The pain lingered.
Every breath Vezdaryon took scraped against his chest like a broken fang. His wings throbbed with deep bruising, his muscles ached with each stretch, and along his sides, patches of scorched and frozen flesh flaked away as he lay still in the hollow he had crashed into. Yet beneath it all deeper than the pain, older than the wounds something else pulsed quietly inside him.
Pride.
He had survived. He had killed a creature as powerful as himself. The ice dragon's blood still stained the rocks around him, melted snow into red streams, and left a bitter scent in the air. It was not just victory; it was proof.
Proof that he belonged here in this savage, ancient land where magic walked like shadow and wind. Where beasts as old as the earth still hunted, and only the strongest survived.
Now, he had to recover.
He remained grounded for two days, nestled within a low ravine where jagged stones gave him shelter from the wind. The cold here was bone-deep, unnatural but his inner fire still burned, keeping frostbite from claiming him fully. He shifted only when needed, curling tighter into the earth, letting time pass.
By the third day, the ache in his wing had dulled to a growl instead of a roar. He tested it with careful stretches. Not enough for flight, not yet but movement returned to his limbs. Scabs formed over his deepest cuts. He flexed his claws and pushed himself upright, nostrils flaring.
He needed to eat.
He needed meat, blood, heat something to stir strength back into his bones.
He leapt from the rocks and moved low through the snow-covered woods, dragging his tail behind him like a felled tree. His body was silent, despite its size, and his scales brushed past brittle trees and frozen brush like a shadow.
Then, on the wind he smelled them.
Sweat. Hair. Warm breath on the cold air.
Mammoths.
He followed the scent until the trees broke open into a vast white field, where the snow fell slower and the world felt wide and dead. And there, moving as a herd, their massive furred forms trudged across the ice — shaggy, ancient, and unaware.
There were nine of them.
Big, lumbering creatures with long curved tusks and breath steaming from their trunks. They walked with slow, ponderous dignity, shaking frost from their coats. Vezdaryon watched them for a long time, unmoving, hidden beneath a snow-coated ridge.
They were beautiful, in a way.
And massive. Each the size of a longhouse, their steps deep enough to crack the ground. His inner fire stirred as his stomach growled but this wasn't mere hunger now. It was the thrill again. That edge of wildness. Something deeper than instinct. Something dragon.
He crept forward, silent as snowfall.
Then he pounced.
The earth quaked as he surged from the ridge, wings outstretched in a shrieking burst of motion and snow. The mammoths let out deep, trumpeting cries and began to scatter — but they were slow, and he was fury made flesh. Vezdaryon landed hard in their midst, swiping one down with a single swing of his claw. It bellowed, its massive frame tumbling into the snow.
Another turned to charge tusks lowered and he unleashed his fire.
The flame erupted in a wave of orange and gold, igniting the beast's fur like dry grass. The air filled with the stench of burning hair and meat. The rest of the herd fled, stampeding into the storm, but Vezdaryon ignored them. His focus remained fixed on the one still alive, still writhing, its trumpets now weaker, panicked.
He advanced, slowly, deliberately, and sank his jaws into its throat.
The mammoth fell still.
The silence returned.
Vezdaryon stood over the smoking body for a long moment, then began to eat.
He fed with no elegance. Tearing chunks of steaming flesh, snapping bones between his teeth. Blood soaked his mouth, warm and thick, running down his throat and washing away the stale taste of frost. It replenished something inside him not just muscle, but identity.
He was not a man. Not even close anymore.
He was what fire became when it learned hunger.
And it was good.
By the time the second mammoth corpse cooled, he had fed well. He dragged what meat he could back to the hollow, storing it like a bear bedding down for winter. He slept longer, deeper, more peaceful dreams filled with ash and white sky.
Each time he woke, he moved more easily.
Within a week, his wings stretched again to their full length, and he climbed atop a mountain ledge and leapt catching the wind for the first time since the battle. It hurt. But not enough to stop him. He flew low, slow, circling the peaks and hunting again wolves, caribou, smaller game. He burned less now. Killed only when he needed.
But the thrill of that first hunt lingered in his bones like heat in coals.
This land wasn't like Essos or Dragonstone or even Valyria.
This was raw, unshaped.
A place where magic didn't obey names, and the wind whispered in tongues older than fire or ice. And somehow, he felt he belonged to it more than any other place. Not by blood or memory but by right of what he had become.
Vezdaryon. Son of flame and destruction.
No longer a creature that dreamed of another life.
No longer a beast shaped by man.
He was his own flame now. And in the cold lands beyond the maps, the world would bend around that fire, or it would burn.
———-
Hope you enjoyed the chapter