inclined his head and left the chamber. The guards outside didn't look at him; to them, he was just a small boy leaving a meeting with his grandfather. They couldn't feel the humming resonance still vibrating in his marrow.
Back in the safety of his own chambers, Daemon locked the door. The "refreshed" feeling from the morning was already beginning to dip, replaced by a cold, hollow hunger that porridge alone couldn't fix. He needed a more permanent solution than just eating half a larder every time he used his power.
He sat at his low weirwood table and pulled out the shard of dragonglass he had been working on.
[System Notification]
Mana Stability: 28%
Project: [Void-Linked Slate ]