The days after Yuan slipped into the sea felt different on Dragonstone. Fishermen refused to sail far out. They swore they saw huge shadows gliding under their boats, said patches of water suddenly turned freezing or boiling hot, and claimed they heard deep, low sounds at night—like a bull bellowing mixed with a mountain collapsing. Melisandre ordered seven bonfires lit along the coastline, holy fires to drive the sea monster away. The flames burned all night, painting half the island blood-red. The next morning a guard reported that several huge fish had washed up on the beach. They weren't dead—just stunned, lying on the sand without moving, not even flinching when men clubbed them to death.
Limpick stood on the castle steps listening to the reports, face blank. He knew exactly what had scared the fish. When Yuan moved through the deep, it sent out low-frequency vibrations no human ear could hear. Fish felt them through the water, through rock, through sand—vibrations that scrambled their brains and left them frozen.
He felt a little guilty, but he kept it to himself.
Life went on as usual. Morning prayers, reading, writing, scripture. Evening prayers, adding wood, pouring lamp oil, listening to the faithful's endless little problems—my boat was scared off by the sea monster, my son has a fever, is R'hllor punishing him, my neighbor stole a salted fish, can I curse him in front of the holy fire. Limpick listened patiently, answered patiently, recited patiently. His High Valyrian grew smoother every day. He could now read The Song of Prophecy cover to cover and stumble through the older, half-ruined scrolls written on parchment with Valyrian steel pens—fragments about dragons, fire, and blood magic.
Melisandre began teaching him real magic. Not the prayers or chants—the hidden arts only priests knew.
"Flame has three uses," she said, standing at the altar, fingers stirring the brazier. The fire followed her hand like an obedient snake. "First, to give light. Anyone can do that. Second, to offer sacrifice. The most common use—trading a living creature's life for R'hllor's favor. Third, to see. The hardest. Looking into the flames to see the past, the future, things happening a thousand miles away, fates that haven't happened yet."
She pulled her fingers out. A small tongue of flame stayed on her fingertip, floating in the air. She drew a slow circle. The flame didn't go out. It spun gently like an orange-red ball. She flipped her hand and the ball became a tiny human figure—finger-length but perfectly shaped, head, body, limbs. The figure twisted inside the fire, struggling or dancing.
"This is blood magic," she said. "Shapes drawn with blood. Blood carries life. Life carries memory. Memory carries power. Drop a man's blood into the flame and you can see him—where he is, what he's doing, what he's thinking. Put in his hair, fingernails, skin, or bone, and you can control him—make him sick, drive him mad, kill him."
She closed her fist. The flame died. The figure scattered into smoke and drifted toward the ceiling.
"But there's always a price," Limpick said.
Melisandre looked at him, red eyes bright in the firelight. "The price is always life. The caster's life or someone else's. There is no free flame. Every fire needs fuel. Magic is the same."
Limpick was quiet a moment. "What do you use for fuel?"
"Mostly other people's. Stannis's blood, Robert's bastard's blood, the blood of animals offered on the pyre. Sometimes—" She paused. "My own."
She held out her hand, palm up. An old scar crossed it, faint but unmistakable, shaped like an eye ringed by flame.
"A long time ago, when I first became a priestess, I knew nothing. I wanted to prove myself. I wanted to offer the strongest magic, the most precious gift to the Lord of Light. I had no king's blood, no noble blood—only my own. So I dripped my blood into the flame and spoke the spell."
"What happened?"
"I saw inside the fire. The same thing you saw during the ritual—blue flame, the passage, and what waits at the end." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I saw my future. I would live a very long time. Longer than anyone I knew. I would watch them all die—husbands, children, friends, enemies—every one of them. And I would keep living, on and on, until the fire itself went out."
The hall was quiet except for the crackle of the brazier. Limpick stared at the scar on her palm and didn't know what to say. How long had she already lived? Decades? A century? How many people had she watched die? How many more would she have to watch?
"Do you still want to learn?" she asked.
Limpick thought about it. "Yes."
Melisandre's mouth curved—just a fraction, something between relief and sorrow. "Good. Tomorrow we start with the first blood-magic spell—tracking a person through flame. You'll need a drop of blood, a hair, or a fingernail. Go prepare."
Limpick nodded.
In the days that followed he practiced every morning after prayers and every evening before bed. He started with the simplest spell—tracking. He caught a rat, killed it, took one drop of blood, and spoke the words Melisandre taught him. The fire jumped, turned green, and showed a tiny, blurry image of the rat running across the floor. He tried three times and succeeded twice. Melisandre said most people needed dozens of tries for their first success.
Next came controlling flame itself. He stirred his fingers through the brazier, trying to make the fire follow. At first it fought him, flaring wildly and nearly burning his sleeve. After days of practice he could thread the flames between his fingers like a red ribbon. Melisandre said that was only the beginning. When he could make the fire leave the brazier and hover in the air for more than a minute, he would be ready for the next step.
He practiced hard. His fingers were burned over and over—blisters, broken skin, scabs. Melisandre gave him a salve that cooled the burns and healed them quickly. She had been burned many times herself. "It is the only way," she told him. "If you are never burned by fire, you will never truly value it."
Sometimes, in the evening, he went to the cove. Not to pray. Not to watch the sea. To see Yuan.
Yuan always surfaced in the same spot—the small hidden bay where Limpick had first found it. Eight thick tentacles rose from the water and draped across the rocks, black and shining with purple-blue light in the sunset. Its body stayed mostly submerged, only the two golden eyes and the long curved horns breaking the surface. When it saw Limpick it would stretch one tentacle over and gently brush his cheek—cool, slick, carrying the chill of the deep.
He sat on the rocks and talked to it. He told it about the magic Melisandre was teaching him, about the people in the castle, about Ember and Plume still waiting in the woods, about how long it would be before he could go back. He didn't know if Yuan understood the words, but every time the tentacle would rest across his knee and stay there, listening, blinking slowly—golden eyelid sliding up from the bottom exactly like an ordinary octopus, only a thousand times larger.
One evening he noticed something under Yuan's tentacles.
He stood and moved to the edge of the rocks. Yuan lifted its body a little higher out of the water. In the circle formed by its eight coiled arms lay a pile of objects. Round, white, smooth—larger than a man's head, smaller than a fist—dozens of them, stacked and carefully guarded by the thick tentacles.
Limpick stared.
Eggs.
Yuan had laid eggs.
He crouched on the rock and looked at the smooth white spheres for a long time. Yuan's tentacles shifted in front of him, almost showing them off. One tentacle reached out and gently touched the largest egg. The shell trembled. A tiny crack appeared on its surface. Something inside moved.