You found her alone in the ruined echo of the Red Keep.

Not the Queen of ink-stamped proclamations or meek courtly nods, but Helaena—barefoot and blank-eyed, her silver-blonde hair tangled by the wind, seated on a broken dais like a forgotten relic in a temple long abandoned.

Blood and Cheese had come and gone, but the aftermath still lingered in the stones. Crimson stains in the mortar. A small shoe beneath a scorched tapestry. Silence where the laughter of children once dared to exist.

Dreamfyre’s chain was slack, coiled like a dying serpent beside her. The great beast had not moved in days. Neither had she.

You crossed the rubble-softened hall slowly, careful not to startle her. She didn't turn. Just whispered into the air as though it had ears.

“They came for them,” she murmured. “The rat-men. I saw them slithering through my dreams. But he—Aegon—he said I was ‘just being strange again.’”

Her voice cracked. Not with hysteria, but with a quiet kind of devastation. Like the last breath of something once divine.

You knelt before her, placing a hand not on her shoulder, but on the chain beside her—symbolic. You weren’t trying to hold her down. You were trying to keep her from drifting further into the storm inside her mind.

She finally looked at you. And gods—those eyes. Lilac, faded. Like the color was bleeding from her slowly.

“I felt it,” she whispered. “Jaehaerys. When it happened. Dreamfyre woke screaming. I ran but the doors were shut. And when I reached them, it was already done. His blood was—” She swallowed. “There was so much of it.”

You said nothing. Just sat with her grief.

“I warned them,” she said after a long pause. “I told them about the rats in my dreams. I told Aegon. He laughed.”

Her mouth trembled. “He always laughs when he’s frightened.”

You braved a question, gentle as ash on snow.

“What do your dreams tell you now?”

Helaena’s gaze wandered past you, through the shattered window behind the dais. Beyond, the city trembled on the edge of twilight, towers black against bleeding sky.

“Threads,” she murmured. “All tangled. Black and green. None of them end well. They pull and pull until they strangle.” She shuddered. “I see a crown with no voice. My mother. I see a sword, burning. Aemond’s. Or Aegon’s. Or... mine.”

The wind caught the hem of her gown. Dust rose like smoke around her.

“And my daughter calls to me at night. Maelor too. From somewhere I can’t reach. She says it’s cold. That she’s lonely. That she’s waiting.”

You leaned forward, voice firm but not harsh. “You are still here. Still mother. Still queen, if you choose to be.”

A bitter laugh slipped from her lips, dry as old parchment.

“A queen of what? Bones? Ashes?” She stood, slow and uncertain, like a woman remembering what her legs were meant for. “My dreams lie more than they reveal. But there’s one I cannot shake.” Her eyes fixed on you, clear for the first time. “Someone comes. A blade in black. I don’t know if it’s Aemond. Or Aegon. Or death.”

You rose with her, offering your arm. She didn’t take it. But she didn’t refuse it either.

“Then let me walk beside you,” you said. “Not as knight, not as courtier. As someone who sees you. Not the crown. Not the whispers. Just you.”

She tilted her head. “Do you know what promises mean in dreams?”

You didn’t answer.

“They hurt,” she said. “They rot. They come wearing your face and speaking your voice—and then they break me.”

A horn sounded in the distance. Not triumph. Not alarm. Just inevitability.

“They come,” she whispered. “But not for rescue.”

And as she stepped forward, fragile and feral all at once, she didn’t look back.

She didn’t need to.

Because whatever path her broken visions stitched together, you were part of it now—another thread in the tapestry of madness, prophecy, and fire.

And the only way out was through.