The wind was warm with ash as Vezdaryon flew deeper into the heart of Old Valyria.
Beneath his wings, the landscape unfurled in endless ruin and glory. Here, the world did not feel real. It was too large, too strange. A place half-remembered by the bones of giants and the whispers of forgotten gods.
He had flown over many lands, soared above kingdoms and crossed oceans, but nothing matched the terrible wonder of this place. Even after weeks of gliding through Valyria's broken spine, it still stole his breath.
The deeper he flew, the stranger it became.
Mountains twisted unnaturally, shaped by ancient forces no man had tamed. Some split straight into the clouds like jagged knives; others curved impossibly, arcing over rivers of lava that pulsed like the heartbeat of the earth. From afar, they shimmered not with snow, but with veins of black crystal, opal, and smoking glass.
The ruins of cities sprawled across the horizon, each more broken than the last. Towers melted into stone like candles left to burn too long. Bridges hung above shattered ravines, their once-golden arches now blackened with soot and time. Vast amphitheaters lay cracked open, their seats empty but shaped to seat thousands more than any city of the modern world could claim.
Statues remained in strange places. Some were embedded into the sides of cliffs. Others rose alone from the lava fields towering shapes of dragons mid-flight, or armored figures with raised swords. He passed one so tall it brushed the clouds, a bearded man in flowing robes with eyes made of gleaming purple gems. Vezdaryon circled it once, watching how the wind howled through its hollow mouth. A king? A god? Or just a monument to pride?
He didn't know.
But everything here was vast.
Even the silence.
No birds. No animals. Just the wind and the deep hum of distant volcanoes.
The air changed as he flew on. It grew heavier, thicker with sulfur and the slow breath of flame beneath the ground. It wasn't dangerous to him, he was flame, but even he could feel the weight of power beneath his scales.
And then he saw it.
A city.
Larger than any ruin he'd found before.
It stretched across an entire valley, locked between rivers of molten stone and massive cliffs of white ash. Dozens of towers still stood, though half of them leaned as if exhausted by time. Roads, black as obsidian, cut through the heart of it like veins. Canals of lava glowed between the buildings, casting flickering light on shattered balconies and grand archways.
He circled above the city, slow, reverent.
The central structure was a pyramid wide at the base, narrowing into a jagged spike that rose higher than any structure he'd seen in Westeros. Its top was cracked and broken, but even ruined, it radiated a strange majesty. At each corner of the pyramid, the stone had been carved into massive dragon heads mouths open, fangs bared, frozen in a roar that would never end.
He landed on one of them, claws clicking against the blackened stone.
From here, the city lay open before him. Silent. Watching. Waiting.
He didn't move for a long time.
He just looked.
There were mosaics still clinging to the walls great wings in gold and red, scenes of Valyrian conquests and rituals. Many had been melted, distorted by the Doom's fire, but the colors still burned bright in patches. One, partly intact, showed a gathering of men in long robes around a burning tree with dragon skulls in its roots.
Below him, near the base of the pyramid, a grand avenue stretched outward. Rows of obsidian pillars lined it, each carved with high Valyrian script, though much had eroded over time. He followed the path on foot, wings tucked in, his tail trailing smoke through the ancient dust.
He passed broken altars, long-dry fountains with dragon spouts, and halls that had once held books now filled with ash and wind. Some walls still held murals, and in one dark chamber he saw what must have been a map: a massive one, carved into stone, stretching across the floor. He placed his claw in the center, where a symbol blazed fire enclosed in a circle of wings.
Valyria.
And surrounding it, lands and seas he barely recognized. Cities lost to time. Rivers rerouted by fire. Mountains that no longer stood.
This had once been the heart of the world.
And now it was nothing.
As he walked, molten light danced along the walls. Lava flowed freely through veins carved into the city itself a living network of fire, perhaps designed to power the very streets. He watched it flow through channels and disappear into great furnaces still half-buried in rubble.
And yet… there were no bodies.
Not here.
No bones, no ash piles. No dragon skulls or empty armor.
He'd expected ghosts.
But the city was clean, as if the Doom had swept them all away without a trace.
That unsettled him more than death would have.
He left the city by air again, rising into the haze with wings wide, fire trailing faintly from his breath.
The volcanoes loomed ahead sharp silhouettes crowned with lightning and steam.
Between them lay the chasms.
Great canyons split the land into jagged scars. Rivers of fire ran at the bottom, and from time to time, tremors rippled outward, shaking the peaks. The skies here were heavy with heat. In the distance, plumes of ash twisted into columns miles high, darkening the clouds.
And in the distance deeper than he had ever flown rose a mountain unlike any other.
It glowed.
Not just from lava or sunlight. It glowed from within.
A deep, steady pulse of red, as if it had a heart. The very rock of it shimmered, veined with crimson light, and along its slopes were great hollow caverns shaped unnaturally too smooth, too wide.
Like dragon lairs.
But none of the dragons he'd ever seen could have fit them.
As he flew closer, he passed another collapsed tower with massive, rotting chains each link the size of a man. They hung slack now, their purpose long forgotten, but they hinted at something terrible.
Something large.
Vezdaryon slowed.
He did not land.
Instead, he hovered, watching the mountain.
The silence here was total.
No flame cracked. No wind blew.
Only the pulse.
And then he turned away.
Not from fear.
But respect.
Some places were not meant to be conquered in a single flight. Even for a dragon.
He would return one day.
But not yet.
He flew back toward the sunset, where the sky flared with gold and red, and the mountains of Valyria watched his passing with eyes made of fire.
——
Hope you enjoyed the chapter