Dawn came with a strange silence.
It wasn't the heavy silence of death, nor the silence before a storm. It was an expectant silence, as if the earth itself knew something had changed in the sevens awakening at the foot of the second tower.
Vaemor was the first to open his eyes. His body felt heavy, the hot air filling his lungs as if he had inhaled liquid fire. But it didn't hurt. The heat no longer burned as it had before; it enveloped him.
He sat up slowly and saw the others scattered around the altar. Kaelyth was at his side, her face pale but steady. Aerys was breathing heavily, leaning on his spear. Zaryon and Maekor were still on the ground, trembling.
And then he felt it.
"Look at your arm," Kaelyth said, her voice barely a whisper.
Vaemor lowered his gaze. On his right forearm, where he had rested his hand on the altar, there was something new: a mark, like a dark tattoo, in the shape of a dragon's head, its contours seeming to shift slightly beneath the skin. It wasn't a static drawing. It was as if something dormant inhabited him.
"It can't be," he murmured, touching his skin. It didn't hurt, but the sensation was strange.
"I have it too," Aerys said, showing his own forearm. The mark was distinctive: a claw, so sharp it looked like it had been etched with a hot iron.
One by one, they all looked at their arms. No mark was the same. Each had a different fragment of the same design, pieces of a dragon still incomplete.
"A dragon that will form when we complete the towers," Kaelyth deduced, a gleam in her eyes.
Vaemor nodded.
"They are transforming us. Not just our blood. Our bodies remember." A New Awakening
The warm Valyrian air, which had once felt stifling, was now lighter. They breathed more easily, as if their surroundings recognized them. It wasn't just the heat: they could feel the whispers of the city.
"Do you hear that?" Zaryon asked.
"There's nothing," Maekor replied, rubbing his arm.
"Exactly," Zaryon said. "But I feel it. As if the stones were alive."
No one laughed. None of them were surprised to feel Valyria's gaze.
They left the second tower at noon. Their bodies ached, but it was no longer the ache from the ritual. It was the accumulated fatigue of living among the ruins.
The path to the third tower led them past the remains of an ancient neighborhood, where the white marble was blackened by centuries of fire. There, the creatures were more abundant.
They were not the remains of the previous day. They were larger, lizard-like, with yellow eyes that gleamed even in the sun. They walked in small groups, watching from the shadows.
"They're following us," Maekor murmured, adjusting his axe.
"No. They're watching us," Aerys corrected. "They're assessing our value as prey."
"Vaemor raised his Valyrian steel sword.
"If they attack us, we will turn them to ash."
"But the beings did not attack. They only followed them at a distance, vanishing when they looked directly at them."
"As evening fell, they came to what remained of a Valyrian temple. Its dome had collapsed and its columns were broken, but the doors still stood, covered in dimly glowing runes.
"It's here," Kaelyth said.
"The tower?" Zaryon asked.
"No," Vaemor denied, his gaze fixed on the interior. "This... is something else."
"They entered." The heat inside was stifling, but not unbearable. The walls were covered with burnt frescoes depicting dragons and Valyrian warriors in ancient rituals. And in the center, protected by a fractured altar, were seven dark, oval objects.
Eggs.
Dragon eggs.
Time seemed to stand still.
Vaemor approached slowly, almost fearing they would disappear if he touched them. He placed a hand on one of them. In that instant, something burned inside him: not fire, but connection.
"They are alive," he whispered.
Kaelyth did the same to another egg and nodded.
"And they are ours."
They didn't argue. They felt it. Each egg seemed to respond to whoever touched it, as if it had been waiting for them for centuries.
"We must rest here," Aerys said, when they were finally able to take their hands off the eggs. "Tomorrow we will leave for the third tower."
"What if those things follow us?" Zaryon asked.
"Then they'll learn to fear." "Us," Vaemor replied.
They lit a makeshift fire inside the temple and ate in silence. No one mentioned that the eggs were dangerous, or that the dragons inside could kill them if they hatched. There was no need. Everyone knew that.
The tattoo on his arms burned faintly, as if approving of their decision.
Vaemor closed his eyes, leaning against the altar. And for the first time, he dreamed in High Valyrian.