The cold no longer stung him. It whispered.
High in the pale sky, Vezdaryon flew low beneath a thick curtain of northern cloud. Beneath his wings sprawled a land untouched by Valyrian fire or southern maps white, black, and vast. Mountains jutted like broken teeth, some cloaked in snow, others bald and slick with ice. Frozen forests twisted over ancient hills, their roots older than empires.
Here, in the true North, time did not pass it settled, slow and heavy.
He had not left since his arrival weeks ago. Perhaps longer. There was no sun to mark the days, only dim shifts in the gray sky and the dancing lights that colored the night. He did not mind. There was something about this place unknowable, but not unwelcome.
The old world had burned. This one had endured.
He turned his body against the wind, gliding toward the east. Below him, a wide river lay locked in ice, its meandering shape outlined by frost-covered pines. Scattered herds of shaggy elk crossed its surface, hooves striking soft echoes against the frozen current. He passed over them without sound. Their heads rose. None ran.
Farther ahead, he saw the snow ripple in waves not wind, but movement.
Mammoths.
A full herd. Perhaps twenty. Massive, slow, graceful in their way. Their tusks curved like the ancient arches of ruined temples, their wool bristling with frost and age. Calves walked between the legs of giants. Vezdaryon soared silently above, casting a long shadow over them. One of the bulls trumpeted and raised its trunk, stomping the snow, but made no move to charge.
He turn and left, there's more to explore.
Each day, he saw new beasts. Creatures lost to memory in the South, still alive and thriving here. Mountain bears, white as snowfall. Great owls with wingspans nearly the width of his own tail. A stag whose antlers were gnarled like ironwood branches and coated in frost.
But it wasn't only beasts that walked this land.
He felt them first. Human shapes, dim and clustered around distant fires. He flew lower, careful to remain unseen. In a shallow valley, surrounded by leaning pines and rising drifts of snow, he saw them: a group of wildlings.
Not a raiding party. A clan.
Children. Elders. Hunters wrapped in layered furs, with blades made from bone and ice-forged iron. Their tents were made of stitched hide and branch. No sigils, no banners. Just survival.
He landed far away, hidden by high ridges and trees. From a safe distance, he crouched on a rise and watched them.
They were laughing.
A woman sang near the fire, her voice trembling in the cold but not broken. A boy chased a carved bone wheel, tumbling into the snow. Two men wrestled in the frost, grinning with bloodied noses and red faces.
They were no threat. No conquest.
And so he watched, motionless and unseen.
For hours, he remained still, not as a predator, but a witness.
There was a truth here he couldn't name only feel. It struck him deeper than fire ever had.
He left them in peace.
That night, he flew beneath the stars, their cold light glinting off the curve of his wings. His mind wandered. Sometimes he remembered heat of the Stepstones, of Valyria, of the boy he once was. But those memories came dimly now, faint and shrinking.
He did not miss the world below.
He did not mourn what he had left behind.
The sky welcomed him now. And so did this land.
As he passed beyond the frozen river and wide plains, the land changed again. Cragged cliffs rose into sharp ridgelines, black and white and cut by wind. In one narrow canyon, he found a ruin not stone, not wood. Just carved rock, set into the mountain like an altar. Symbols had been etched into the stone: spirals, circles, strange stars.
He didn't know their meaning.
But the air there buzzed. Not with life with presence.
He did not enter.
Some places were meant to be left untouched.
Instead, he flew higher, away from the ridges, until the ground dropped below him in a wide, endless basin. There, rising like jagged towers from the snow, were spires of ice tall as castles, glimmering with frozen light. Some formed arches over narrow valleys. Others cracked and steamed faintly from within, as if something burned at their heart, trapped and eternal.
The wind howled through them like song.
He flew between them in silence.
Later, as the sky darkened again, he curled in a high alcove carved into a cliff. It faced the northern stars. The air was thin. His breath steamed before him in low plumes.
There were fresh scars along his body from past battles. Wyverns.
It reminded him that he lived.
And he had never felt more alive.
Below him, the wild world slept. Its pulse was slow and steady, but ancient. He listened to it. Listened until the stars turned and the cold pressed deeper into his bones than it ever had before.
Yet still he did not burn.
He simply breathed.
And the North breathed with him
——-
Hope you enjoyed the chapter