In the dark belly of Dragonstone, where the maesters feared to tread because the air grew thick with sulfur and the walls groaned with the weight of the sea, you built your true kingdom. You did not need their permission to be a dragon. Using the ancient blood-magic of the old lords—the spells that had raised the towers of Valyria before the sky turned to glass—you constructed a massive, towering pyramid of obsidian incubators. They were not warmed by coals, but by your own fire-wielding. You would slice your palm with a shard of dragonglass, letting your thick, dark blood drop into the vents, igniting a magic so ancient it turned the air purple. Inside, hidden from the sight of your family, lay the eggs.

You had stolen them from the deepest cracks of the mountain—eggs that had been forgotten for a century, cold and stony. Your magic woke them. They pulsed like hearts in the dark.

You did not claim Balerion, nor Vhagar, nor Meraxes. Those were the hounds of the Targaryen kennel, broken to the saddle.

You went into the high, jagged cliffs where the wild ones lived—the dragons that had never known the touch of a whip or the taste of a stable-master's meat.

The Cannibal, a monster of pure midnight and jade fire, tried to consume you when you first entered his lair. You did not draw a sword. You simply opened your robes, baring your chest to his heat, and unleashed the shadow-weaving.

The shadows rose from the floor like massive, silent wings, wrapping around the great beast until he whimpered, his massive head lowering into your palm.

You taught them to carry your wealth.

Through your magic, the three wild dragons used their iron-hard talons to lift the massive obsidian incubators, carrying them away in the dead of night, hidden beneath a shroud of mist that Grey Ghost wove around the island.

The day before Aegon flew west to burn a continent, he found you in the library, packing your scrolls into heavy weirwood chests.

"The bells are ringing," Aegon said, standing in the doorway. He looked smaller than you, though he wore the steel and the crown of the Conqueror.

"The fleet is ready. We sail for the Blackwater. This is your last chance to ride behind me, brother. There is a kingdom for you to rule if you help us take it."

You did not look up from your book. Your silver hair fell forward, a curtain of silk that hid your face.

"You go to conquer a land of mud and mud-kings, Aegon," you said, your voice like the rustle of dry autumn leaves.

"You will spend your life counting their cows and listening to their prayers.

You think yourself a god because you ride a beast that breathes fire. But you are just a king. And kings die."

"And what are you?" Aegon demanded, his fist clenching.

"A scholar of dead things? A second son who hides in the dark because he was passed over?."

You finally looked up. Your violet eyes were not the hot, burning purple of Aegon’s; they were the deep, dark indigo of the sky just before the stars fail.

"I am the branch that broke away," you said, your voice dropping to a whisper that filled the entire stone tower.

"You will build an iron chair, and your children will kill each other for the right to sit upon it.

They will forget my name because your maesters will not write it. But far from here, where the sea meets the sky, my house will grow.

We will have the old magic. We will have the wild blood. And when your iron chair has rusted to nothing, my children will still rule the night."

You reached out, your long, pale fingers touching the air. A shadow—thick as ink, cold as winter—rose from the corner of the room and wrapped around your chest, swallowing you whole.

When the shadow dissipated, the room was empty. The chests were gone. The books were gone.