The first sensation was pressure. An unyielding, claustrophobic darkness that had defined the entirety of his existence. It was a smooth, curved prison, womb and tomb entwined. There was no thought, only a primal, burgeoning instinct that whispered of more. More space. More life. The whispers became a roar, a biological imperative that thrummed through nascent sinew and bone still soft as cartilage. A force, ancient and irresistible, compelled him to push.
A crack, no louder than a snapping twig, echoed in the hollow space. A sliver of light, blinding and utterly alien, pierced the gloom. It was not the gentle, filtered light of a womb, but something harsh and raw. With the light came a scent—salt, smoke, and something acrid, volcanic. The pressure intensified, not from without, but from within. A second push, fueled by a desperation he couldn't comprehend, and the world broke open.
He tumbled out, a wet, clumsy heap of scales and limbs, onto rough, warm stone. The air was a shock, a scouring force that filled his freshly inflated lungs with a gasp that was half-shriek, half-hiss. It burned. Everything burned. The light seared his new eyes, the air chafed his slick, membranous wings, the ground scraped against a hide that had never known texture. He was a creature of instinct, a bundle of raw nerves and screaming need. He should have been terrified, a helpless infant in a vast, threatening world.
But then, the other memories came. Not the gentle, biological unfolding of a newborn beast, but a deluge. A tidal wave of a life already lived, a consciousness fully formed, crashing into the pristine, empty vessel of his draconic mind.
Rain on a windowpane. The soft glow of a screen. The scent of old paper and ink. The weight of a book in his hands, pages filled with maps of a land he now smelled on the air. Westeros.
The dichotomy was a physical agony. His mind, the mind of a man who had read of dragons, dreamed of dragons, and critiqued the follies of their masters, was now trapped within one. He remembered his name, a mundane sound from a world of steel and silicon, now a meaningless echo. He remembered his life, a thread cut short by the cliché of a speeding truck. He remembered his obsession, the magnum opus of a portly, bearded author, a world of ice and fire that he had consumed with a fanatic's devotion. A cunning, cautious, ruthless, psychopathic fan. The self-diagnosis had always been delivered with a smirk, a private acknowledgment of the darkness he saw reflected in the grimmest characters of the saga. He'd admired Tywin's cold pragmatism, Roose Bolton's chilling ambition, Euron Greyjoy's audacious madness. He hadn't cheered for the heroes; he had studied the villains.
Now, he wasn't studying. He was living it.
And he was a dragon. A newly hatched dragon.
Ten years before the Dance. The knowledge settled not as a learned fact, but as an intrinsic truth, as certain as the heat radiating from the stone beneath him. The great, bloody, dragon-killing civil war was a decade away. A war that would see his kind, the most magnificent and powerful creatures in the world, butchered and driven to extinction by the petty squabbles of the bipedal apes who called themselves their masters.
Panic, cold and sharp, tried to seize him. He was a hatchling. Weak. Vulnerable. Destined to be leashed, ridden, and sent to his death in a pointless conflict. He saw the future in a flash of remembered text: Vhagar tearing Arrax asunder in a storm; Sunfyre and Vhagar burning Meleys out of the sky; the frenzied mob in the Dragonpit, a wave of insignificant insects with spears and axes, overwhelming the chained gods.
Then, another sensation bloomed, deeper than the memories of his past life, more profound than the instincts of his new body. It was a language. Not the Common Tongue of Westeros, nor the High Valyrian of his presumed masters, but something else. Something that felt like home in a way his human life never had.
Dovahzul. The Dragon Tongue. Words of Power.
The terror receded, replaced by a cold, sharp clarity that was utterly his own. He was not just a beast. He was Dovah. A Dragon. The word resonated in his soul, a declaration of identity, a rejection of the bestial fate awaiting him.
He pushed himself up on trembling legs, his claws scraping on the obsidian-like ground. He took in his surroundings. He was in a clutch with other hatchlings, a squirming mass of bronze, green, and black scales. They hissed and snapped at each other, driven by simple hunger and aggression. He looked past them, his gaze sweeping over the scene with an intelligence that was chillingly out of place in a creature so young.
He was on Dragonstone. The smoking mountain loomed against a grey sky, its peak wreathed in a perpetual plume of vapor. The architecture was Valyrian, fused and flowing stone, a testament to a power that had shattered mountains and tamed gods. And there, tending to the new clutch, were the gods' keepers. Men in dark, Targaryen livery. Their faces were studies in awe and caution. And beyond them, standing with an air of proprietary pride, was a figure he recognized with a jolt that was part terror, part predatory excitement.
Prince Daemon Targaryen. Younger than the rogue prince of the Dance, but the same dangerous energy coiled around him like a visible aura. Darkstar, they called him in the books, but Daemon was the true article. And in his arms, he held a silver-haired child, a boy no older than three. Laenor Velaryon's eldest son, Jacaerys. He remembered the timeline. Viserys had decreed that his grandsons would receive eggs in their cradles. One of the squirming, mindless beasts beside him was meant for this boy.
A wave of revulsion and contempt washed over him. To be a pet. A mount. A living weapon wielded by a child who would grow into a man and die foolishly, taking his dragon with him. Vermax. That was the dragon's name. Slain above the Gullet, crashing into the sea, tangled in the rigging of a ship he had been too arrogant to see as a threat.
No. Krosis. Sorrow. That would not be his fate.
He needed a name. Not a slave name like Vermax or Syrax. A name of his own. A name in the tongue of power. He thought of his past, the hollow ache of a life unlived, the sorrow of a meaningless death. He thought of his future, the brutal, relentless struggle that lay ahead. Krosis. Krif. Sorrow. Fight.
He was Krosis-Krif. Sorrow-Fight. The one who would fight against the sorrowful fate laid out for him.
A deep, primal hunger gnawed at his belly. It was more than the simple need for sustenance. It was a cavernous void, a black hole demanding to be filled. The keepers tossed a bucket of bloody meat into their enclosure. The other hatchlings descended upon it in a frenzy, tearing and swallowing. Krosis-Krif watched for a second, his mind cold and analytical. Then he moved. He wasn't the largest of the clutch, his scales a deep, lustreless black, like cooled lava rock, but his movements were precise. He didn't join the fray; he targeted a smaller, bronze hatchling that had secured a large chunk of flesh.
He didn't hiss or posture. He struck. His jaws, still weak but armed with needle-sharp teeth, clamped down on the bronze one's leg. A shriek of pain. The bronze hatchling dropped the meat. Krosis-Krif ignored it. He was a psychopath, after all. He didn't just want the food; he wanted to establish dominance. He bit down harder, a satisfying crunch echoing in his skull. The other dragon thrashed, but Krosis-Krif held on, his black eyes unblinking. The keepers shouted in alarm, but made no move to intervene. Such things were common.
Finally, the bronze hatchling scrambled away, whimpering and trailing blood. The other hatchlings gave him a wide berth. Krosis-Krif turned his attention to the prize. He devoured the chunk of meat, and as the flesh slid down his throat, a new sensation, utterly magical and intoxicating, flooded his being.
It was power. A literal, tangible surge of it. He could feel his muscles knitting together, growing denser. His bones hardening. A warmth spread through him, a feeling of vitality so potent it was almost painful. He looked down at his own claws and could have sworn they were a millimeter longer than they had been moments before.
The ability to increase size and magical power the more he eats.
It wasn't just a perk. It was the key. The answer to everything. The path to godhood. He wasn't bound by the slow, conventional growth of his kind. He could accelerate. He could become immense. Larger than Vhagar. Larger than Balerion the Black Dread had ever been. A dragon's power was its size. A dragon the size of a mountain was not a weapon to be wielded; it was a force of nature. An apocalypse on wings. No mob could storm him, no scorpion bolt could pierce a hide a foot thick.
Naak... Zu'u fen naak fun-lok. Eat... I will eat the whole sky.
The next few weeks were a blur of calculated voracity. He was a black hole in the shape of a dragon. He bullied the other hatchlings, stealing their portions, his intelligence giving him an edge they couldn't comprehend. He wasn't just fighting for food; he was fighting for his future. Every scrap of meat, every bone crunched between his jaws, was another brick in the fortress of his survival. He grew visibly faster than his siblings. His black scales lost their dullness, taking on a deep, obsidian sheen, hard and sharp at the edges. His eyes, which had been the murky yellow of a common reptile, began to glow with a faint, internal embers, the color of molten gold.
The keepers noticed. They spoke in hushed tones, pointing at him. They saw a prodigy, a prime specimen. A prize for a worthy Targaryen. Their attention was a death sentence.
One day, a new figure approached the enclosure. Not a keeper, but a woman. He recognized her instantly from the descriptions in Fire & Blood. Queen Alicent Hightower. She was younger, still beautiful, but the seeds of her pious ambition were already visible in the tight set of her mouth. With her was a boy with silver hair and a perpetually sullen expression. Aegon. The future King Aegon II, the usurper, the fool who would start the war and die a broken, poisoned man.
"That one," Alicent said, her voice crisp, pointing a slender finger directly at Krosis-Krif. "The black one. He is the strongest."
An old, bearded dragonkeeper bowed his head. "He is, Your Grace. A fierce one. Hatched from a clutch laid by Dreamfyre, we think. He has a... strange spirit."
"A strong spirit is what my son needs," Alicent declared. Aegon looked at Krosis-Krif with a mixture of fear and desire. The look a boy gives a sharp, beautiful new sword. The look of a master eyeing a tool.
A keeper, emboldened by the queen's presence, unlatched the gate to the enclosure. "Perhaps the prince would like to... meet him."
This was it. The moment of bondage. The first link in the chain that would lead to his doom. They would try to touch him, to forge the mystical bond between rider and mount. His entire being recoiled from the thought with a violence that was absolute. He would not be a slave.
Aegon took a hesitant step inside. He was just a boy, perhaps six or seven years old. In his past life, Krosis-Krif might have felt a flicker of something, but the human part of him was a cold, dead thing, a library of useful facts. The dragon, the psychopath, felt only contempt. This mewling whelp wanted to own him? To ride him into fire and death?
As Aegon approached, hand outstretched, Krosis-Krif didn't hiss. He didn't roar. He did something far more terrifying.
He spoke.
"Gein... los... zey," he growled. The sound was deep, guttural, resonating from his chest like the grinding of tectonic plates. It was not the screech of a beast. It was articulate. Each word was a hammer blow of sound. One... I am... I.
Aegon froze, his eyes widening in shock and fear. The keepers stared, dumbfounded. Queen Alicent's mask of serene authority slipped, her lips parting in disbelief.
"What was that noise?" she demanded.
The old keeper shook his head, his face pale. "I... I do not know, Your Grace. I have never heard a hatchling make such a sound."
Krosis-Krif held Aegon's gaze. The embers in his eyes flared brighter. He let a thin wisp of black smoke curl from his nostrils, carrying the scent of brimstone and charred meat. He took a deliberate step forward, not with the quick, darting movements of a reptile, but with the slow, ponderous tread of a predator that knows it has no equal. He lowered his head, not in submission, but to bring his glowing eyes level with the boy's.
He saw the future in Aegon's face. He saw the Golden Dragon, Sunfyre, beautiful and doomed. He saw the horrific burns at Rook's Rest, the shattered legs. He saw the crown, the madness, the poison. He saw failure.
With a speed that belied his growing size, he snapped his jaws shut an inch from Aegon's trembling fingers. The sound was like a blacksmith's hammer striking an anvil. The prince cried out and scrambled backward, falling in a heap. The queen gasped. Her guards rushed forward, their hands on their swords.
But Krosis-Krif did nothing more. He had made his point. He was not a pet. He was not a mount. He was not a prize to be claimed. He turned his back on the terrified prince and his furious mother, an act of supreme insolence. He walked to the far side of the enclosure, coiled himself into a tight, formidable mass of black scales, and closed his eyes. But he wasn't resting. He was planning.
This cage would not hold him for long. Dragonstone was a temporary feeding ground. He needed to leave. He needed the vast, untamed wilderness of Westeros. The forests of the Rainwood, teeming with game. The endless plains of the Reach, dotted with fat, slow-moving sheep and cattle. The Mountains of the Moon, high and isolated, where he could grow in secret, undisturbed.
He would hunt. He would feast. He would grow. He would gorge himself on the flesh of this world until his size blotted out the sun and his roar could shatter castles. The Targaryens thought they were the masters of dragons. They were children playing with fire. He was not fire to be played with. He was the coming conflagration.
He let his consciousness drift, focusing on the thrumming power within him, the insatiable hunger that was his birthright and his salvation. The words of the Dovahzul were his catechism, his shield against the world of men. He was Krosis-Krif. His sorrow was his memory of a future he would unmake. His fight was the path to his apotheosis. Let the pathetic humans play their game of thrones. He was playing a different game, one of survival and ultimate power. And in his game, there was only one rule: Naak faal vennesetiid. Eat the past, the present, and the future. Devour it all.