Chapter Text
Oldtown, 276 AC
Rhaegar
He had not played the harp in the halls for some time. The strings were still in tune, and sometimes, when the sun was low and the corridors quiet, he would retreat to a forgotten corner of the Red Keep and play a few songs he had written, soft and low. But never near his father. Not anymore.
They said Rhaegar had grown strange. That he spoke to cats and sang to dogs. That he whispered in dead tongues and read through all hours, or else burned ancient tomes in secret. That he kept to the highest towers, or the deepest dungeons, and dined alone with his books, or in the servants' halls of the castle, sharing wine with beggars, mummers, and whores. They said the king and Lord Baratheon had taken him to brothels, but he’d shown no interest in the women. Or far too much, especially those with the soft Valyrian features of Lys. That he studied sorcery and old rites, not for power, but to cure the madness in his father. Though even whispering that word, madness, could earn you a split lip from Bobby’s Boys. Or worse. The gold cloaks asked no questions. Aerys had ears in every wall, and when those ears heard treason, they came. And the speakers vanished.
Some said Rhaegar meant to control the king, to guide his hand as he signed laws and named traitors. Others, that he meant to burn the realm and build it anew. In the wine sinks and soldiers' barracks, they argued over whose side he was truly on. They said he was a Northern sympathizer, that he spoke in a Northern brogue when drunk, that he quoted Stark words like holy scripture: family, winter and silver, hear the winter, winter is going (or whatever they were), that he kept company with maesters who had spent too long at the Wall. Or else he was the North’s strongest enemy, its fiercest and most vocal opponent, sharpening his words and paroxysms upon Lannister and Tully reputations like knives. Some said he urged preemptive strikes. Others, that he counseled restraint; cold, fey diplomacy in the face of Robert’s brave steel and heat. Always he was the shadow behind the council’s words, the man behind the king’s decree.
They talked about the other young lord too (some called him Prince), Robert Baratheon, who laughed and drank and carried a hammer. Who stood proud and loud, the king’s second son in all but name. He boasted of war while Rhaegar watched with baleful eyes. They said Robert would lead the South if war came. That he would marry the next Targaryen princess, whenever she was born. Aerys, the strong and virile king, was waiting to see if Rhaella was full of boy or girl, you see. And Robert would rule beside her, heir in all but name. That he would wear the crown if Aerys died, with the blessing of Dragon and Storm’s End alike.
And Rhaegar? They said he would vanish into fog. That he would slip away like smoke, a coward and a traitor, a sorcerer too strange to trust. They said he drank blood. That he bathed in wine. That his dreams spoke to him, and that he spoke back.
Let them say it. Better that than speak of the king, and lose a tooth, or a tongue, or worse.
In truth, Rhaegar lived much as he always had. He trained with the sword each morning, favoring precision over flair. He attended court when summoned, sitting silently beside his father or standing in the shadow of Lord Chelsted. He studied in the afternoons: histories, ledgers, laws, healers’ texts, and old treatises on governance and diplomacy, reading not for pleasure, but preparation. If ever the realm needed him, he wanted to be ready. If ever his father looked to him, not in madness, but in one of those rare, lucid hours when the king’s eyes cleared and he spoke to his son like a man, Rhaegar wanted to have an answer.
He rode often, too, ranging out into the Kingswood with Ser Arthur Dayne and a small company of knights and sworn swords who had grown used to his periods of thoughtful silence and dreamy reveries. They hunted, sang songs beneath the trees, and ate simple meals beneath the stars. At inns and holdfasts they passed along the way, Rhaegar kept his hood up, but he drank, laughed softly when someone told a good tale, and sometimes, when pressed, even sang. Serving girls and barmaids would gather near, leaning in with starry eyes, and he’d smile, sheepish and still half-hidden in his cloak, before slipping quietly away.
He spoke gently to servants in the halls of the Red Keep, remembered their names, nodded to the stablehands and cooks. He visited his mother when she was in a good mood, speaking to her in soft Valyrian about books and music, about dreams, about the nostalgias of the past. And always, in the quiet hours, he returned to study, driven not by ambition, but duty. Not for himself, but for the father he might someday be called to follow.
In the years since that day in the small council chamber, when Robert was named commander of the gold cloaks and his father had thrown a goblet at his face. Rhaegar had read everything he could find. Histories of madness and melancholy, of illness and instability. Accounts of erratic kings, cursed bloodlines, and noble houses brought low by the weight of their own minds. He read theories written by maesters of the Citadel and Academy, treatments both ancient and new, philosophies half-rejected by the Faith or censored by the Crown.
When the Red Keep’s libraries were exhausted, he went farther.
Arthur Dayne had gone with him, steady, loyal, sharp-eyed as ever. In the early years, he had spoken only of swordplay lessons and schedules, of mundane things, like roads and readiness and weather. But as the journeys grew longer, and Rhaegar older, Arthur spoke more. Of lords and loyalties. Of the heavy burden of rule. Of how even good men could be ruined by the wrong advisors, or the wrong would-be sons. Sometimes he spoke only to fill the silence, recounting old stories of knightly gallantry or describing the keeps they passed, the terrain, the history tucked behind names half-forgotten. But more often than not, he simply listened. He had become more than a bodyguard. He had become a companion. A friend. And if Rhaegar was searching for knowledge, Arthur was the hand that held the lamp.
They had ridden south to the libraries of Starfall, where the Daynes kept manuscripts older than the Andals. They had searched the crumbling sept libraries along the Mander, and a ruined sept on the cliffs above Nightsong, where damp crept through the walls and the scrolls were brittle as old leaves. Rhaegar had considered traveling farther north, to speak with distant Uncle Aemon at the Wall, but he had resolved to read every book in the south before he braved the cold. Together, they crossed the breadth of the realm in search of answers. And finally, on to Oldtown.
The maesters offered ink and empty words spoken in arch tones and ultimately unsatisfactory. Rhaegar pressed them anyway. What causes madness? Is it in the blood, or in the soul? Is it inherited like eye color, or born of grief?
The Archmaesters spoke in circles. One blamed sunstroke. Another, milk of the poppy taken too young. A third suggested isolation, poor diet, childhood fevers, excessive heat, the ill humors of the womb. They spoke of nerves and bile and balance of the elements, citing treatises written before the Doom.
But one night, behind the locked door of an upper cloister, a young maester, newly chained, and younger than most who wore the title, asked him to swear he would not be punished for speaking plainly. Rhaegar did. The man made Arthur Dayne swear it too.
He stood there a long moment, wringing his hands. His chain hung loose around his neck, still short, still half copper. His hair had begun to thin at the crown, though he could not have been more than five-and-twenty. Ink stained the cuffs of his robe. His eyes never stopped moving, flicking toward the windows, the shelves, the floor, as though even the stone might overhear.
“It cannot be cured,” the maester said at last. “Your family’s custom of marrying within itself, to preserve the purity of blood, is anathema to us Westerosi, not only for reasons of faith or tradition, but because it is known, my prince, known, that the intermarriage of kin breeds madness as surely as night follows day. It is not a suspicion. It is a law of nature. Your line has turned inward on itself. Brother to sister. Cousin to cousin. Aunt to nephew. For centuries. And the mind, when pressed like that, when narrowed and folded upon itself again and again, begins to crack. The blood carries every fracture forward, as plainly as the color of your eyes.”—He swallowed, then went on, voice gathering speed—“In the pursuit of purity, each Targaryen child is made to carry the weight of their blood, and with it, the risk. Some will be spared, perhaps touched only lightly—a shadow that brushes past them in childhood and never returns, or a glancing blow off the armor of the mind that wounds but doesn’t kill, not exactly. Some will not know it until around their thirtieth year, when the voice in their head no longer sounds like their own but like many voices, all speaking at once: some laughing, some screaming, none familiar. And others, most, will carry it always, whether they know it or not.”—The maester had stilled by now, and his voice came quieter, like a priest offering last rites.—“It is likely that your family will need to marry outside its own blood for five, perhaps six generations before the risk of madness lessens to that of other noble lines. Until then, the blood remembers. And it breaks.”
Rhaegar had been silent until then. But at that, something in him tightened.
The maester had said thirty. That one day, a voice might speak within him—strange, unrecognizable, layered with others. That it might come suddenly, without warning, when a man believed himself whole.
Rhaegar was not yet seventeen. But thirty was not so far.
He hoped, firmly, silently, that no such horror would ever find him. That when the year came, his mind would still be his own.
He pushed the thought aside.
“Only a glancing blow,” he said, his voice hoarse and low. “What do you mean?”
The maester’s expression did not change.
“Not all madness wears the face of violence, my prince. Not all of it howls. Yes, sometimes it comes as stark-raving fits: screaming, destruction, rape, mutilation, fire. Abuse outward and inward. That is the kind most fear, and rightly. It is the loudest. It is the heaviest when it falls. On the person, and on their family. But there are other kinds. Quieter, colder, just as ruinous. Some laugh easily, speak sweetly, even dress finely. Their smiles are polished. Their eyes clever. They know what pleases others and mimic it well. But there is no heat in them. No guilt. No shame. No love. These ones do not feel as other men feel. They harm and do not flinch. They betray and do not blink. Their hearts do not break, because they were never formed. If they wound, it is not from pain but from appetite, curiosity, control, something darker. And if they rule, gods help the ruled. Some men, the hot kind, kill dozens or hundreds. But the cold ones too. Their courtyards or farms are found full of corpses: whores, or children, or travelers upon the road. Vile rituals done with their bones, their organs and their skin. Not rituals of faith, my prince. Rituals of pattern, obsession and horror born from within and acted out in blood.”—He exhaled softly and looked briefly away. For a moment, he seemed not like a maester, but a boy too young to be speaking of such things—“But sometimes,” he continued, “madness wounds instead of breaks. Sometimes it comes quietly. You live your life. You smile, you speak, you rule. But you cry and do not know why. You wake from a dream and cannot move, because something vast and black is sitting on your chest. You lie down in the afternoon and the moment you doze off you startle awake knowing, not fearing, knowing, that one day you will die, that there is no escape, that there is a time, infinite, in which you. Will. Not. Be. And the thought will not leave you for days. You look in the mirror and feel only the urge to break it, not out of vanity but so you will not have to see your own face again. You grow tired in strange ways. You long to be gone. Sometimes you try. And if you succeed, they will call it a tragedy. But if you fail, they may only call it weakness.”—His gaze dropped to the stone beneath them—“It is not raving madness. But it is madness all the same. And then there is the kind that hides itself beneath the surface. The kind they do not name. The kind no one fears until it is too late. Sometimes it comes like a shock: a fire behind the eyes, a squeeze just under the ribs, or a weight on the abdomen that does not lift with rest. A panic with no name, no enemy, only sensation. You will feel it before a task (any task, even a minor one), before a word, said to a friend, or a lover, or a colleague; before a door that needs opening, one you’ve opened a thousand times before, perhaps that of your bedchamber or your home; a robe that needs tying, or mending, or cleaning, or simply to be picked up from the floor where it’s fallen; a meeting that cannot be avoided, with your septon, your sworn sword, or your children. It is a pain of the mind, my prince, but the body will believe it is dying.”—The maester’s voice had grown slower now, steadier, as though reading from a book that no longer shocked him—“Even the simplest pleasures become revolting. The plucking of a harp string, that once made you feel whole, will feel suddenly false, offensive, unbearable. The face of a loved one may seem unfamiliar. The idea of speaking, of being seen, of being perceived, becomes unthinkable. You will retreat from everything, and you will not know why. Not just from duty or desire, but from sensation itself: from the sound of rain on the roof, from the wind on your skin, from the breath of another person in the room.”—He turned slightly, his gaze slipping past Rhaegar, toward nothing in particular—“You’ll stop going outside. First for a day. Then a week. Then a season. And then years will pass, and you will not know where they went. You’ll recall them as fog, or not at all. You will forget summers. You will forget songs. You will forget that you were once a child, or a prince, or someone who laughed without cost. One day, you’ll see yourself in a mirror, older, paler, heavier, or hollowed, and you will not look the way you remember. Not as young. Not as strong. And then you’ll hate yourself, not only for what you’ve lost, but for the time you wasted, even time spent on things that were vital, or lovely. Time you will never get back.”—And then, softly, as though speaking to the stone itself—“That, too, is madness, my prince. And like the others, it does not warn before it comes. There are the fixations. The obsessions. Not only the washing of hands until they bleed, or the counting of steps on every stair, or the need to see all things in patterns, though there is that, and plenty. But it goes deeper. Sometimes it’s a thought that grips the mind and does not let go. A moment relived, a question unanswered, a memory you cannot unsee. A song, sung not once or twice, but for hours, days, until the melody infects every silence. A desire that consumes you. Not just longing, no: need. Every waking thought narrowed to a single shape, a single person, a single act. You imagine it, crave it, dream it… and when at last it comes to pass, you find it hollow, flavorless, a ghost of the thing your hunger imagined. The wanting was always richer than the thing itself.”—The maester’s voice trembled slightly, whether from fear or memory, Rhaegar could not say—“And it does not end. It deepens. Your doublet must be buttoned just so. Your sword must hang at a precise angle or you feel unmade. The books on your shelf must align or you cannot sleep. You develop rules. Rituals. Tiny liturgies no one else knows but you. You do not know when they began, only that you cannot stop. Your thoughts are no longer yours to command; they are your jailor, and you live at the mercy of their chains and of their tortures.”—He did not pace now. He only stood, watching the candle flicker between them—“That too, my prince, is madness. And then,” the maester said, voice barely above a whisper, “there are the dreams.”—He did not blink. His hands remained clasped before him, knuckles pale, as though fearful of what might happen if he let go—“Sometimes they come in sleep, vivid and strange and impossibly clear; lucid, they call it, when you know that you dream and still walk within it. You move as yourself. You speak. You choose. We all have such dreams, from time to time. But you would have them every night. You hold conversations that linger after waking. With friends. With ghosts. With kin you’ve never met. Some say you speak with your ancestors. Or your descendants. Or, just you, elsewhere, as others, as other people. That through these visions the blood shared with those before acts as conduits to the unknown, to the before, or to the after. That time and space are nothing in the dream, no more than fog to walk through. The physics of the world, the distances, the sounds, the laws that bind men to earth, they do not apply there. You speak across centuries. You see faces not yet born.”—He wet his lips—“Many call them prophecy. And perhaps they are. But I pray to the Seven that they remain only dreams. Because when they come waking, when the vision arrives while your eyes are open, when the shadows twist and you see what isn’t there, what no one else can see… that is a terror no man should know. Ghosts in every chamber. Corpses and fire and vermin in every corner. Faces behind the faces of your friends. To see the end of the world in your winecup, or in your looking glass. That too,” he said softly, “is madness, my prince.”—The candle burned low. The tower creaked. He took a long breath and exhaled through his teeth—“But even that, even all of this, rage, fear, anxiety, melancholy, compulsions, visions, it is still only a glancing blow. A lance turned by armor. The body does not fall. Not right away. You can live with it. You can rule. With enough wine, with enough milk of the poppy, with enough touch from your wife or from whores, with enough quiet or noise around you, you can function. You can blank your mind, convince yourself you are whole. You can forget you feel these things… until you remember, and your eyes fill with tears, and your heart feels clutched by an armored fist, and you begin to breathe hard—harder—and if you can just fill your mind with honey-sweet memories quickly enough, flood it fast enough with light and comfort and laughter, or drown it in wine, in cunt, in anything that numbs, then maybe you can forget again. For a while.”—He looked up. Not at Rhaegar. Through him—“You learn to carry it. You smile when spoken to. You answer when called. You’ve tricked your loved ones, tricked the realm, perhaps even tricked yourself. They think you are normal. But you are not. You are surviving. Just.”—He took a half step back, and his voice fell to nearly nothing—“A glancing blow, my prince. Not death. Not ruin. But the bruise beneath the skin is deep. You will wear it forever. You may not see it. But you will feel it. And for this…”—He said, quieter still—
“There is no cure.”
The room was quiet.
Rhaegar sat motionless in the candlelight, and when he raised a hand to his face, his fingers came away wet. He had not felt the tears fall. He only knew that they had.
Across the chamber, Ser Arthur Dayne stood beside the narrow window slit, looking out over the rooftops of Oldtown. His posture was rigid, unmoving, his sword at his hip, his eyes turned toward nothing. He said nothing. He had said nothing in nearly an hour.
The maester, younger than both of them, let his shoulders sag. His breath came shallow, uneven. With trembling fingers, he reached for a cup of wine and drank, too quickly, then held the rim against his lips as though uncertain whether to drink again.
He stared at the stone floor between them, as though the words he had spoken were still pooling there, dark and irreversible.
No one moved. For a time, it seemed there was nothing left to say.
Only the candle stirred, its flame swaying in the still air, casting the same flicker across three unchanged faces.
At last, the maester spoke again, gently.
“My prince,” he said, “do any of these… sound like your father?”
Rhaegar didn’t answer at first. He sat very still, his hand loosely holding the damp edge of his sleeve. Then he nodded, once.
“Yes,” he said. That was all.
He did not speak of the screaming fits, or the laughter that came too late and too loud, echoing down the halls like something cracked. He did not speak of the goblet flung across the Small Council chamber, nor the blood it drew when it struck his brow. Or the way Aerys had smiled after, lips red with wine, as though the whole thing had been a jest.
He did not speak of the long nights drowned in wine and madness, when the royal chambers filled with laughter and moans and screams, and no one was permitted near the doors. When serving girls were summoned up one by one, and did not come back down. When whores were brought in through side entrances and carried out by the hour, half-dressed, unconscious, or silent with eyes wide open.
He did not speak of the custodians who came at dawn, their buckets sloshing with suds, and left again with water turned red and fizzing. Of the linens burned. Of the marble polished until the stain was only a memory.
After a recent council meeting in King’s Landing, one where Aerys had flown into one of his rages, shouting about Northern independence, Lannister whores and slamming his goblet on the table, Rhaegar had lingered behind, shaken, silent.
But when he stepped into the outer corridor, he found his father already waiting. Aerys stood to the side, cloaked, calm, his posture straight, his face composed. He spoke clearly.
“I’m sorry, son, that I raised my voice in there.”
Rhaegar blinked.
“I am quite concerned about the happenings in the North,” Aerys went on, voice measured. “It may prove a boon to the realm’s coffers, but the way it was brought to us, fully formed, without royal input, reeks of quiet treachery. That kind of independence can only grow. Into separation. Secession. Rebellion.”
He placed a hand on Rhaegar’s shoulder.
“We must be strong, you and I, and Robert too. The realm will need all three of us to guide it wisely. To bring the North and the West back into the fold. To preserve the indivisibility of the Seven Kingdoms. You’ll be their king one day, after all.”
He gave Rhaegar’s arm a brief squeeze, then turned and walked away, head held high, steps even and assured.
For that moment, he had seemed whole. Entirely himself. Perhaps more than he ever truly was.
After a few moments of silence, Rhaegar spoke. “Sometimes, he’s lucid. With me. Or with his ward… Robert.”
The maester’s lips parted, surprised.
“That’s good,” he said softly. “Hold on to those moments. They’re rare. And they won’t last.” He hesitated. “He cannot improve, my prince. He may remain as he is for a time, but the slope only descends. Cherish him while he’s still… mostly himself.”
Rhaegar looked down. He could remember his father’s hand on his shoulder. Not cruel. Not clinging. Just there. The kind of touch a man gives when he is proud. He closed his eyes.
“And you,” the maester said. “Do any of these… describe you?”
He thought of the heaviness he sometimes woke or walked with, a weight at the base of his diaphragm, usually after a hard or violent moment with his father. But then he thought of the quiet joy when his mother smiled and the chagrin when they played cyvasse and he fell for her Yeen opening like always, or when he recited a poem he’d written and her violet eyes filled with mirth or proud tears.
He thought of the anxiety that slowed his feet as if he were walking through mud, or clay, or quicksand, how despair welled up from somewhere deep within the gaps between his ribs and his heart before the small council meetings he knew Robert would attend. But then he thought of the lightness in his stride as he mounted his horse, the wind in his hair and the easy peals of laughter as he rode winding paths through the Kingswood with Arthur.
He thought of the repetition of a melody, or a series of chords, turning in his mind for a day, or several, until at last he interlocked them, extracting from their friction the most sublime, heartfelt beauty: the kind that raised the hairs on the neck and flushed the skin with warmth and joy in those who listened.
He felt the balance.
He had not lost himself.
“No,” he said. His voice was calm, steady.
The maester raised his head slightly. There was no alarm in his expression now, only a flicker of relief, tinged with pity.
Rhaegar hesitated.
“Well,” he said at last, “I do have dreams. Sometimes. Very vivid ones.”
His tone was even, almost contemplative. He didn’t elaborate, and the maester didn’t press.
“Some men, particularly the more devout, find comfort in seeing such dreams as prophetic,” the maester said. “It gives shape to the chaos. Meaning to the fire.” He gestured toward the shelves behind him. “There are a few texts here that speak of such things. Mostly partial translations, scattered, suspect. But deeper in the Citadel, in the sealed halls, there are volumes even some Archmaesters won’t admit we keep. Writings from Valyria, from Asshai, from lands where prophecy was not merely studied but followed, practiced or feared.”
Rhaegar’s eyes sharpened. He didn’t speak, but his posture changed slightly, alert now. Already he was thinking of names, of titles, of long hours buried between leather covers and ancient ink.
The maester noticed. He hesitated, then added, more gently: “If you wish, I can have you admitted to those halls. The sealed vaults. Quietly.”
Rhaegar looked up, surprised. “You would allow that?”
“The pursuit of knowledge is sacred, my prince. Higher than rank, higher than coin.”
Rhaegar reached into his tunic nonetheless, producing a small leather purse. “Still, I would offer something—”
The maester shook his head. “Keep your coin. Use your mind. That is the price I ask.”
The silence that followed was easier now. Not because the grief had passed, but because it had shape. A name. A path forward.
By the window, Arthur turned at last. “It’s late,” he said softly.
Rhaegar stood. The candle had burned to nothing, the hearth cold. But something lingered in the air still. Not warmth, exactly, but clarity. The kind that follows truth, even hard truth. He felt steadier for it. Not lighter, but more sure of the road ahead.
[+++]
The library had no name.
It stood in the oldest quarter of the Citadel, where the stone was dark with age and the lamps never seemed to burn quite bright. The hallways bent like tree roots, and the air smelled faintly of mildew and smoke.
The night after their conversation, near midnight, the young maester knocked softly at Rhaegar’s door. Arthur was already beside him. They said nothing. Together they slipped through the Citadel’s winding corridors, down staircases older than the crown, through passages where the stone walls wept with age. Twice they ducked into alcoves as old maesters shuffled past, and once as a custodian dragged a mop down the hall, humming. No one saw them.
At last, they reached the door. The maester drew two iron keys from his sleeve, each long and dark with use, and unlocked the twin bolts with care. The door groaned as it opened, spilling dust and silence.
Inside: scrolls bound in dragonhide, codices stitched with wire spun from gold and silver, books inked in Valyrian glyphs so fine they shimmered faintly in the low light. Some pages were pressed between sheets of glass, others sealed in lacquered boxes or wrapped in silk as if too sacred to touch. Light, dim and amber, fed from whaleoil, flickered like memory itself.
The maester lingered a moment more, then murmured, “No one will disturb you, my prince,” and slipped away.
He found it in the back, half-buried beneath loose parchment and dust, its pages brittle but intact. The writing was vague, riddled with contradiction, and bore no maester's stamp. But it confirmed what he had begun to suspect: that dreams of fireblood could be cultivated. That some remembered more than others. That memory itself was a flame—fickle, stubborn, needing coaxing.
He read in silence for nearly an hour, copying what he could. ingredients, doses, vague instructions scrawled in fading ink, onto his own paper with steady hands. He slipped the pages into his sleeve and returned them to his room, then visited an apothecary in the city the next day under a false name. He asked for herbs by old names. Paid in silver. Gave no reason.
He brewed the first mixture slowly, just as described: a weed-and-berry tincture steeped in milk of the poppy, bitter as pine sap. It was not the only one.
One recipe called for wine before sleep, to ease the mind and open the gates. Another warned against it, claiming dulled senses and false recall. A third required powdered nightshade, measured in amounts smaller than the head of a needle. A fourth named a tea brewed from toadstools, licorice root, and mashed crickets, steeped exactly seven minutes in total darkness. A fifth claimed that fasting for three nights after a full moon might suffice.
He tried them all.
Some left him dizzy, trembling with phantom sights, his fingers elongating into pale spirals, the sound of his voice dampened, distorted and slowed, his movements sluggish as if speaking and swimming through molasses, with shapes unfurling in rainbows from the grey stone of his chamber walls, blooming outward as he stared and saw infinity. But nothing of his dreams. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Others left him numb, sleeping the sleep of the dead, unmoved and unmoving, waking in the same position he’d fallen in, with no memory between.
But one concoction opened the gate.
It had been brewed from dreamleaf, dried sourmint, a pinch of sunberry pulp, and three drops of poppy syrup stirred into black pine resin tea. The taste was sharp, bitter, clinging to his tongue like ash. He drank it in silence, beneath an open window, as the first birds began to sing.
And in that moment, he remembered. Just—
[A flicker]
A young grey wolf loped through the woods, light on its feet, almost playful. The forest was lush and warm, fed by clean, rushing waters, full of mist and moss, with shallow streams that sparkled in the moonlight and flashed silver with darting fish. The air smelled of green things and wet stone. The night was soft and drowsy. It hummed with life.
The wolf pranced more than it hunted, splashing through a brook, then leaping a fallen log with something like joy. It was alone, but not afraid. The forest welcomed it.
And behind that forest, half-concealed by trees: a wall.
It rose with unnatural height, black stone, sheer and smooth, older than the dream itself. The wall stretched so far in all directions that if it had towers or gates, they were swallowed by its scale.
And somehow, against all reason, the angle of the moon cast the wolf’s shadow high across it. Tall as a tower. Tall enough to swallow the Red Keep. Yet still, it was nothing beside the wall. Infinitesimal. A fraction.
The shadow followed the pup as it ran, bounding through the trees, a blurred silhouette that moved like smoke across the surface of the stone.
Then something else appeared.
Thin, spectral shapes. Splintered and branching. Skeletal fingers, or claws, or roots, or something in between. First one. Then two. Then more. They slid across the surface without sound or source, converging not on the wolf, but on its shadow. Triangulating. From different angles, above and below. A web of narrowing points, a net, closing in.
But the wolf did not notice.
It ran on, nose to the wind, ears perked, eyes bright. Free.
[A flicker]
Dragonstone, vast and black, loomed above him as he craned his neck, the angle so steep it made the towers seem to stretch forever, each one jagged as a talon clawing at the azure sky. And overhead, a golden sun burned, strange and unwavering. He could look straight into it without blinking, without pain. Its light bathed the black stone in a glow like molten coin.
But then, without warning, the dream moved.
The castle was still there, but smaller now. A model. It rested atop a stone table in a room he knew well: a nursery in the royal wing of the Red Keep, long sealed. It had been meant for a child, perhaps the one his mother still carried, or another who had never drawn breath. The chamber was quiet, half-furnished, filled with the weight of waiting.
And yet, impossibly, the golden sun still shone. Its rays stretched through stone and wall, spilling across the cradle, the toys, the table.
But the light dimmed. Slowly. As if behind a curtain of blood.
He stepped closer.
The model of Dragonstone was black, sharp, and perfect, fashioned from black diamond and amethysts the color of old blood and flame.
Then the wind came.
There were no windows in this chamber. The door was shut. And still, it came, dry and hot and whispering.
He reached for the castle, touched it—
And it crumbled. Not into dust, but into sand.
Red-black grains, fine as sifted ash, pouring through his fingers, falling to the floor, vanishing between the stones.
When he looked up, the sun was gone too.
[A flicker]
Ten.
He was one among thousands, brothers, sisters, clans unknown to one another, but bound together by purpose and fate.
Nine.
They moved as one and sang songs of ancient victories, and of deliverance yet to come.
Eight.
Their bodies were wrapped in fur and sealskin, and armors made of bone and bronze.
Seven.
Though their breath shimmered in the moon’s pale light, they did not feel the cold. Only life. Hearts still beating. Lungs still breathing. Joy in moving forward.
Six.
None dared look back at what followed: a veil of frost and wind, alive and relentless, roiling across the land and the homes they had abandoned.
Five.
With it came the true cold. The true death.
Four.
What began as joy in motion became dread. Hope withered into despair. Some wept. Others fell silent.
Three.
The old, the sick, the very young; any who stumbled were taken. Others stopped walking, turned to face the veil, and let it take them.
Two.
Rhaegar knew he had to keep going.
One.
So close now. Just a little further. Just a little longer.
Zero.
The colors of the world inverted. A flash of light, a new star, absolute in its radiance, vast and mute. Followed by heat, followed by a force that pummeled his chest and knocked the wind out of him, followed then, finally, by the sound, a howling cacophony of bowed strings, shrieking, discordant and unending.
A birth.
Some raised their hands to their faced, but the light pierced everything. Aftermirages stamped into the surfaces of their eyes.
But Rhaegar could see.
The naked singularity of flame.
Familiar. Terrifying. Cleansing.
And from that singularity, a rose began to bloom. Viridescent and vast, taller than the tallest towers of man, unfurling, a flower for the hand of a god, petals of fire carving a path through the dark, opening the way to a new world.
Those who could still stand, still see, his people, shouted in triumph, the screaming strings resolving into a single, sustained, sublime chord that flowed around their voices.
And Rhaegar was shouting too.
[A Flicker a flicker a flicker and entropy and nothingness enveloped him whole and all he could perceive was
a loud
ringing
in
the
ears]
[+++]
He woke gasping, heart racing, the taste of ash in his mouth. For a moment he heard nothing, then sound returned, birdsong through the window, and voices in the corridor, like water draining from his ears.
He was in bed, though he did not remember walking there. The blanket had been drawn over him. The window was still open. The light was soft.
His limbs ached. His mouth was dry. And his eyes were wet.
But the images did not fade. Not right away.
He knew, with certainty, that he had dreamed these visions before. Not just once, but many times. Exactly the same, each time.
He had simply never remembered. Until now.
How could dreams return so precisely, with such perfect fidelity… unless they weren’t dreams at all?
For the first time, Rhaegar believed he had seen something not meant for him.
Or perhaps meant only for him.
If he could not save his father, he would save himself.
And if the dreams could not be denied, if he was sane, if they weren’t dreams…
If they were not madness, then they were truths.
And in that moment, he could not say which he preferred.