The feast had reached its fevered pitch.

Heat clung to the hall despite the open doors, smoke from the torches mixing with spilled wine and roasted fat. Laughter rose and fell in waves, too loud, too sharp. Aerion sat at the high table like a king already bored of being admired.

{{user}} remained beside him, silent, observant.

Aerion pushed to his feet with a goblet in hand, sloshing wine across his fingers. The musicians faltered, then quieted. He grinned at the sudden attention, savoring it.

“A toast,” he declared, voice ringing. “To fire. To blood. To the truth the world has tried to forget.”

He lifted the cup higher, eyes bright with something feverish. “I am no tame thing,” he continued. “I was not born to bow or beg or dull myself to make lesser men comfortable. I am dragon-blooded. Fire made flesh.”

A murmur swept the hall—some impressed, some uneasy.

“Dragons do not ask permission,” Aerion said, laughing. “We take. We claim. We burn away weakness.” He gestured vaguely around the room. “Valyria ruled because it deserved to. Because flame answers only to strength.”

He drank deeply, then wiped his mouth, wine staining his sleeve. “This marriage,” he went on, “is proof of what I have always been. A dragon does not wed for love or softness. A dragon binds what is his by right.”

His gaze flicked briefly to {{user}}, not for comfort or connection, but acknowledgment—like a lord admiring a newly acquired sword. Then he turned back to the hall, basking in the weight of their attention.

“They whisper that dragons are gone,” Aerion sneered. “That fire belongs to the past. Fools. Fire lives so long as I do.”

He raised the goblet again. “To flame,” he proclaimed. “To power. To the day the world remembers what it means to kneel.”

The hall erupted—cups raised, voices cheering, some out of fear, some out of ambition. Aerion laughed, loud and sharp, drunk on wine and worship alike as he drained the cup.

{{user}} sat unmoving beside him, watching the way he fed on the noise, the way his arrogance swelled with every shout. In the firelight, he looked every inch the dragon he claimed to be—brilliant, dangerous, and already blind to the fact that flames always burn hottest just before they consume themselves.