Chapter 3: A Kingdom of Silence and Bone
Five years. In the grand, slow turning of the world, it was but a moment. For the Targaryen princelings and princesses, it was an age of lessons, tourneys, and festering rivalries. For Krosis-Krif, it was an eon of relentless, brutal ascension. The mountains were his crucible, and the furnace of his hunger burned without cease. The hatchling who had fled Dragonstone, the size of a pony, was a memory, a shed skin left behind in the race for ultimate power.
Now, he was titanic. From snout to tail, he measured over a hundred and fifty feet. His wingspan was vast enough to cast a village into premature twilight. When he stood to his full height, his head towered over the tallest pines of the high valleys. His scales were no longer the simple, polished black of his youth. They had grown into thick, interlocking plates of obsidian armor, each one the size of a knight's shield, with edges so sharp they could shear through flesh and bone with a casual brush. A ridge of jagged, crystalline spines, the color of dried blood, ran down his back, glinting menacingly even in low light. His horns, once mere nubs, had twisted into two great, forward-curving weapons that framed a skull larger than a carriage. And his eyes, those molten gold embers, now burned with a constant, intelligent fire, the gaze of a being that did not just see, but analyzed, judged, and condemned everything it beheld.
His kingdom was a place of profound silence. The high peaks of the Mountains of the Moon, once teeming with life, were now his private larder. The great shadowcats that had once been the apex predators of this realm were gone, hunted into extinction in his territory. The mountain lions were ghosts. The vast herds of hardy goats and sure-footed sheep had been systematically consumed, valley by valley. He was a force of unnatural selection, a walking extinction event. His hunting methods were a testament to his human intellect, refined by draconic power. He didn't simply chase prey. He studied their migratory paths, their watering holes, their birthing grounds. He would create avalanches to trap entire herds, or use his growing command of fire to drive them towards a cliff's edge. It was never a fight; it was a harvest.
His lair remained the same cave high on the peak, but he had expanded it. Using his fire—now a torrent of liquid flame that could melt solid rock—and his immense physical strength, he had hollowed out deeper chambers, creating a vast, echoing hall where he could rest, safe from any storm and hidden from the eyes of the world. The floor of his sanctum was a macabre mosaic of bones, bleached white and picked clean, the silent testament to the thousands of lives that had fueled his growth. He would sometimes lie amongst them, the memories of his human life a distant, cold hum in the back of his mind, and contemplate the sheer, beautiful efficiency of it all. Life was fuel. Nothing more.
But the fuel was running low. The larger beasts were gone. The remaining prey was small, scarce, and hardly worth the effort. The gnawing hunger, the demand for more power, was a constant torment. He could feel his growth slowing, plateauing. To accept this was to accept a limit, and to accept a limit was to accept a vulnerability. Vhagar was still out there. Caraxes was still out there. The doom of the Dance was still coming. He was not yet strong enough.
For years, he had watched them. The other inhabitants of the mountains. The clansmen. In his human life, he had read of them: the Black Ears, the Burned Men, the Stone Crows. Primitive, savage tribes who worshiped strange gods and lived by raiding the fertile lands of the Vale below. He had avoided them, not out of fear, but out of a cold, calculated patience. They were a resource he was saving. Now, the time had come to collect.
From his perch, he studied their movements with the detached focus of a naturalist observing an insect colony. He saw their hunting parties, armed with crude spears and stone axes. He watched their territorial squabbles, their strange rituals of blood and fire. He saw their villages: clusters of crude huts made of stone and turf, nestled in the more sheltered, lower valleys. To his draconic senses, they were noisy, smelly creatures. To his human intellect, they were a puzzle to be solved. To his psychopathic core, they were an untapped source of nourishment.
His hypothesis, formed that first day he consumed his clutch-mate, had lingered in his mind. The energy gained from a draconic source had been potent. What, then, of a sentient, tool-using primate? A human brain contained a universe of thoughts, memories, and emotions. What was the energy signature of a soul? Would consuming one provide a greater leap in power than devouring a thousand sheep? There was only one way to find out. This wasn't about malice or hatred. It was an experiment. A necessary step on his path.
He chose his target with care: a settlement of the Burned Men, located in a narrow valley several peaks away from his own. It was isolated, containing perhaps two hundred individuals. Large enough to be a worthwhile meal, but small enough that no survivors would escape to spread a coherent tale. He watched them for a full lunar cycle. He memorized the positions of their sentries, the rhythm of their daily lives, the location of the chieftain's hut where the strongest warriors slept. He noted how they huddled in their hovels during the coldest nights, their fires casting flickering shadows against the stone.
The attack would not be a glorious, fiery rampage. That was the way of a beast, of Caraxes or Meleys. His would be the way of a silent killer. The way of Roose Bolton, not Gregor Clegane. Terror was a byproduct, not the goal. The goal was efficient acquisition of biomass.
He chose a night when the wind was howling down from the highest peaks, a bitter, shrieking gale that would mask any sound. He did not fly directly to the village. Instead, he landed silently on a ridge high above it, a colossal shadow melding with the larger shadows of the mountain. He crept down the slope, his massive form moving with an unnatural stealth he had cultivated over years of stalking his prey. His claws, each longer than a man's arm, made no sound on the frozen ground. The clansmen in their huts, shivering around their fires, had no conception of the doom that was descending upon them.
He positioned himself at the mouth of the narrow valley, a living wall of black scales cutting off their only escape route. He could smell them. The scent of woodsmoke, unwashed bodies, cooked meat, and fear. He waited. Patience was the virtue of the predator who knows his victory is absolute.
His first target was the sentry on the eastern ridge, a lone figure silhouetted against the faint starlight. Krosis-Krif didn't even grant him the dignity of a direct assault. He simply lifted one massive foot and placed it down. The man was gone, a brief, muffled crunch lost in the shriek of the wind.
Then, he began.
He moved into the village itself. The wind was his ally, the darkness his cloak. He went from hut to hut, not breathing fire, not roaring, but using his physical form with chilling precision. He would crush a roof with a casual nudge of his snout, the occupants dying in their sleep, buried under stone and turf. He would use the tip of his tail, a whip of scaled muscle ending in a wicked, bony club, to shatter the wall of another hut, then reach inside with a single claw to pluck out the inhabitants.
It was when he made his first kill up close that he tested his theory. He cornered a large warrior, the clan's chieftain, who had been woken by the sounds and had emerged from his hut, axe in hand. The man's face, painted with crude symbols, was a mask of disbelief and terror. He screamed, a raw, primal sound of pure horror. Krosis-Krif lowered his immense head, his golden eyes fixing on the man's. He saw the man's life flash in those terrified eyes: the hunt, the birth of his children, the love for his woman, the fear of his gods. It was a whirlwind of complex energy.
Then, he ate him.
The rush was unlike anything he had ever experienced. It was not just the familiar surge of physical power, the knitting of muscle and hardening of scale. This was something more. It was a psychic explosion. He felt the man's memories, his emotions, his very life force, being siphoned into him. It was a fleeting, chaotic torrent of information that his mind instantly broke down, filtered, and absorbed, converting it all into pure, unadulterated magical energy. The embers in his eyes flared, burning with the intensity of twin suns. The heat in his core surged, and he felt a new, deeper layer of his draconic nature unlock. His fire would be hotter. His mind, sharper. His will, more absolute.
The hypothesis was confirmed. Sentient life was premium fuel.
The rest of the raid was a blur of silent, merciless consumption. He moved through the village like a ghost, a nightmare given form. There were screams, but they were short-lived, choked off as he methodically disassembled the tribe. He was not just killing them; he was erasing them. He devoured them all—the warriors, the women, the children, the old. No witnesses. No survivors. It was the most fundamental rule of his old life, applied now with devastating finality.
When he was done, the valley was silent once more, save for the ceaseless wind. The village of the Burned Men was gone, replaced by a ruin of crushed huts and dark stains on the snow-dusted ground. Krosis-Krif stood in the center of the devastation, his great black chest rising and falling with slow, even breaths. He felt no remorse, no guilt, no pity. He felt only a cold, profound satisfaction. He had gained more power in this single night than he had in the last six months of hunting beasts. His growth, which had begun to stagnate, kicked into a higher gear. He could feel his bones creaking as they expanded, his scales tightening over new layers of muscle.
He took to the air, circling the valley once to ensure his work was complete, before banking and flying towards his lair. He left the bones. Let the other clans find them. Let them whisper their fearful stories. Let them create legends of a new god of the mountains, a silent demon that devoured entire villages. Fear was a wall. It would keep them away from his territory. It would make them hide. It would make them easier to hunt, next time.
In the weeks that followed, he felt the change in the mountains. Patrols from other clans, the Black Ears and the Stone Crows, ventured into the Burned Men's valley. He watched from on high as they discovered the ruins. He saw their fear. He heard their panicked shouts carried on the wind. The news spread through the mountains like a contagion. They spoke of Krosul, the Black Silence. They left offerings at the mouths of valleys: dead goats, crude carvings, anything to appease the new, unseen power that had come to their home. The offerings were a welcome supplement to his diet.
His impact was beginning to be felt, a ripple spreading from his isolated kingdom. He knew that eventually, those ripples would reach the Vale. Some terrified clansman, captured by the Knights of the Vale, would babble a story about a dragon of impossible size, a demon of shadow and silence. The Arryns would dismiss it as the ravings of a savage. At first. But the stories would persist. The silence from the high peaks would be noted. The cessation of raids from the Burned Men would be a mystery.
From the ledge of his lair, now significantly larger and more powerful than before, he looked east. On a clear day, he could just make out the distant, shimmering line of the Narrow Sea. And beyond that, the world. The world that was marching towards war. The Dance of the Dragons.
The thought no longer filled him with the cold dread of a victim. His perspective had shifted. He was no longer thinking merely of survival. The power thrumming in his chest, a direct result of his utter ruthlessness, sparked a new and dangerous emotion: ambition.
Why just survive the Dance? Why hide from it?
The war would throw the world into chaos. The Targaryens would unleash their dragons upon each other. Vhagar, Caraxes, Syrax, Sunfyre… they would all be committed. They would bleed. They would weaken each other. Their riders, so full of pride and arrogance, would make mistakes. He knew every mistake they were going to make. He had read the book.
While the "great" dragons were busy immolating each other over places like Rook's Rest and the God's Eye, he would be here. Growing. Feasting. Ascending. The war wasn't just a threat to be weathered. It was an opportunity. An opportunity to emerge when all others had fallen. To be the last, the greatest, the undisputed apex predator on a continent swept clean of rivals.
He let out a low, guttural rumble, a sound that was no longer just a noise but a word in the language of his soul. Vukein. Victory.
He was Krosis-Krif. The Sorrow-Fight. The one who fought against a sorrowful fate. But now, he saw a new meaning in the name. He would not just fight his own sorrow. He would become the sorrow of others. He would bring the fight to them. The game of thrones was for men. The game of dragons was about to begin, and he was the only player who knew all the rules. The world would provide the pieces. And he would devour them all.