The great hall was filled with the stench of smoke and scorched stone. Cracks split the marble floor where Caraxes had crashed into the western wall, and guards still scrambled to put out the last of the fires. Viserys, pale and shaken, stared down at his brother from the Iron Throne, his voice brittle with fury.
"Have you gone mad, Daemon?" the king hissed. "You brought your dragon into the castle grounds and nearly killed half the guard! The people are terrified!"
Daemon stood at the base of the throne, breathing hard, his armor scorched and his eyes wild.
"I didn't do it," he said.
The room quieted. Viserys narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean you didn't do it?"
"I never commanded Caraxes to land. He disobeyed me. No... worse. He listened to someone else."
A few lords exchanged uneasy glances.
Ser Harwin Strong stepped forward, armored in silver and black. "Dragons don't just change riders. You're the Blood of the Dragon, are you not?"
Daemon turned toward him. "I heard the voice. A boy. Somewhere in the courtyard. He spoke in Valyrian—no, not Valyrian—something older. Deeper. He spoke in the true tongue, the one dragon's answer to."
The maesters looked horrified. One dropped his ink bottle. Another muttered prayers.
"That's not possible," whispered Lord Beesbury. "That tongue is... lost. Forbidden."
Daemon's face twisted. "That's because my ancestor — Archduke Arthur of the Black Flame — purged it from the world."
The court fell dead silent.
"He hunted down every last soul who could speak it," Daemon continued coldly. "Men, women, children. Mages. Riders. Bastards with the gift. Anyone who dared speak to dragons in the old tongue — he had them dragged into the Black Forest and silenced. Their tongueswere cut. Their sigils burned. Their bloodlines erased."
"Why?" Viserys whispered.
"Because Arthur feared them," Daemon said. "He feared what they could become. He believed the dragon tongue was a weapon older than Valyria, one that could enslave not just beasts, but men. So he sealed it away. And when the final speaker was killed... he gave a single command to his order of shadows: if ever again one speaks—kill them and all they touch."
The knights stood frozen.
"But now," Daemon said slowly, "someone speaks it again. And my dragon — my Caraxes — obeyed him like a dog."
"Who?" Viserys rasped.
Daemon met his brother's gaze.
"I don't know. A boy. Young. Red eyes. Pale skin. Like a ghost... or a memory."
Maester Orwell's voice trembled. "My prince, such things are... myths. Legends."
Daemon turned to him, eyes blazing.
"No. He is real. Whether ghost or shadow or something, Arthur could not kill... he's returned. And if he can command dragons, then no castle, no crown, no army in this realm is safe."
The forest groaned beneath the weight of old memories.
Twisted roots like gnarled fingers reached through the underbrush, and towering blackwoods blotted out the sun. The deeper one went, the quieter the world became—no birds, no wind, only the crunch of boot against moss and the distant breath of something ancient that had not slept, only waited.
Archduke Arthur stood beneath a broken stone archway, half-buried in vines. A sigil had once been carved upon i, —long erased by time. The mouth of the old ruin yawned before him, black and wide like a grave.
"Take the vanguard," Arthur said, his voice low but unwavering. "Move them deeper into the forest. No fires. No banners. The Order of the Flame rides blind until I say otherwise."
The three lieutenants at his side bowed their heads and dispersed without a word. Silent riders in dark mail began moving through the trees, vanishing one by one into the shadowed wilderness. With them were hundreds of masked figures—men and women whose eyes gleamed with strange colors, whose sigils were long since burned, whose lineages were forgotten to time. The descendants of secrets. The remnants of oaths.
And among them, chained and veiled, walked a handful of children.
Otto Hightower rode beside one of the wagons. His expression was grim.
Meanwhile, in the Red Keep, chaos brewed.
Daemon leaned against the war table in the council chamber, staring down at a cracked map of Westeros. He had not slept in days. He wore no crown, but in that mome,nt he commanded more than any king.
"Find them," he said.
Lord Larys Strong, cloaked in the garb of a spymaster, tilted his head. "Who, my prince?"
Daemon slammed his fist onto the table.
"Those who can speak the dragon tongue—the true tongue. I don't care if they're hiding in caves, in brothels, in forgotten towers at the edge of the sea. Bring them to me. Alive. Or dead, if they resist."
Ser Criston Cole shifted uneasily. "Your Grace, the Faith will not—"
"I did not ask for the Faith's blessing!" Daemon roared. "Take knights. Take gold. Take whores, if you must—but bring me names. Faces. Bloodlines. I want every bastard child of Valyria, every old sorcerer, every hedge witch with a whisper of fire in her voice."
He turned to Larys again, voice lower now, but colder than winter.
"Use the rats. You have your whisperers, do you not? I want them crawling through the gutters, slipping through walls. I want the truth peeled from the roots of the realm. Every man, woman, or child who speaks in that cursed tongue is a threat to the realm."
A page burst into the chamber.
"Your Grace! A man was caught in Flea Bottom, speaking in tongues to a brazier. The fire answered him. The guards—"
"Where is he?" Daemon demanded.
"He's… gone. Burned. Before they could seize him."
Daemon cursed under his breath. "He was testing it. That means they're being trained. Someone is teaching the tongue again."
Lord Beesbury muttered, trembling, "This is heresy. To speak the fire tongue is to risk the Doom again. This is how Valyria fell. This is how the skies bled—"
"The skies will bleed again," Daemon snapped, "unless we stop it."
He dismissed the council with a wave of his hand, storming out of the chamber. Behind him, maesters and lords scrambled, unsure whether to obey or to pray.
That night, Daemon stood alone in the dragon pit before the sleeping form of Caraxes. The great beast stirred in its sleep, steam rising from its nostrils.
Daemon whispered in High Valyrian. Caraxes did not answer.
Then, slowly, he tried the ancient phrase again—the one the boy in the courtyard had spoken. The one he'd heard not with his ears, but in his bones.
"Volnyr et vires… karrex morghon…"
Caraxes' eyes opened.
And for the first time in his life, Daemon felt fear.
The dragon didn't roar. It didn't bow. It simply watched him… like a predator waiting to see if its prey would flee.
As the last of the sun's rays slipped behind the jagged peaks of the eastern mountains, the spymasters of the realm scattered across the known world like restless shadows, their orders echoing in their minds—find one who still speaks the tongue of dragons. No cost was too great. No place too far. No life too sacred.
In the desolate southern reaches, where wind howled through forgotten ruins and even the crows no longer came, a lone spymaster followed a lead—a whisper told in a drunken slur by a dying sailor in a rusted-out port. The rumor spoke of a madman, blind and broken, who lived within the ruined depths of the ancient forest near the Shattered Spine, murmuring in tongues no man alive should know.
The spy arrived as a thunderstorm rolled over the canopies, casting eerie light through the twisted trees. The ruins were overgrown, the stone nearly consumed by centuries of vines and moss. At the heart of it stood a house—or what was left of one. The roof had caved in. The walls crumbled, leaving gaps wide enough to see the shivering figure inside. An old man, draped in rags of what might once have been noble robes, sat before a dying fire, rocking back and forth. His eyes, clouded like milk, were blind. But his lips moved.
The spy paused in the doorway, heart pounding, for he recognized the cadence—not of madness, but of something more ancient. It was the Old Tongue of Dragons. The man was muttering phrases with impossible precision, as though the words were burned into his soul. He spoke to the fire as though it were listening, coaxing, commanding, begging it to awaken. The spy slipped away silently into the night.
Two days later, under cthe over of fog and shadows, the madman was taken.
He did not resist.
When the knights bound him in chains of star-forged steel and wrapped his mouth in soaked linen, he simply stared at the sky and laughed, muttering still behind the gag. Even unconscious, his lips moved, murmuring ancient words like prayers to gods no longer worshipped.
Back in the castle, Daemon sat in a hall lit only by flickering braziers. Blood still stained his armor, his face pale from days of obsession. The doors opened with a screech. Rain dripped from cloaks and steel as the knights entered, dragging the prisoner behind them like a corpse.
Daemon stood.
The moment the cloth was torn from the madman's mouth, the old man screamed a phrase in the tongue of dragons—"Zaldrīzes ēdruta!" (The dragon is listening!)
Caraxes, caged outside, stirred violently.
Daemon stepped forward, eyes blazing. "Where did you learn it? That tongue was purged! None were left!" he demanded.
The old man raised his head, slow as a corpse rising from a grave. His lips curled in a strange smile.
"I was there," he whispered, "when the purge began."
Daemon's eyes narrowed. He stepped down from the dais and crouched before the man. "What purge?"
"The Purge of the Flame-Tongues," the old man rasped. "Ordered by your ancestor… the Black Archduke. The Man with the Sigil of Absolute Will. Arthur of the Old Blood."
"I know he ordered it," Daemon said sharply. "I read the records. I've seen the sealed letters. But why? Why kill every last dragon-speaker? Why erase the language? What was he afraid of?"
The madman began to laugh—wheezing, sputtering, shaking his shackled arms like a drunk seer. The knights moved forward, but Daemon raised a hand to stop them.
"I saw him," the old man said. "I saw his eyes, same as yours. Burning red and gold like the last ember of a dying god. He stood atop a mountain of skulls and screamed in that tongue. Not to dragons… no. To something deeper. Something older."
Daemon flinched. "What are you saying?"
"He didn't fear the language," the man croaked. "He feared what it opened. The Voice was a key, and we were the keepers. He slaughtered us… because he had already looked through the door."
The air grew still. Even the wind paused. The castle itself seemed to listen.
Daemon slowly stood. "What door?"
The madman stared ahead. "The Door Beneath the Ashes. Beneath the capital. Beneath even time."
A silence fell, thick and heavy.
Daemon turned to his knights. "Chain him in the east tower. No food, no water, just scribes. I want every word he mumbles recorded. Day and night."
As the madman was dragged away, still laughing and murmuring the ancient words, Daemon stood motionless. The red and gold in his eyes gleamed like a forgotten flame.
One of the knights approached. "My lord… You believe him?"
"I believe my ancestor Arthur was not a man to act without cause," Daemon said slowly. "If he purged every tongue-bearer and ordered the extinction of a language that bent dragons… then perhaps he feared what came when too many learned to speak it."
He turned his gaze to the sky.
"I fear… he may not have killed the threat."
Another knight asked, "Then what do we do?"
Daemon's voice was low. "We learn. We rebuild what Arthur destroyed. And if that means opening the door he sealed shut—so be it."
He walked back toward the tower.
"Prepare more spies. Send riders north, east—everywhere. Find me more dragon-speakers, even whispers of them. Priests, madmen, children who speak to fire in their sleep. Bring them all to me."
"And if the Archduke was right to destroy them?" one spymaster asked quietly.
Daemon paused at the threshold of the hall. A small smirk crossed his face.
"Then I suppose we'll find out what scared even him."
The old man was chained at the ankles, hunched on cracked stone beneath the pale light of a crescent moon. His face, withered and sunburned, held the haunted expression of a soul who had glimpsed the abyss and remembered it too well. His white hair fell like cobwebs over blind eyes that twitched with each wind that passed, as if hearing voices no one else could.
Around them, the tower chamber was sealed tight. Torches guttered in their sconces, and only Daemon and three of his personal guards remained. The others had been dismissed—on Daemon's order. No scribes. No whispers. Just silence and fire.
The prince stepped forward, boots echoing across the cold stone floor. He stopped before the old man and crouched.
"You said," Daemon began, voice quiet but sharp, "you were there. When the order was given."
The old man nodded slowly, as though dredging up a memory buried beneath layers of ash and blood. "I was a child," he rasped, "but I remember the sky."
Daemon's brow creased. "The sky?"
The old man lifted his head, eyes unfocused. "When he gave the order, the Riders loomed. Black-helmed. Silver cloaks. They came with no trumpet, no writ. Just flame."
Daemon's eyes narrowed. He had read no records of this. Only a sealed royal decree bearing Arthur's sigil, commanding the extermination of all known dragon-tongue speakers. Not a reason. Not a trial. Just a purge.
"The purge," Daemon said slowly. "How did the people not notice?"
"They never knew," the man whispered, voice trembling. "No one knew who we were. We were never named. Just caretakers of an old song. They made it look like plague. Disappearances. Fires blamed on accidents. Entire villages razed without memory."
Daemon clenched his jaw. "But why? Why would Archduke Arthur—the man whose very blood I share—fear the dragon tongue so much?"
The old man was silent for a long while. Then, he smiled.
"Because he did not want anyone outside the royal bloodline to speak it."
Daemon blinked. "He hoarded it?"
The old man nodded. "He believed the tongue was a right—not of scholars or keepers—but of kings. Of emperors born of fire. And he was right to fear others learning it."
Daemon tilted his head. "Because it was used to command dragons?"
"That was only the first door," the man whispered, his voice turning strange, deeper, as if echoing from a place not his own.
Daemon stilled.
"My father told me," the old man continued, "that the dragon tongue was not merely speech. Not merely command. It was resonance. A map to something hidden in the breath of the world."
"Hidden?"
"A nectar," the old man said. "Something dragons fed upon in ancient times. Not meat. Not fire. But soul. The essence that sleeps beneath the land. We called it Dragon Nectar."
The old man whispered "A living essence. Born of the first dragons—their fire, their soul, their blood. Those who drink it… command not just dragons and their subspecies—wyverns, drakes, wyrms—but time itself. Aging stops. Wounds fade. One becomes... immortal."
"He called it a plague. He said if the world knew what the nectar could do, empires would fall into chaos. Tyrants would rise. Kings would wage endless war. Starvation. Darkness. Cities turned to ash in pursuit of a vial."
The torches flickered.
"And the tongue?"
"It wasn't just the language of dragons," the old man said. "It called to the Nectar. It could lead you to it. Only those of royal blood could wield it properly. That's why he purged the rest."
Daemon turned away, pacing. The weight of this revelation was immense. He looked out the stained-glass windows toward the distant mountains.
Daemon's voice was low but sharp, slicing through the cold air like a dagger.
"How were you punished?"
The old man trembled, his withered hands clutching his knees, eyes gazing into the distant nothing of memory. "Punished?" he whispered. "No, boy... I was spared. Others—they were punished. Whole cities. Whole bloodlines."
Daemon knelt, meeting him eye-to-eye. "Tell me."
The old man's breath grew ragged. "Arthur… he tamed a dragon. Not just any dragon. The dragon. We called it the Dragon God. VELTORIX. Its wings blotted out the sun. Its breath... turned castles to dust, rivers to steam, and men to shadows etched into stone."
The room was still. Even the fire in the brazier seemed to lean in to listen.
The old man's voice lowered, shaking with reverence and horror."He found it—no one knows how—in the deep fire pits of the Scorched Abyss, where ancient wyrms go to die. Veltorix had been sleeping for centuries. Some say it chose him. Others say he chained it with the old tongue, bled from his own veins into the spell circle. Either way, when it rose… the world changed."
Daemon stood slowly. "And the punishment?"
"Runtis," the man spat the name. "A kingdom to the north. Home to the last dragon-tamers, those who refused to give up the tongue. They didn't want power. They just wanted to preserve it. A priest there once said the tongue wasn't a weapon, but a bridge. A bond between beast and man… a language of soul and fire."
The old man's jaw clenched, his voice rising with each word."Arthur declared them heretics. Traitors. That they were plotting to unearth the Nectar, to raise a dragon army and enslave mankind. It was a lie. But none dared oppose him, for Veltorix had already flown."
He raised a shaking finger to the sky, as if he still saw it."Three days it circled Runtis. The priests sang. The children wept. On the fourth, the sky opened, and fire fell like rain. Not a scream reached the clouds. Veltorix didn't just burn Runtis. He erased it."
Daemon took a step back, the weight of the past folding in around him. "If the tongue leads to the Nectar… and the Nectar leads to Veltorix… then why hasn't anyone tried again?"
"They have," the old man rasped. "And they died. The tongue... it's cursed now. Every time it's spoken by one not of the blood, their throat burns. Their hearts implode.
The old man clutched his chest, his eyes widening in sudden agony. His breath hitched, shallow and sharp, and his frail frame hunched as though a great invisible hand had struck him. He gasped, mouth trembling, as if the air itself had turned to fire in his lungs.
Daemon reached forward. "Old man—?"
But it was already too late.
Far away, in the darkest reaches of the Black Forest where no bird sang and no light pierced the canopy, a voice as cold and ancient as the grave whispered through the twisted trees. Cloaked in shadows, standing atop a jagged outcrop, was a figure draped in black and crimson, the armor beneath his cloak etched with the crest of a forgotten empire.
Arthur.
His golden-red eyes shimmered like twin stars of molten ruin, the wind curling around him like a serpent. His expression was calm—almost emotionless—but his words cut through the forest like a blade drawn from an oath-bound scabbard.
"You have spoken too much… for someone who was spared."
He raised one gloved hand. In it, a single crimson thread shimmered faintly in the air, woven through with ancient runes that glowed and pulsed like the beat of a heart.
"You were given silence as mercy," he murmured, voice low, echoing unnaturally through the forest. "And yet you chose remembrance. You chose to speak of things that were buried for a reason."
The trees groaned. The forest darkened further. Every creature within a mile fell into absolute stillness.
Behind Arthur, a faint shadow stirred. Massive. Wings like voided sky. A breath like the cracking of mountains. Veltorix.
"Do you know what happens when you name a thing that should not be remembered?" Arthur asked, letting the thread of fate dissolve between his fingers. "You bring it back."
Back in the mountains, the old man's eyes rolled back. He fell to his knees, trembling. Smoke began to rise from his robes, curling from beneath his skin. His veins lit with something not of this world—glowing, searing, as if his blood had turned to liquid fire. Daemon stepped back in horror as the man's body convulsed, whispering a name he could no longer say aloud.
A whisper from far away echoed in Daemon's mind, unbidden, ancient.
"The price of betrayal is the return of memory."
The old man screamed once—a sharp, unnatural sound—and then collapsed. Silent. Dead. A black mark slowly burned itself into the floor beneath him: the sigil of a dragon's eye split by a sword.
Daemon stared. Not at the corpse. But at the sigil.
It was the same as the one carved into his dragon's scale.
ChatGPT said:
As Arthur turned away from the whispering winds and the suffocating stillness of the forest, behind him lay a sight that could silence gods and drive kings mad with awe.
Beneath the roots of the earth itself, nestled within a hollow basin formed of blackened stone and draconic bone, lay the slumbering titan—
Veltorix.
The Dragon God.
His body was an endless mountain of obsidian scales, each larger than a warship's hull, cracked faintly with glowing veins of red-gold light—like magma frozen beneath the skin. Curved horns curled backward along a skull so massive it dwarfed the trees above, and his wings were folded like cathedrals fallen in on themselves, layered in dust and silence. He did not breathe as men do; the ground simply trembled with each slow throb of his dormant pulse.
Chains—ancient and divine—were fastened around his limbs. Not to restrain him… but to contain the world from what he was. Their links shimmered with runes long lost to mortal tongues, powered by the blood of ten thousand dead sorcerers, bound in rituals that had shattered empires.
Arthur stood before him, a dark figure dwarfed by his own legacy.
He reached out a hand, fingers trembling ever so slightly, brushing the air before the beast's snout. A strange warmth pulsed beneath his glove. The bond was still there—ancient, unbroken, absolute.
"You've slept for too long, old friend," Arthur said, voice almost reverent. "The world forgot you… and it began to rot."
He bowed his head.
"We ride soon. Just not yet."
And as he turned to walk away once more, a deep sound rumbled through the cave—not words, not breath… but memory.
A voice not of this world. Not Arthur's.
"…Then let them remember what true fire is."
The cave quaked.
Arthur smiled faintly—bitter and proud.
Daemon, miles away, woke from sleep in a cold sweat, gasping, his dragon shrieking in panic within its soul-forge. His hand was glowing. The sigil burned.
And far above, in the skies yet untouched by war, the wind began to change.