Chapter 46: An Inheritance of Ash
Time, for a god, was a current in a great river, its passage measured in the slow erosion of mountains and the shifting of stars. For an immortal, it was a more insidious thing, a silent thief that stole the faces of everyone you had ever known, leaving behind only the ghosts of memory.
One hundred and sixty years had passed since the Theocracy's triumph over the Volantene coalition. Two centuries had passed since the Doom of Valyria. The Century of Blood had bled itself out, leaving behind a new map of Essos, a landscape of scars, ruins, and two colossal powers: the humbled, wary remnants of the old Valyrian successor states, and the Golden Dragon Theocracy, a gleaming, unassailable empire whose golden wyrm banner was the most respected and feared sigil in the known world.
The Theocracy had entered its long afternoon, an extended golden age of peace and unparalleled progress. The five immortal Prophet-Regents who had forged it from the fires of revolution now presided over a marvel of civilization.
Hesh's Wyrm's Roads were the arteries of the continent, engineering marvels that connected their provinces so efficiently that a merchant could travel from Lysaro to Old Ghis in a quarter of the time it once took. His Academy of Builders had pioneered new forms of concrete, advanced sanitation systems, and even intricate clockwork mechanisms that were beginning to automate the looms in the textile workshops of Mantarys.
Lyra's Serpent Trading Company was no longer a mere company; it was the circulatory system of the world's economy. Its trading outposts stood in every major city from the Summer Isles to the Jade Sea. Its coffers were so deep that it was said, only half in jest, that Lyra could buy the Iron Bank of Braavos with her petty cash. Her intelligence network was even more formidable. It was a web of whispers so vast and subtle that it was simply known as 'the Ouroboros,' the snake that sees all by eating its own tail.
Elara's Covenant Corps had transformed the Theocracy into the most educated and healthy society in the world. Life expectancy had nearly doubled. Literacy was almost universal. The Golden Covenant, the doctrine she had shepherded, was not just a religion; it was a deeply ingrained cultural operating system based on merit, community, and relentless self-improvement.
Jorah's Legions of the Wyrm, though they had not fought a major war in over a century, were the most professional and disciplined army on the planet. They were peacekeepers, guardians of the roads, and a permanent, terrifying reminder of the Theocracy's strength. Jorah himself had become a living legend, the Un-aging General, his presence alone enough to quell any border dispute before it began.
And the dragons… the dragons had thrived. The original thirteen were now Great Wyrms, ancient and immense, their wisdom profound, their presence a constant, low-level thrum of divine power that permeated the entire empire. They rarely flew now, preferring to spend their days in contemplation within the vastly expanded, sun-drenched upper chambers of the Vault, which had been opened to the sky. Their children, and their children's children, now numbered over one hundred. This new generation, smaller and more numerous, formed the active Guardian Fleet, their riders—the Wyrmguard—an established knightly order whose lineages were now intertwined with the dragons they were bonded to.
But for the five rulers, this golden age was a gilded cage. They stood apart, figures of living myth, their immortality a chasm that separated them from the people they loved and guided. They had watched Tarek and Fendrel grow old and die, their loyal service rewarded with peaceful, prosperous lives. They had watched the children of the artisans of Saris become masters of their guilds, and then watched them too pass into memory. They had officiated the weddings of their own grandchildren, and then presided over their funerals. They were sustained by their god's grace, un-aged, unchanging, while the river of mortal life flowed past them, leaving them as lonely, eternal statues on its banks.
Their bond with each other was all they had left. It was a bond of shared memory, shared burdens, and a profound, shared loneliness. They were the eternal parents of a nation that would forever be young in their eyes.
The cold war with Westeros had long since settled into a quiet, predictable routine. Their strategy of ideological subversion had been a resounding success. The Faith of the Seven remained a fractured, bickering institution. The authority of the Iron Throne, while absolute on the surface, was perpetually undermined by the proud, resentful lords whose rebellious tendencies were subtly encouraged and funded by Lyra's agents. The Targaryen dynasty had never achieved the true, unified power Aegon had dreamed of. They were a regional power, contained and manageable. The Theocracy had achieved its long-term goal. Westeros was not a threat.
It was this very success, this long, quiet peace, that made the news, when it came, so jarring.
Lyra called the emergency session of the High Council. It was the first time she had done so in over a decade. The other four prophets arrived in the War Room to find her standing before the great map of Westeros, her face grim. The years had not touched her beauty, but her eyes held the weary weight of a woman who had played the Great Game for longer than most nations existed.
"King Viserys Targaryen is dead," she announced without preamble.
The news was not unexpected. Their agents had been monitoring the king's failing health for years.
"His heir is his daughter, Rhaenyra," Lyra continued. "But the king's Hand, Otto Hightower, in concert with the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, has suppressed the news of the king's death. They have moved to crown Viserys's son, Aegon II, in her place. They have sent ravens to the great houses, demanding they swear fealty to the new king."
Jorah snorted. "A succession crisis. The vultures will feast. Let them squabble."
"It is more than a squabble, Jorah," Lyra said, her voice low. "Rhaenyra has fled to Dragonstone. She has the support of the Velaryon fleet, the most powerful navy in Westeros. And she has dragons. Her son, Jacaerys, rides Vermax. Her husband, Daemon Targaryen, rides Caraxes. And she herself rides the great she-dragon, Syrax. The Hightower faction has the king, the capital, and the treasury. And they have the two largest dragons in their stable: Visenya's old mount, Vhagar, now ridden by the prince Aemond, and Aegon II's own beast, Sunfyre the Golden."
She looked up at them, letting the implications sink in. "The lords of Westeros are being forced to choose a side. To declare for the Blacks, for the Queen, or for the Greens, for the King. A civil war is not just coming. It has begun. And it will be a war fought not just by men, but by dragons."
The Dance of the Dragons. The name would be given by the maesters years later, a poetic term for a conflict of unparalleled horror.
Elara's hand went to her mouth. "By the god… they will burn their entire continent to the ground."
"It is their choice," Hesh said, his voice a pragmatic rumble. "It is a tragedy, but it is their tragedy. It does not concern us."
"Doesn't it?" Lyra countered. "For a century, we have worked to keep Westeros weak and divided, a manageable threat. This war… this war will do our work for us more effectively than our agents ever could. But the outcome is uncertain. A victor will emerge. What if that victor is a ruthless, battle-hardened ruler with a flight of dragons who now sees us, a peaceful and prosperous nation, as their next target?"
"Then we will meet them!" Jorah boomed. "Our dragons outnumber theirs ten to one! Let them come!"
"And what of the people, Jorah?" Elara asked, her voice filled with pain. "The smallfolk of Westeros. They are the grass that will be trampled in this dance of dragons. Are we to simply watch as hundreds of thousands burn for the ambition of two Targaryen children?"
The old debate, the one that lay at the heart of their long rule, resurfaced. The cold logic of strategy versus the compassionate tenets of the Covenant. Pragmatism versus morality.
Kaelen listened to them, his ancient, weary soul feeling the turn of a great historical page. He felt the god's attention focus on the west with a new and profound interest. The long, patient game of containment was over. A new, more chaotic game was beginning. The whisper that came to him was not a command, but a final, chillingly logical strategic assessment.
He saw a vision of a great, strong fortress—the Targaryen dynasty. But the people inside, in their madness, were tearing down the walls, stone by stone, to hurl at one another. The god did not need to lay siege to the fortress. Its own inhabitants were providing the demolition.
The whisper was the voice of a CEO watching his greatest competitor file for catastrophic bankruptcy.
Patience is the ultimate weapon. An empire rots from the head. Your rivals have forgotten the lessons of their own history, and will now drown in their own fire and blood. Do nothing. Do not intervene. Do not aid. Simply watch. Learn. And when the fires have died down, be prepared to sift through the ashes for anything of value.
Kaelen relayed the divine will to the council. Their new grand strategy was to be one of absolute, predatory neutrality.
"We will not take a side," he declared. "We will not aid the Blacks or the Greens. Operation Dragon's Shadow is terminated. Recall all our agents who are involved in funding the insurgency. Their work is done. The Targaryens will now bleed themselves far more effectively than we ever could."
"So we do nothing?" Jorah asked, aghast. "We simply stand by?"
"No," Kaelen said, a cold, hard light in his eyes. "We do not do nothing. We will profit. And we will learn."
He turned to Lyra. "The Serpent Trading Company will declare itself a neutral party. We will sell non-military goods—food, timber, raw iron, cloth—to both sides, at a significant premium. Let them empty their treasuries into ours. Let them fuel their war with our grain."
He then turned to Hesh. "We will buy the debt of the Westerosi lords. As they ruin themselves for their chosen king or queen, we will become their primary creditors. When the war is over, regardless of who sits on the Iron Throne, the throne itself will be in debt to us."
Finally, he looked to his spymaster again. "Lyra, your agents have a new mission. They are no longer insurgents. They are observers. Scholars of war. I want a report on every battle. Every tactic. Every dragon engagement. I want to know how Caraxes fights against Vhagar. I want to know how a smaller, more agile dragon can defeat a larger one. I want to know how they die. The Targaryens are about to write the definitive textbook on modern dragon warfare with their own blood. I want our Wyrmguard to be the only ones who read it."
His plan was met with a stunned, impressed silence. It was ruthless, cynical, and strategically flawless. Elara was visibly pained by the coldness of it, but she could not argue the logic. To protect their people, to uphold the peace of their own civilization, they would become vultures, circling a dying beast.
"And when it is over?" she asked softly.
"When it is over," Kaelen said, his voice dropping, "when their great dragons have burned each other from the sky, and their great houses are shattered and broken… we will send our envoys. We will send our healers and our engineers from the Covenant Corps. We will help them rebuild. And we will sift through the ashes of their ruined world for anything of value. A disgraced lord with priceless military knowledge. A maester who has uncovered a lost Valyrian text. Even… a clutch of abandoned, forgotten dragon eggs."
He had laid out their path. They would not be conquerors. They would be inheritors.
The orders were given. The great, clandestine machine of the Theocracy pivoted from a strategy of containment to one of predatory observation. Their agents in Westeros went to ground, their new mission to watch and record. The Serpent Trading Company's ships, flying the banner of neutrality, began to ferry grain and iron to ports controlled by both the Greens and the Blacks, their profits soaring.
In the war room, the map of Westeros became a living chronicle of a world's self-destruction. Lyra's reports detailed the first tragic clashes. Dragons fighting dragons over Shipbreaker Bay. The horrifying incident at the God's Eye, where Prince Aemond on the great Vhagar fought Prince Daemon on Caraxes, a battle that ended with both dragons and their riders falling in a fiery embrace into the lake below.
The council watched, dispassionately, as the great dragons of the Targaryen dynasty, the last living links to Old Valyria, were systematically annihilated. Vhagar, Meraxes's old companion. Syrax. Sunfyre. One by one, their lights were extinguished.
With each report, Jorah's tacticians and the Wyrmguard commanders learned invaluable lessons. Elara's healers studied the effects of dragonfire on a mass scale. Hesh's engineers analyzed the structural failures of castles under dragon assault. And Lyra's economists tracked the collapse of the Westerosi economy.
The war lasted for two brutal years. In the end, it was a war with no true victor. Aegon II was dead, poisoned by his own council. Rhaenyra was dead, devoured by her half-brother's dragon. Their children, the few who remained, were left to inherit a broken, bleeding kingdom, its fields fallow, its treasury empty, and its skies empty of all but a few, small, young dragons. The Targaryen dynasty had survived, but its power, the power of its dragons, was shattered, perhaps forever.
In the immediate aftermath, as the lords of Westeros began the long, arduous task of rebuilding, a fleet of ships arrived from the east. They flew the banner of the Serpent Trading Company. They did not come with soldiers, but with food, medicine, low-interest loans, and teams of skilled engineers from the Covenant Corps offering to help rebuild their shattered castles. To the broken lords of Westeros, it was an act of inexplicable generosity from a powerful, neutral neighbor. They did not understand that they were signing away their kingdom's economic future, becoming indebted to a power they could never hope to repay.
The god, in his domain, watched the final moves of the game. The great, fiery light over Westeros on his map had been reduced to a few, dim, flickering embers. His own Theocracy, in contrast, shone with a brilliant, steady, and utterly dominant light. He had played the long game. He had allowed his only rivals to destroy themselves. He had profited from their destruction, learned from their mistakes, and was now poised to absorb their legacy.
His Great Tree of Light stood serene and powerful. The whisper of Aegon's challenge from a century ago now seemed like a faint, pathetic echo. The question of who was the true heir of Valyria had been answered. It was not the house that had conquered a kingdom and then burned it. It was the house that had built an empire, and had possessed the patience and the wisdom to let its rivals destroy themselves.