The wind howled over the peaks like a hungry ghost, trailing flurries of powdered snow that clung to Vezdaryon's wings. He flew low, gliding just above the treetops, his golden eyes fixed on the terrain below. Hunting had become a rhythm a part of him now and the prey in this frozen land was wild, strong, and ancient. It made him sharper.
He spotted the herd from a distance elk, large and alert, clustered together along a half-frozen river. He tucked his wings slightly, diving with practiced silence. The elk never had a chance. In a single sweep of claws and flame, he brought two down and scattered the rest like leaves in wind.
He landed and ate slowly, not out of weakness but calm he had grown to savor these moments. The snow hissed as his fire smoldered on the ground. Steam rose from the carcass. Life ended. And he lived on.
When he finished, he spread his wings again and launched into the sky. The world was quiet, heavy with snow and solitude. He flew north further than ever before. Each mile carried him past frozen lakes and jagged mountains, deep into a land unmarked by even the boldest of maps.
And then he felt it.
A change.
It was not the usual cold of the North not the bite of wind or the sting of ice. This was deeper. Older. It was a silence that clung to the bones. A stillness in the air that made the wind itself seem like an intruder. Vezdaryon slowed his flight, gliding in uneasy circles as his fire pulsed faintly beneath his scales.
The clouds above were dark and heavy, not with snow but something else a wrongness that slithered down from the sky. The very light around him dimmed, though the sun had not yet fallen.
Then, without warning, his inner fire dimmed.
It did not die, but it faltered as if something unseen had reached out and squeezed it.
Vezdaryon veered sharply, breathing heavier, and scanned the land below. He flew past a forest of black trees each one long dead, their bark pale and cracked like old skin. Beneath them, the ground glittered with frost that didn't melt, even under the heat of his passing flame. No animals moved. No breath but his own.
And there, in the valley ahead, he felt them.
Not saw, not heard but felt.
A presence that pierced deeper than any fang or claw. The temperature dropped again, and his wings stiffened. The sky turned slate-gray, and even his fire, when he breathed it cautiously, looked thinner paler. It steamed from his throat like dying embers.
He landed, slowly, on a wide hilltop blanketed in white. The earth beneath his talons was solid ice, though no water flowed nearby. He paced, agitated. Growled low in his throat. Something was near. Something ancient and wrong.
And then… his eyes locked onto a point in the trees below.
They stood like statues tall, thin shapes in the darkness, cloaked in the same white-blue cold that gripped the land. Vezdaryon could not see their faces, but he could sense them watching. Unmoving. Patient.
White Walkers.
He knew the power. Knew that this cold was theirs. This silence. This dread.
They did not attack. They simply stood.
And their presence dragged at his soul like an anchor.
A flicker of memory rose old, blurred thoughts of who he had once been a man with a beating heart and fears too small for fire. That man was gone now. Burned away. But something deep, deeper even than his dragon mind, shuddered.
He took a step back.
Then another.
His tail whipped behind him, flames sputtered from his nostrils. He flared his wings and roared not to intimidate, but to remind the world that he was not prey.
The sound echoed like thunder across the barren hills. Trees cracked under the force of it.
And still, the figures below did not move.
The cold did not retreat.
Vezdaryon took to the skies again rising sharply into the darkening sky. His wings trembled slightly. Not from weakness, but from something new. Something unfamiliar.
True fear.
He flew hard and fast, pushing south, chasing warmth, chasing distance. Behind him, the wind grew quieter, but the memory of that cold clung to him like frost on his soul.
He had faced wyverns, ice dragons, shadowed beasts in Valyria. He had survived battles that cracked mountains. But this was different. The fire inside him had met its match not in strength, but in stillness.
And as he flew far away from the haunted woods, from the deathless cold that watched from beneath the trees, a single truth gnawed at him like old bone:
That cold had not feared him.
And worse… it had been waiting.
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Hope you enjoyed the chapter