The world had grown quieter.
Days passed in snow and shadow as Vezdaryon moved deeper into the bones of the North. He had seen lands scorched black by lava, cities carved from red cliffs, forests so ancient the trees spoke in their sleep but nothing lingered in him the way this realm of white silence did.
Here, everything whispered.
The wind. The frost. Even the earth beneath his claws.
He flew low that morning, gliding over a ravine glazed in blue ice, the sky above him pale and open. Below, rivers of mist rose from cracks in the rock, where warm springs refused to yield to winter. He could feel that warmth from above slight, brief. A breath.
He landed in a quiet glade nestled between steep hills and thick drifts of snow. The trees here were strange thin, tall, their bark pale as bone, with no leaves to clothe them. And yet they lived there was no rot, no death. Only sleep.
Vezdaryon moved carefully through the glade, steam curling from his nostrils, wings tucked against his sides. He hunted no prey. Hunger did not drive him this day.
Curiosity did.
And then he saw it.
It moved with no sound, stepping from the mist like it had always been there.
A creature of myth but Vezdaryon knew now that myths were often truth dressed in wonder.
The unicorn stood at the edge of a frozen pool, its hooves barely making contact with the snow. Its coat shimmered like polished moonlight, pure white, untouched. A mane of soft silver framed its long face, and its horn… it curved upward in a spiral of ivory, glowing faintly as it caught the filtered morning light.
The creature turned its head and looked directly at him.
They watched each other. No movement. No fear.
Vezdaryon took in every line, every breath. He had seen power before burning, screaming, clawing for dominance. But this… this was not power born of fire.
It was grace.
And just as suddenly, the unicorn turned. It stepped through the snow and disappeared between two trees. Gone.
He didn't follow. He knew instinctively that some things were not meant to be chased.
Instead, he took flight once more, his wings slicing clean through the cold air. The glade vanished behind him, a memory already fading into frost and stillness.
He flew north again.
The sky dimmed as he passed over a chain of jagged mountains. The wind here was sharper, full of shards that stung against his wings. Something in the air had shifted not just temperature, but pressure. The world felt thinner.
Taller peaks rose ahead. He landed on one, settling in silence. From this vantage, he could see a wide plain beyond the mountains, open and endless a canvas of untouched snow and black stone. But it wasn't the land that froze him in place.
It was what soared above it.
Far ahead, moving through low clouds, a shape.
Wings. Long and slow. A tail like a silver whip.
Another dragon.
But it wasn't like any dragon he had seen before not in Westeros, not in Valyria, not in memory or legend.
It glided lower, and for the first time, the light struck it clearly.
The creature was pale not white, but translucent. Its wings caught the weak sunlight and split it into shards. Its body shimmered in hues of faint blue and ghostly gray. And as it breathed, frost streamed from its jaws, drifting in the air like smoke.
Vezdaryon's heart thudded hard in his chest. Not in fear. In recognition.
This was not a wyvern. Not a fire-blood. This was something older. Wilder. The very air around the beast crackled with magic — not heat, but the deep, ancient cold of creation.
The other dragon, the ice dragon, for there was no other name drifted across the plain in perfect silence. As big as Vezdaryon. Maybe just slightly leaner, but no less powerful. Its eyes, when they turned toward him, gleamed like frozen stars.
Vezdaryon did not move.
Neither did it.
Two titans, standing still across a gulf of snow and wind, studying one another.
He felt a sharp thrum in his chest. Not fear, not excitement. Warning.
This creature would not share territory.
And the North, this deep into the unknown… may have been claimed already.
He tensed, his muscles tightening beneath his scales. No sound. Just the wind and his own breath fogging in front of his snout. His wings flinched, ready to rise.
But the ice dragon simply circled, not closing the distance. Not attacking. Not retreating either.
Vezdaryon knew this moment was only the beginning.
There would be no avoiding it.
Tomorrow, or the day after soon they would meet not as watchers, but as warriors.
He turned and leapt from the peak, his wings catching the air instantly. The cold chased him. Not the kind that seeped into the bones no. This cold was alive, and it followed him like a shadow.
The storm was coming.
And he would be ready.
———-
Hope you enjoyed the chapter