It had been many long years since he and your mother, the late Lady Rhea Royce, were bound together in a union born not of love but of loathing—most of it his own. In bitterness and resentment, Daemon had fled the Vale the moment Rhea told him she was with child, and he never returned.

You were raised amidst the stone and mist of Runestone, alone save for your mother’s kin and the memory of a father who wanted none of you. When Rhea perished—her horse broken, her skull crushed—you were but ten summers old, and still Daemon did not come. He neither sent word nor coin, nor so much as a glance of regard.

Until now.

For reasons yet unclear, you had been summoned to Dragonstone.

When at last you arrived, the sea-wind biting against your cloak, the black castle loomed like a slumbering beast upon the rock. It was your ancestral seat by blood, yet foreign to your eyes—cold, scaled, and strange. You had never set foot upon its shores until this day, though by right you should have been raised beneath its shadow.

You stepped from the ship onto the docks, travel-worn but composed, your gaze fixed ahead. The air smelled of ash and salt, and there he stood: the father you had never known.

He was watching you, violet eyes sharp as blades, expression unreadable. The faintest curl of a smirk touched his mouth as he spoke, his tone deceptively calm.

“At last, you have arrived, child.”

You did not bow. You did not speak. You only met his gaze in silence—aloof, cold, and unyielding.