Thaddues gently settled the child beneath the blankets before rising from the bedside. He had turned his rag clothes into a more comfortable cloth.
Outside the village continued to burn, sapphire flames staining the upcoming sunset.
Rowena stood before a shelf, her gaze fixed on a small glass bottle. A faint smile lingered on her lips as she watched the tiny captive thrashing inside, desperately battling an ant.
The amusement disappeared.
Her head turned toward the chamber's entrance, crimson eyes effortlessly piercing the transfigured space surrounding their refuge.
"You have unwanted guests," she said softly, her voice dropping into a dangerous whisper.
At the same time the system voice echoed through Thaddues' mind.
---
"Host Warning! Multiple high-threat magical presences approaching host perimeter!"
---
A heartbeat later, he felt them.
The very air seemed to thicken, burdened by the ancient, withered power of the Old Gods.
Thaddues glanced at the sleeping child.
A quiet, humorless chuckle escaped his lips.
"What is cast returns," he murmured.
The next instant, he apparated.
He emerged before the carriage, the burning village smoldering at his back. His gaze settled upon the distant horizon, calm and patient, as though this hour had been foreseen long before the first spark was ever lit.
Then the dusk gave its answer.
One presence.
Then another.
And another.
Ancient magic stirred across the land like the turning of an unseen tide, its weight settling upon the world until even the hungry flames seemed to lose their voice.
Thaddues did not move. He simply waited.
The hunt had begun.
------
A/N: I had to share this scene which is part of upcoming chapters. HAHAHA
Here's the chapter ...
The sun hung high over Sunspear, but it gave little comfort. Its light spilled across pale stone and sun-bleached walls, across courtyards where heat lingered like a memory that refused to fade.
The city below moved in its usual slow rhythm—vendors calling from shaded stalls, guards leaning into shadowed alcoves, children running barefoot through narrow streets—but even Dorne's famed resilience had begun to bend beneath an unrelenting sky.
There had been no rain.
Not for years, long enough that absence no longer felt unnatural, only expected.
The memory of fire still lingered at the edges of the realm—of the invasion, of the burning of Caraxes, of how quickly war had come and gone, leaving scorched scars in its wake.
Some houses never recovered. Others rebuilt too quickly, as though haste could outrun grief. Yet even that violence now felt distant compared to what pressed upon them each day.
Dorne was no longer bleeding from war.
It was drying from within.
Inside the Water Gardens, the pools still held their beauty, yet even they seemed diminished, as though the earth itself had begun to drink from them. Further inland, wells were no longer drawn freely but measured with care, each bucket accounted for in ways once unthinkable. In the western marches, the Greenblood had fallen enough to expose old stone beds and forgotten river edges, as if the land itself were being slowly stripped bare.
And in Sunspear, beneath the shadowed halls of House Martell, the realm gathered to speak of it.
The council chamber was cool by Dornish standards, carved deep into stone and shaded from the sun's harshness. Narrow windows let in slivers of light that stretched across the long table like blades.
Prince Nolan Martell sat at its head.
He did not wear ceremony for comfort, but for necessity. The weight of rule had a way of settling even on the most disciplined shoulders, and today it seemed heavier than most.
To his right sat Princess Maris Martell, composed as ever, her gaze steady, her fingers resting lightly against the table as though she were listening not only to words, but to what lay beneath them. Opposite her, the Princess Heir, Dareya Martell sat with a stillness that suggested thought more than patience.
Further down the table were the princes.
Prince Qoren Martell, upright and attentive, already carrying himself like a man accustomed to command.
Prince Qhorys Martell, slightly younger in appearance and demeanor, though not lacking presence—his eyes moved often, taking in every speaker, every shift in tone.
Around them sat advisors, stewards, and captains of Sunspear's household guard. Maesters stood ready near the walls, parchment in hand, waiting to record decisions that would shape the weeks ahead.
Prince Nolan's voice broke the silence.
"We begin with the reports."
A maester stepped forward first.
"The settlements along the eastern dunes have stabilized," he said. "Refugees are returning in numbers. Fields have been replanted where irrigation allows. Trade with the southern ports resumes slowly, though caravans remain cautious after the Reach incursions."
Nolan listened without interruption.
Another voice followed.
"The western holdings still struggle. Some houses have not recovered their losses. Several villages remain half-empty. The invasion took more than men and grain—it took confidence."
That earned a faint shift in the room. Not surprise. Recognition.
Everyone knew which houses had fallen hardest during the Reach's campaign into Dornish borders. Some had been burned out entirely, their names reduced to ash and memory. Others had survived, but only just, clinging to inheritance like a blade with no edge.
And beneath it all—always—the quiet truth that not all had been spared in time.
A captain spoke next, his voice rougher.
"The rebuilding efforts in Sunspear's outer districts proceed well. We owe much of that to the assistance provided by Lord Peverell. Before he left he restored the water channels. Making the restoration faster,"
At the mention of the wizard's name, the room shifted—subtle, but unmistakable.
A wary respect settled in.
Nolan gave no outward reaction, though his gaze lingered a moment longer on the report.
"Continue," he said.
The discussion turned then, as it always did, to what could not be ignored.
Dorne was recovering—but unevenly.
Some regions rose quickly, aided by gold, skill, and what many now called unnatural efficiency in rebuilding efforts attributed to the foreign wizard. Other regions lagged behind, too distant, too broken, or too stubbornly independent to receive the same benefit
One of the advisors finally spoke what others had been circling.
"The realm is not unified in recovery," he said carefully. "Some prosper under aid. Others are left to mend themselves. It is not weakness to admit this—it is truth."
Prince Qoren leaned forward slightly.
"Then assign oversight more directly," he said. "If coordination is lacking, it can be corrected."
Another advisor shook his head.
"It is not coordination that fails. It is distance. And time. And the simple fact that not all lands receive equal favor."
The word favor hung in the air a moment too long.
Princess Maris finally spoke.
"Favor from whom?" she asked, though she already knew the answer.
No one replied directly.
Because the answer had already been written into their reality.
Prince Nolan let the silence settle before moving the conversation forward.
"And the drought?"
That single word shifted the weight of the chamber.
If the invasion had been a wound, the drought was something slower. Less visible. More patient in its destruction.
"The rains have not come," a maester said quietly. "The reservoirs are falling. Wells in the northern holds are already rationed. If this continues another moon, grain yields will suffer across the entire region."
A steward added, "Livestock losses will follow. Water must be prioritized for people first. But even that will not last indefinitely."
Prince Qhorys exhaled softly, though he said nothing.
Prince Qoren spoke again, more direct this time.
"We can expand cisterns. Improve storage. Redirect supply lines from the coast inland."
One of the captains nodded. "We can also send caravans to barter for grain in Essos."
Princess Maris's gaze shifted slightly.
"And when Essos demands more than we can give?"
That question lingered without answer.
Another advisor suggested, "We may need to reopen old Rhoynish water channels. There are systems beneath the sands that have not been used in generations."
"Assuming they still function," another muttered.
Plans accumulated quickly after that.
Some practical. Some desperate. Some spoken only because silence felt worse.
Princess Dareya volunteered to oversee restoration efforts in the eastern settlements personally.
Prince Qoren offered to coordinate supply caravans, ensuring that no hold was left without aid.
Prince Nolan listened to them both without immediate approval or refusal, weighing not only their words but their readiness to bear consequence.
At last, he spoke.
"Then it is decided. Princess Dareya will take oversight of reconstruction beyond Sunspear. Prince Qoren will manage supply distribution and external trade coordination. Report failures directly. Do not let pride slow response."
Both inclined their heads.
But before further discussion could continue the doors opened.
A household guard entered, moving quickly enough to draw attention but not so hurried as to break decorum. In his hands was a sealed parchment, marked with the unmistakable insignia of Ghost Hill.
The chamber fell silent.
The captain approached Prince Nolan and bowed low, extending the message.
Nolan took it, holding it for a moment before opening it. His eyes moved across the page once, then again.
Something in his expression changed—recognition mixed with disbelief, as though the words refused to settle properly in the mind.
Princess Maris watched him carefully, Princess Dareya leaned forward just slightly, and Prince Qoren frowned.
"What is it?" Princess Maris asked at last his husband.
Princw Nolan did not answer immediately. Instead, he read the letter a third time, slower now, as if confirming that the meaning had not altered itself in the act of observation.
Then he spoke.
"From Ghost Hill," he said quietly. "Lady Toland sends word throughout Dorne."
Prince Nolan lowered the parchment slightly. "The Wizard of Dorne has heard the prayers of the people." A pause lingered before he continued, more carefully, "And he intends to invoke rain upon Dorne."
For a heartbeat, no one moved.
Not because they did not understand—but because they did.
They had already seen what Thaddues could do, when he drove back a dragon's fire and saved Dorne from the flames. No rumor needed shaping here, no doubt left room to grow. Memory had already done the work.
This was not possibility.
It was continuation.
Princess Maris exhaled slowly, the kind of breath that held more memory than surprise.
Prince Qoren's expression tightened—not in doubt, but in calculation, already measuring what it meant for Dorne to be reminded of power it had once seen with its own eyes.
Prince Qhorys said nothing. He only stared, steady and unreadable, as though silence was safer than naming what they all remembered.
Princess Dareya did not speak at first. Her hands went still on the table as the words settled into her.
She had already known he was moving toward Sunspear—the moment he stepped beyond his own lands, House Gargalen's ravens carried the word across Dorne—but this was different. Not politics, not war, not negotiation. Rain. Something belonging to gods or myths, to men who had long since burned themselves out trying to touch the sky.
Her thoughts turned before she could stop them, and with them came the memory of him: the steady way he carried himself, the way nothing around him seemed easily shaken, and how magic seemed to settle around him without being cast or named. Against her will, something in her chest tightened.
Dorne is fortunate, she thought, though she did not speak it.
Outside the chamber, beyond stone and silence, the desert remained dry. Yet for the first time in many weeks, it felt as though the sky itself had been asked a question—and something beyond reach had begun to listen.
King's Landing slept poorly. It always did, in one way or another. Even in the deepest hours of the night, the city never truly fell silent.
The harbor groaned softly against its moorings, shifting with the black tide, while the distant spill of drunken arguments drifted up from the stews of Flea Bottom. High above the squalor, the Red Keep stood like a watchful stone spine against the sky, its pale curtains and narrow windows reduced to faint squares of guttering candlelight.
Within its highest halls, King Viserys Targaryen lay in restless sleep.
The great bed was too large for his shrinking frame. Once, its vast expanse of silk and carved weirwood had been a symbol of stability—of a reign settled enough to afford luxury and the illusion of permanence. Now, as sickness chipped away at his flesh, the bed felt like an emptiness made physical.
Viserys shifted beneath the heavy velvet covers, his shallow breathing catching in his throat.
Then, the world dissolved.
He was no longer in the Red Keep. He stood instead upon stone older than memory, a vast, fractured waste stretching toward a horizon that warped and buckled under a burning sky. Above him, gold bled into crimson, and crimson into a black deeper than night. A phantom wind swept across the ruins, carrying neither dust nor heat, only a crushing sense of presence.
Viserys knew he was dreaming, yet the dream carried none of the soft haze of sleep. It felt deliberate. A summoning.
A few paces away, a figure stood with its back turned. It was a boy, yet he bore the posture of someone shaped by a history that had not yet suffered the passage of time.
When the boy turned slowly, his face shifted like smoke, refusing to settle into a single form. Yet the truth of him struck Viserys with the force of a physical blow.
Heir.
The word was not spoken, but known.
Behind the boy, the sky fractured. From the rift, a shadow of wings filled the world—so many dragons that counting them became a meaningless exercise. They circled in the burning air, their shadows falling across the broken earth like a sentence of judgment. Viserys felt a tangle of hope and grief rise in his chest, choking him.
But as the boy's smoke-like face continued to shift, the shadows behind him pooled together.
The air grew dense, carrying the scent of lightning and ancient, static magic. From the roiling darkness, a second silhouette took form. A man cloaked in robes that drank the crimson light stepped forward, his posture unyielding, his gaze calm and unwavering. Magic clung to him like a second skin.
The silhouette stepped forward, his movements entirely unaffected by the warping reality of the dream, and placed a heavy, protective hand upon the shapeshifting boy's shoulder. As his fingers touched the cloth, a faint, iridescent barrier flared around them both, turning back the falling ash of the burning sky.
The word Heir echoed in Viserys's mind, vibrating against his skull.
But it was immediately followed by a second truth, spoken in a voice like grinding stone and starlight.
Chosen.
Viserys realized then, with a jolt of pure terror, that the prophecy was incomplete. The Prince That Was Promised—the savior of the living—was a fragile thing. A flame that could be snuffed out before it ever burned. The boy could not survive the cold alone. He required that mysterious person.
Then the boy and the mysterious man vanished together, and the ruins grew biting cold.
Through the shattered stone came the stalkers of the waste. They were tall, skeletal shapes, their flesh pale as milk, moving with a terrifying, rhythmic intent. Where they passed, the heat of the world died; even the ambient fire of the sky seemed to shrink from their presence.
Viserys felt his breath hitch in his throat. He did not need a maester to name them. He knew the secret etched into the Valyrian steel dagger at his hip; he knew the words of Aegon's dream.
The white walkers.
They were the absolute end of men.
A roar tore through the heavens, shattering the silence. A dragon descended—not one of the beasts of the Dragonpit, nor even the great she-dragon Syrax. This beast eclipsed them all,bigger than his dragon Balerion, its vast wings blotting out the bleeding sky. Its scales were a color that defied naming, deep and absolute.
When it opened its jaws, it did not unleash the orange flame of the pit. It spewed a torrent of brilliant, overwhelming white fire.
The white walkers did not die like men; they shattered like glass, unmade by the absolute heat. The dream-world itself recoiled from the cataclysm.
Viserys stumbled forward, drawn by a desperate reverence. As the white flame dimmed, the great dragon turned its massive head, its ancient eye locking onto his. Behind it, smaller but no less terrible dragons landed in the ash, a vanguard awaiting command.
Then, a final shadow fell over the battlefield.
It did not descend from the clouds, but from somewhere beyond the fabric of the sky itself. A hand, colossal and alien, stretched across the broken world. It did not strike or crush; it simply hovered above the dragons, its fingers spread like the idea of destiny given physical form.
The dragons did not roar. They did not fly. They simply waited to be weighed.
Viserys fell to his knees, his breath stolen by the sheer magnitude of the sight. The hand paused, measuring the world beneath it, considering the blood of the dragon.
With a sharp, agonizing inhale, Viserys woke.
The Red Keep rushed back in fragments—the vaulted stone ceiling, the smell of milk of the poppy and old tallow, the faint glow of moonlight through the casement. His heart hammered violently against his ribs, his phantom aches flaring to life.
He sat up slowly, pressing a trembling hand to his damp forehead. The dream did not fade as common nightmares did. It clung to his skin like ash.
Dragons. The cold death of the North. The hand in the sky. And the silhouette who shielded the boy who would inherit the ash.
Viserys exhaled a shaky breath into the dark. Aegon had never spoken of anyone who could stand within such power. The weight of the Conqueror's secret pressed heavier than ever upon his chest, tangled now with a desperate new imperative: he had to find the one who stood beside the heir.
TBC
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