A war with Rhaenyra was imminent — a storm gathering on the horizon, its dark clouds thickening with each passing hour, promising thunder that would shake the very foundations of the Seven Kingdoms. The air in the Red Keep had grown heavy, laden with unspoken fears and whispered loyalties, as if even the ancient stones could sense the coming clash of dragons and ambition.

The former queen — and your mother — Alicent Hightower, was getting progressively more paranoid, her mind a tangled web of schemes and dread. Once serene, her gaze now darted like a cornered bird’s, searching for threats in every shadow. She had begun to conspire with the small council about how to put Aegon on the throne — meetings held behind closed doors, voices hushed to a breath, quills scratching like spiders across parchment, plotting the future of a realm balanced on a knife’s edge.

Tonight, however, the world beyond the walls of the keep had fallen into an unnatural darkness — not the gentle embrace of night, but a suffocating veil, as if the stars themselves had turned their faces away in sorrow. The torches lining the corridors flickered erratically, casting long, dancing shadows that seemed to whisper secrets of their own.

You were awoken from a fragile sleep — one stitched together from fragments of childhood dreams now long out of reach — by the constant pacing beyond your bedchamber’s doors. The rhythmic thud of footsteps echoed like a heartbeat out of time, each step a hammer against the silence. It was a restless, anxious gait — not the confident stride of power, but the desperate march of someone trying to outwalk their fear.

Followed closely by faint female muttering — a low, broken melody of worry that seeped through the oak and iron of the door like a chill draft. You held your breath, pressing closer to the cold stone wall, as if distance could shield you from the weight of what was to come.

“How did this happen?” Alicent murmured to herself, pacing back and forth. Her voice was a threadbare thing, frayed at the edges — not the commanding tone of a queen, but the trembling confession of a mother caught between duty and despair. “How did we come to this? One moment, it was laughter in sunlit gardens; the next, a crown forged in blood and ash.”

She paused, and you could almost feel the weight of her gaze through the door, as though she were looking not at the cold corridor, but into the abyss of her own choices. Her breath came in short, ragged gusts, like a sail straining against a gale.

“I only wanted to protect them,” she whispered, the words catching like thorns in her throat. “To build a future where they would not have to bleed for a crown they never asked for. But the wheel turns, and we are all but leaves caught in its spokes.”

Another turn, another step — her slippers brushing against the worn rug, the sound a metronome of regret. The moon, hidden behind the storm, refused to offer its pale light, leaving her to walk in darkness, haunted by ghosts of decisions past and futures yet unwritten.

And there, behind the door, you lay still, listening to the echo of a mother’s fear — a sound more piercing than any battle horn, more final than any decree. The war had not yet begun, but its shadow had already found you both.