The air in the Westerlands was still thick with the coppery scent of blood and the low, mournful keening of the wounded when the raven arrived. It was not like any raven Jaerian had ever seen. Its feathers were not black, but a deep, iridescent shade of volcanic glass that shimmered with hints of crimson and gold. Its eyes glowed like embers, and it did not caw. It landed on the pommel of Jaerian's discarded sword with an unnerving silence, regarding the new King in the North with an intelligence that was profoundly alien.
It carried no scroll. Instead, as Jaerian cautiously approached, the bird opened its beak, and a voice, deep and sibilant, woven from fire and shadow, echoed directly into his mind.
"The Shepherd of Scales stirs. The Forge of the World breaths anew. The King of Ashes raises his standard on the Isles of Drakuade. The fire that mounts the world is coming. The pact is broken."
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the raven burst into a shower of cold, grey ash, leaving behind only the faint smell of sulfur and a profound, chilling silence.
Jaerian stood frozen, the words burning in his mind. The victory felt hollow, the weight of Robeyn's crown suddenly insignificant against the scale of this new, cryptic threat. He knew the name, though it was from legends so old they made the Age of Heroes seem like yesterday. The Isles of Drakuade. The Dragon King.
Far to the east, across the shuddering sea, where the maps of maesters ended and the tales of mad sailors began, the world was being remade in fire.
The Isles of Drakuade were not islands of green and stone, but a shattered, smoking archipelago born from the corpse of a continent-shattering volcano. The sea around them boiled in places, and the air was a perpetual haze of ash and heat-haze. The very rock was black obsidian and porous, blood-red slag. At its heart stood the Adamant Spire, a mountain of black diamond that was not grown but built, its facets catching the dim light and reflecting it in a thousand bloody pinpricks.
Within the deepest chamber of the Spire, a place where the air was so hot it shimmered and the walls glowed with a deep inner fire, the one they called the Dragon King stirred.
He was not a man. He was not a beast. He was a confluence of both, a being of such ancient and terrible power that the very stone beneath him had flowed like water to accommodate his will. His name, in a tongue that would shatter mortal minds to hear, was Aegonax, the Last Scion of the First Flame.
He sat upon a throne not of iron or swords, but of fused dragon skulls, each larger than the last mammoth to walk beyond the Wall. His form was humanoid, but scaled in plates of obsidian and crimson gold. His hands ended in claws that could carve castle stone. His face was a mask of terrible, aristocratic beauty, etched with lines of primordial power, and from his brow swept back two great horns like a crown of night. His eyes were pools of molten magma, and when he spoke, the chamber trembled.
"They have forgotten the fire," his voice was the rumble of the earth's core, heard not with ears but felt in the bones of every living thing on the isles. "They cower in their stone dens, worshiping weakling gods of tree and stream. They have broken the oldest pact. The world has grown cold and stagnant. It must be cleansed. It must be reforged."
Before him, kneeling on the smoldering rock, were his Draconians. They were not mere followers; they were his children, his army, forged in the same fires that had birthed him. They were humans who had given themselves utterly to the worship of the dragon, and in doing so, had shed their mortality like a skin.
There were the Pyre Guards, their bodies sheathed in rock-like scales, their blood replaced by liquid fire. They stood immobile as statues, but their eyes glowed with a fierce, patient hunger.
There were the Ash-Stalkers, slighter and faster, who moved through the volcanic plumes like ghosts, their skin the colour of cooled ash, their breath a weapon that could choke the life from a man and leave him a desiccated husk.
And there were the Scaled Ones, the most common of the transformed, whose bodies were a patchwork of human and draconic features—ridged spines, lashing tails, jaws that could unhinge, and wings of leathern skin that, while not yet capable of true flight, allowed them to glide from the high spires.
Aegonax raised a clawed hand. "The time of whispering is done. The time of burning is now. We do not march to conquer. We march to consume. To make this world a reflection of the glorious, purifying flame. We shall burn away the rot of mankind and from the ashes, a new, stronger race will rise. A dragon race."
He pointed to a massive, circular portal that dominated the far wall of the chamber. It was not made of stone, but of solidified lightning and swirling ash—a Sorcerous Conduit, a relic of a magic so old it predated Valyria.
"The fires beneath the world are our highways," Aegonax boomed. "We will not sail the slow, cold seas. We will rise from the very earth they walk upon. From their volcanoes, their hottest forge-fires, their deepest mine shafts. We will be born from their own industry and turn it against them."
He turned his molten gaze to his three most powerful lieutenants, his Drakkon Lords.
"Ignis," he said to a massive being whose entire form seemed to be made of living, cracking lava. "You are my Vanguard. Take your Ember-Wyrms. Burrow deep. Emerge in the bowels of their strongest castles. Let their foundations be the first to tremble."
Ignis merely bowed his head, a shower of sparks cascading from his shoulders.
"Zephyra," he said to a lithe, terrifyingly fast Draconian whose wings were vast and whose skin was like polished blue steel. "You are my Shadow. Take your Ash-Stalkers. Poison their wells. Smother their crops under clouds of ash. Let their lands wither and die before we even arrive."
Zephyra hissed, a sound like steam escaping a fissure.
"And you, Kaelen," he said to the most humanoid of the three, a master of the ancient, fiery sorcery that bound their kind. His scales were like black diamond, and runes of power glowed upon his chest. "You are my Will. Awaken the slumbering fires. Find the forgotten forges of Old Valyria. The dragons of stone that sleep beneath their cities. Call them to our banner. We shall have an air force that will black out the sun."
Kaelen clenched a fist, and arcane fire danced between his claws.
"Go!" Aegonax's command was a wave of pure heat that washed over them. "Rouse the forges! Awaken the hatcheries! The Drakuade Legion marches!"
The chamber erupted in a frenzy of activity. The sound was not of industry, but of a waking volcano. From deep pits, the Ember-Wyrms were roused—massive, worm-like beasts with maws of spinning, volcanic rock, capable of chewing through leagues of solid stone. In the hatcheries, vast eggs of obsidian shuddered and cracked