The world changed beneath his wings.
The wind was no longer sharp, but heavy, Weighty, Not just with chill, but with something older, Something quieter. He had flown for hours or days, time no longer mattered at the heights he moved through. The lands of men were far behind him. The sands of Essos, the scorched coastlines of the Red Waste, the stepstones, even the painted sky above Valyria all of it faded into the warmth of memory. Now, all that stretched ahead was white. Pale, bleak, endless.
He didn't know this land.
Vezdaryon banked slowly through clouds layered like smoke. His wings beat steadily, trailing streamers of vapor. Below, the terrain had grown harsh. Grey rock jutted from snow-covered hills like broken teeth. The forests were sparse here, the trees brittle and gaunt, their branches blackened by cold. There were no dragons here. No wyverns. No men. No fire.
Only silence.
And cold.
It was a kind of cold that no flame could warm. It wasn't like the chill of high mountains, or the early frost of winter near the seas. This cold moved into things. Into bones, into breath. It wrapped itself inside him in ways he hadn't felt before. His wings, wide and ancient-seeming, shimmered faintly from his own inner heat, casting off steam in long ribbons. But even that was thin against the cold up here.
This wasn't the cold of snow.
It was the cold of something older. Something untouched by flame or time.
He had flown so far north that even the stars seemed different.
He knew he was still in the world still above the earth he had hunted and flown over for years but it no longer felt like it belonged to the same world that had raised him. Here, things slept beneath the ice. Things long forgotten. Things that did not burn, or break, or die.
He descended slowly, wings angling downward through a break in the clouds. He needed rest. The wind had grown treacherous, and it had been a long time since he'd felt this drained. Not just in body in spirit. The land was draining something from him. Not energy. Not will. Something deeper.
A jagged mountain range pierced the snow ahead, and nestled in its shadow was a plateau rimmed with broken pines and frost-shattered stone. He landed there, slow and heavy, his talons sinking into deep snow as he settled his long body to the ground. The snow hissed where his heated scales met it. Steam rose around him in thin columns.
He curled in on himself and rested his head near his wing.
There was no sound but the wind.
And yet, he could feel something watching him.
He didn't know where it came from. There was no scent. No heat. No shimmer of eye or flick of tail. But he felt it ancient and patient. It didn't approach. Didn't speak. It simply watched, as if judging whether he belonged.
He exhaled a plume of smoke into the air, and it dissipated quickly. Too quickly.
Here, even flame felt unwelcome.
He dreamed.
In his dream, the skies were ash. Not red not smoke but fine, white ash that fell endlessly. Shapes moved in the ash. Huge things. Tall, silent, with empty sockets where eyes should be. They moved with slow grace, like trees walking. He tried to roar, but no sound came from his throat. The ash drowned it. He flapped his wings, but the sky was too heavy.
He woke suddenly, his eyes flaring in the dark.
The sky above him was clear now. Thousands of stars stared down. He stood, slowly, and began to walk across the plateau. The snow was untouched not even birds had passed through. Far in the distance, a frozen river cut a crooked path through the hills. He followed it, gliding low over the ground.
As he flew, he saw no signs of life.
No birds.
No beasts.
No ruins.
Nothing.
And yet, the cold was deeper here.
It had presence. It felt like it wanted something.
And for the first time in many, many years… he felt small.
Not in body. In self.
This land was not dead. It was not silent.
It was merely waiting.
He flew for days in silence. Sometimes the wind spoke to him in strange tones. Sometimes he felt warmth under the ice fleeting and cruel. There were no sunrises, only paler greys. The land had slipped into something beyond season, beyond rhythm.
Eventually, he came upon a vast stretch of forest, completely petrified not metaphorically, but truly frozen in time. Every tree was crystalized, their bark turned to translucent stone, their branches unyielding. The wind howled through it in strange, mournful whistles.
He passed above it, uneased.
Somewhere in the heart of that forest, he saw something massive a formation, or perhaps a monument but he did not descend. He did not want to.
There were places in this land not even fire should go.
That night, he landed on a great crag of black rock that jutted from the snow like a claw. He circled it three times before settling. The winds screamed around it, but at least he had some height again. Some vision.
From here, he could see for miles.
And what he saw unsettled him.
In every direction, the land stretched pale and broken. The mountains curled around valleys that never saw sun. The rivers were frozen motionless. And far to the north far he saw lights. Not fires. No. These lights danced like flame, but shimmered like mist. Green, blue, gold like ribbons twisting in the night sky. They writhed above a place even he dared not go.
He lay down that night in silence.
He did not dream.
But his thoughts churned.
He did not miss men. He did not miss the world he'd left behind. Not truly. But here, in this place of frost and forgotten things, he remembered what fear tasted like.
The cold had no malice.
And yet it stripped him.
Not of strength.
But of certainty.
He would not stay long.
He would leave when the sky turned again. But he knew, without understanding why, that he had come close very close to something vast.
Something deep.
Something that watched.
——-
Hope you enjoyed the chapter