Chapter 4: The Spark Ignites – Reactions and the Call
The news of Viserys Targaryen's martyrdom spread like wildfire through the dry tinder of Essos. First it was whispers in the slave pens of Astapor, carried by trembling lips from one chained soul to another. Then it leaped to the docks of Yunkai, where sailors muttered it over sour wine. By the time it reached the crowded bazaars of Meereen and the shadowed alleys of Volantis, it had become legend.
In the slave quarters beneath Astapor's red-brick pyramids, a gaunt woman named Lhara clutched the torn page of The Flames of Eternity she had hidden inside her ragged tunic. She had seen the silver-haired man preach in the undercity weeks earlier—his voice calm, his eyes burning with something she had never seen in a master. When word came that he had been nailed to wood and left to die without a scream, she wept silently into her sleeve. "He suffered for us," she whispered to the others huddled around the single flickering lamp. "A dragon lord bled like we bleed. If their god let him die for slaves, then maybe that god sees us."
The next night, twenty slaves slipped away from their masters' houses. They met in the catacombs, repeating the words Lhara had memorized: "The Dragon God was once chained. He broke free in flame. So can you." By the end of the week, the number had grown to a hundred. They burned small offerings of cloth and bone in hidden braziers, whispering prayers for the Messiah who had not cried out.
In Yunkai, among the pillow houses and spice markets, a former pleasure slave called Myria heard the tale from a customer who had witnessed the crucifixion from afar. She laughed at first—another mad Targaryen story—but the details stuck: ten days on the cross, no water, no pleas for mercy, only prophecies of vengeance. That night she stole a candle and a scrap of red cloth, knelt in her tiny room, and spoke the first words of the bible she had overheard. "If the shepherd suffers, so shall the flock if we stray." Tears came unbidden. For years she had sold her body to survive; now something inside her felt clean for the first time.
Word traveled faster than armies. In the Free Cities, smallfolk gathered in taverns and temple squares. A fishmonger in Pentos told his customers, "They say the Beggar King became something greater. Died like a god so we might live free." A blacksmith's apprentice in Myr carved a crude three-headed dragon into his workbench and prayed to it before striking iron. In Lys, courtesans whispered the story to powerful clients, planting seeds among merchants and magisters who began to wonder if this new faith might shift the winds of trade and power.
Common people did not join in thousands at first. They joined in dozens, then scores, then hundreds. A widow in Volantis whose sons had been sold to the fighting pits burned her husband's old cloak as an offering and declared, "If the Dragon God took the pain of nails for strangers, He will not abandon my children." A Dothraki bloodrider, exiled for questioning his khal, heard the tale around a campfire and grunted, "This silver-hair died standing. That is strength." He cut his braid and tied a red ribbon in its place, swearing himself to the church.
Everywhere the reaction was the same mix of awe, fear, and fragile hope. The powerful sneered—"another dragon delusion"—but the powerless listened. Slaves, beggars, broken soldiers, widows, orphans—they saw in Viserys's silent suffering a mirror of their own. And in his reported reappearance after death, a promise that pain was not the end.
Five days after the disciples carried Viserys's head back to Daenerys in a sealed cedar box, she stood atop the Great Pyramid of Meereen.
The plaza below was packed shoulder to shoulder. Freedmen, former slaves, merchants who had quietly donated coin, Dothraki riders who had sworn new braids, Unsullied who had laid down whips for dragon banners. Torches burned along the edges, casting long shadows. The twins, Rhaegar II and Visenya, barely more than babes, slept in their nurse's arms at the rear of the platform, unaware they were already symbols of an emerging faith.
Daenerys wore simple black silk shot through with crimson thread—no crown, no jewels, only the shard of Viserys's crucifixion wood hanging from a chain around her neck. Her silver hair whipped in the night wind. When she raised her hand, silence fell like a blade.
"Brothers. Sisters. Children of the Dragon God." Her voice carried clear and steady, trained by months of preaching in secret. "You have heard what was done to my brother—your Messiah. You have heard how he was nailed to wood by slavers who thought they could break a dragon's will. You have heard he never cried out. You have heard that after ten days of agony, when his followers carried his head home in grief, he appeared again among the faithful—whole, radiant, speaking words of vengeance."
A low murmur rose, then died as she continued.
"I stood in the tent when they brought me his head. I looked into the face I had loved since childhood and saw only peace. He had finished his work. But ours is only beginning."
She stepped forward, eyes sweeping the sea of faces.
"The Dragon God sent His son among us—not to rule from a throne of gold, but to suffer beside the chained, the beaten, the forgotten. He died so that no slave need call any man master. He rose so that no tyrant can sleep easy. And now He calls us to finish what my brother began."
Daenerys drew her dagger—small, sharp, Valyrian steel—and sliced her palm. Blood welled dark in the torchlight. She let it drip onto the stone at her feet.
"I call the First Crusade. Not for gold. Not for land alone. For vengeance. For justice. For the eternal flame that burns in every heart that has known chains. God wills it!"
The words struck like thunder.
"God wills it!" roared the front ranks—former slaves, their voices raw with years of silence finally broken.
"God wills it!" echoed the Unsullied, spears striking shields in perfect unison.
"God wills it!" came the Dothraki howl, arakhs raised high.
"God wills it!" shouted merchants, widows, children, old men—thousands of voices rising until the pyramid itself seemed to tremble.
Daenerys lifted her bleeding hand to the sky.
"Then rise, faithful! Take up the red banner! March with me across the sea to the stolen throne! Burn the usurpers! Free the oppressed! Let every kingdom know the Dragon God sees, and He remembers!"
The plaza erupted. Men tore strips of cloth to tie around their arms as makeshift red bands. Women wept and laughed at once. Boys too young to fight begged to carry water skins. The chant rolled outward like a wave, spreading through the streets of Meereen and beyond.
In the Spiritual Space, Alex watched, breath caught in his throat. The common people's hope had ignited into something unstoppable. Daenerys had not merely declared war—she had given them purpose.
The First Crusade had begun.
(Word count: 1498)