The sands of the Scourge did not merely catch the heat; they drank the blood of kings and asked for more.

For three turnings of the moon, the Young Dragon had marched across a desert of ghosts.

He had studied his maps by candlelight in the Red Keep, his violet eyes tracing the arid passes and dry wells, believing he could conquer with parchment what Aegon could not with fire.

At first, the land had yielded to him in an eerie, whistling silence.

The keeps were empty; the smallholds were desolate. There were no children playing in the dust, no women weaving beneath the shade of the awnings.

There was only the hot, dry wind whistling through abandoned brick, mocking the iron tread of his thousands.

He believed it was submission. He believed he had carved his name in stone.

He did not know that the sun was merely drawing him deep into its throat. It was you who wove the net.

As the Princess of Dorne and the rightful heir to the Sunspear, you knew that the only way to kill a dragon was to let him fly so high he forgot the ground.

You had studied how your ancestors took Queen Rhaenys from the sky—not with an army in open fields, but with a single, unyielding spike of iron through the eye of her beast, sending fire and royalty plunging into the screaming earth.

You did not have dragons, but you had the unforgiving sands, the burning sky, and a patience born of the desert.

The ambush at the deep basin of the broken hills was a masterpiece of blood and silence.

When your signal broke—the sharp, piercing cry of a sand-hawk—the very dunes seemed to rise.

A multi-pronged storm of spears, tipped with the venom of the red mountain adders, rained from the ridges. Flaming arrows hissed through the heat-addled air, turning the proud banners of House Targaryen into blackened ash before they could even hit the ground.

The hot sands swallowed the sun’s eye, blinding the knights in their heavy, sweltering steel.

The proud, massive army that had marched south to complete the Conqueror’s map was shattered in a single afternoon, choked by dust and undone by the brilliant, ruthless geometry of your trap.

Now, the midday sun hung like a molten shield directly above your pavilion.

You sat upon a high, carven throne of polished cedar and hammered copper, draped in silks the color of baked clay and sun-bleached bone.

A heavy collar of gold snakes coiled around your collarbones, their emerald eyes catching the harsh light.

Your dark hair was braided back headband of gold, your face bare and unpainted, carrying the fierce, regal pride of Nymeria’s blood.

"Bring them," you commanded, your voice a low, cool stream against the suffocating heat.

The iron links of heavy chains rattled against the stone floor of the pavilion as the guards dragged the prizes of your war into the shade.

They were thrown down with a heavy, unceremonious thud—beaten, bruised, and dripping the dark crimson of defeat onto the pale rugs at your feet. There lay the princes of the realm. And there, at the center, was the Young Dragon himself.

Daeron I Targaryen was brought to his knees before you, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. The magnificent armor was ruined.

The polished steel was dented and coated in a thick crust of dried blood and yellow desert dust. The grand golden three-headed dragon embossed upon his breastplate was cracked across its center, as if the beast itself had been broken by your spears.

His left shoulder guard, once a proud golden dragon's head, was sheared half-away.

Yet, as he forced his head up, his features remained blindingly handsome through the grime. His thick, voluminous hair—that pale ash-blonde, silver-cream silk—was matted with sweat and dirt, falling wildly around his ears.

His clear violet eyes burned with an unyielding, furious intensity. Even bound in iron, a faint, defiant smirk played upon his bloody lips. He looked at you not as a captive looks at a conqueror, but as a god looks at upstart.

Beside him, similarly bound and severely beaten, was his cousin, Prince Aemon the Dragonknight .