The wind whipped past Vezdaryon's wings as he soared, a dark flame streaking across the northern sky. The cold air clawed at his scales, but he had grown used to it.
Cold was a memory now it bit, but it did not deter him. He had faced the deep chill of the true north, beyond the Wall, where the light itself seemed to die, where ice spoke and walked. Compared to that, this southern cold felt almost warm.
Below him, Winterfell shrank behind. The old grey stone. The heartbeat of the North. It had watched him in silence and he had returned the gesture. A brief gaze. He felt the weight of it still those watching eyes, the stillness of their fear.
But it meant nothing.
They were not prey, not a threat.
He turned his head slowly, nostrils flaring. The scent of pine. Of smoke from hearthfires. Of distant horses, wolves, damp soil, and men.
The world stretched wide before him endless valleys of green and gold, broken by rivers and the soft hum of life. He followed no roads, no borders. The sky was his. The land bent beneath his shadow.
He felt heavy, but not with exhaustion. His body had grown, stretched, hardened. Each wingbeat came with weight and thunder. When he dove, he felt the pull of wind and gravity war against his power, and he relished the fight.
He was Vezdaryon now son of flame and destruction. That name burned in his bones. He no longer remembered the shape of his human form, only the feel of it like a dream slipping through smoke. The part of him that had once walked on two legs was buried, layered beneath talon and fang, lost to the sky.
Below, a herd of deer broke into a panicked scatter. They had heard him long before they had seen him. Their instincts were sound. He did not chase them not this time.
Not hungry. Not now.
He climbed higher, up into the cold clouds, where the world blurred into mist and wind. The ground below vanished. He was alone with the air. He liked it here the silence between thunder, the space where nothing reached him. Not dragons. Not men. Not even memory.
But his mind wandered despite himself.
He had seen so much. The stepstones burning. Valyria's shadows. Wyverns bleeding in the sky. Ice that walked and fire that cracked stone. He carried it all, not in words, but in scars. There was one beneath his right wing joint a thick, crooked line where a wyvern's teeth had held for too long. Another across his chest, from the battle near the burning cliffs. He bore them with pride. They told the truth. He had survived.
He had thrived.
Below, the land began to change green rolling hills, small farmsteads, winding rivers. The North was behind him now. He had passed its judgment. Now came the Riverlands, the heart of men's realms. He could smell them more clearly here smoke from smithies, fresh-cut grain, the filth of cities.
He did not descend. He watched. He always watched first.
A village came into view thatched roofs, plumes of smoke, a dozen horses in a paddock. People in the fields, unaware. He circled once, the tip of his wing trailing a curtain of cloud. They looked up. Some dropped their tools. One pointed. A scream followed, thin and sharp.
Vezdaryon kept flying.
He didn't roar. He didn't need to. His silence carried the message.
The sun dipped lower in the sky, casting his shadow long across the land. He felt its warmth against his back not enough, not like the fire in his gut, but still… comfort.
The air shifted.
He slowed, wings fanning wide as he caught a new scent — sharper, acrid, oily. Smoke, but not of wood or cookfires. Blacker. Controlled. Industrial.
His head turned slightly, gaze narrowing.
He had flown close to the capital before. He had sense a few dragons there but the where chained, like house cats.
He would not go there.
Instead, he turned, gliding low over a wide river where merchant boats scrambled beneath his shadow, some veering into the shallows. He chuckled to himself a deep, throat-rumbling sound, like rocks grinding beneath fire.
He veered west.
The lands rolled beneath him, full of life and stories he would never understand and didn't need to. He wasn't part of them. He had torn himself from the world of men long ago. He was something else now.
Not just a dragon.
A storm.
And storms didn't ask permission to arrive.
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Hope you enjoyed the chapter