The skies over Old Valyria never changed.
Even after all this time, the light seemed stuck somewhere between dusk and dawn. Smoke rose from unseen fissures in the land below, curling like ghosts into the sky. The scent of sulfur clung to everything, and the wind tasted faintly of ash. Vezdaryon moved silently through the air, gliding with practiced ease. His wings barely stirred the air anymore each beat deliberate, precise. He had been flying for hours, tracing ridges of ruined cities swallowed by fire and time.
He was alone, it suited him.
The great peaks of Valyria's mountains had fallen long ago, many cracked open from within, their hearts spitting lava in slow, steady pulses. Rivers of glowing stone curled down valleys like veins, but they no longer frightened him. The danger was familiar now. This land lived and breathed in its own way—cauterized and broken, but not truly dead.
Vezdaryon tilted his wings and let the wind take him lower, circling over a region he hadn't seen before. Strange formations jutted from the ground in crooked lines spires or ribs of ancient architecture now half-buried in earth and shadow. Something about it pulled at him.
He banked sharply and glided down into the valley.
From above, it looked like ruins, like all the other places. But as he descended further, he noticed shapes that were too organic too intentional. The curves didn't belong to stone. They were too smooth, too massive, too ancient.
He landed with a gentle thud, folding his wings against his sides. Heat radiated from the ground beneath his feet. The air shimmered above cracks in the earth, but it wasn't the heat that drew his eyes forward.
It was the bones.
At first, he wasn't sure what he was looking at. The skeleton was tangled in layers of stone and ash. Parts of it had collapsed inward, the ribs buried, spine fractured in several places. But the shape was unmistakable: the long neck, the curved wing bones, the ridged spine that ran down a tail half-submerged in hardened lava.
A dragon. Or what was left of one.
He stepped forward slowly, claws digging softly into the warm ash. The wind stilled, as if the land itself was holding its breath. Vezdaryon's eyes narrowed as he took in the full length of the skeleton. It sprawled across the valley like a fallen mountain.
And it was massive.
Far larger than anything he'd seen.
Even Balerion the Black Dread, the mighty terror of Westeros hadn't been this size, at least not from what Vezdaryon remembered of his skull hidden beneath the Red Keep. This one was longer, broader, its ribcage taller than city walls. The creature's head had collapsed sideways, half-buried in the slope of the land, but the jaw still stretched wide enough to swallow wagons whole. Horns curved back like great black blades, thick with wear and age.
He exhaled slowly, smoke curling from his nostrils.
He wasn't afraid. But he was small again. Not in body but in presence. In understanding.
He stepped alongside the massive ribcage and traced the line of bones with his eyes. They arched like the hull of a ship, sunken in some ancient sea. The wings what was left of shattered in the fall or perhaps crumbled from time. Long finger-bones from the wings extended like trees, some cracked, some still holding together.
Whoever this dragon had been, they had been old. And powerful.
Vezdaryon lowered his head, sniffing at the dry, crumbling bones. No scent of magic remained. Only dust. Heat. And silence.
But still something lingered here. A kind of memory. Not thoughts or voices, but the weight of something great that had once lived and breathed and burned.
He circled around to the head, stepping carefully around the crushed stone. The skull stared skyward, empty sockets gazing into a sky that no longer remembered it. Teeth like swords jutted from the half-buried mouth. One of the fangs had snapped cleanly in half, the fracture smooth as glass.
Vezdaryon stared at it for a long time.
Not out of fear. But out of something closer to reverence. There were no names carved into the bones. No stories. No ancient markings. Just sheer scale.
This wasn't the first dragon. And it wasn't a god.
But it had been something mighty. Something that had once ruled the skies with fire in its lungs and shadows beneath its wings.
He moved away, flying up to perch on a nearby cliff that overlooked the valley. The skeleton stretched far below, coiled across rocks and ridges like a beast that had simply laid down and never risen again.
He sat there for a long time.
Thinking.
The world had changed since that dragon walked it. Whatever life it had known whoever had flown beside it, or battled against it, or whispered its name was gone. And yet the bones remained. A monument of scale. A reminder that even the mighty fall.
Was that what waited for him, too?
He had always been aware of his rapid growth. From hatchling to hunter in only a handful of years. He was strong now feared, seen, whispered about. But this skeleton was a different kind of power. It wasn't raw strength. It was endurance. This creature had lived long enough to become myth, and then died in silence with no one left to remember it.
Vezdaryon inhaled deeply, letting fire warm his lungs before exhaling in a slow, flickering sigh. The flames curled out gently, not in aggression, but as a quiet expression of awe.
Then he stood, spread his wings, and leapt back into the sky.
He didn't look back. But the image stayed with him: the great fallen beast, silent and nameless in the heart of a broken empire. Larger than legends. Larger than kings.
It reminded him of what he was growing into.
And what might one day be left behind.
———
Hope you enjoyed the chapter