The sea was quiet beneath him.
Not calm no, the waves still churned and the winds still clawed but to Vezdaryon, it was quiet. Familiar. The salt air kissed the ridges of his wings, the ocean's vast breath brushing against his scale-armored body. He had followed the coast from the Vale, drifting down from northern skies with patience, not urgency.
There had been no destination at first.
But then, in the long silence above the water, something called to him.
A pull not from hunger or anger or instinct but memory.
Not human memory. That had long faded into shadow and dust.
This was older.
Deeper.
Born from the moment he first spread his wings in the caldera of a volcanic isle, bathed in rising heat, watching other dragons wheel in the sky far above.
He saw the silhouette of the island before he smelled it jagged peaks jutting from the sea like broken fangs, the black cliffs rising into mist and cloud. Dragonstone.
His wings slowed.
Not from fatigue. But reverence.
He circled the island once, his shadow dancing across its steep ridges and ancient towers. The castle high and carved like a dragon's skull still stood grim against the dying sky. Its stones whispered old names. Targaryen names. Names tied to fire and conquest. Names that no longer mattered to him, but once had.
He had flown far. Fought more. Changed.
But this place had not.
Not truly.
He descended toward the volcano's ridge, the one where he had once crouched still young, still unsure watching the dragons of the Targaryens soar above, afraid to be seen. That same perch remained, scorched and wind-bitten. Black stone licked by heat that never fully died.
He landed there now.
His talons scraped against the basalt as he folded his wings in. The ground, though hard, gave off warmth. Not enough to burn just enough to hum.
He inhaled deeply.
And for the first time in what felt like years, he rested.
No longer a traveler.
No longer a predator.
Not tonight.
He lowered his head, smoke curling faintly from his nostrils, and looked out across the narrow sea. The wind blew stronger here. Wild. Briny. Carried voices of gulls and distant waves and the groan of stone. But beneath all that… was silence.
And in that silence, Vezdaryon remembered.
He remembered the first night he climbed the ridge, watching Syrax circle overhead, her golden form catching the sun. He remembered the way the keep below had pulsed with heat dragons feeding, roaring, hatching. He remembered how he never dared come too close.
Now, there was no fear.
Now, the island belonged to him as much as it ever had to them.
No other dragon challenged his arrival.
The skies remained quiet. Perhaps they had sensed him long before he arrived. Or perhaps they remembered.
He lay down slowly, massive form coiling slightly along the ridge, his weight settling into the mountain's bones. His body bore the record of his years: talon scars from wyverns, a deep gash from the ice dragon still faintly pink across his flank, one ragged wing-claw slightly twisted from a mid-air collision. He felt none of it now. The warmth of the isle soothed even the aches.
He watched the horizon turn gold, then crimson, then indigo.
For a moment, he was not the storm in the sky, not the scourge of wyverns, not the whispered ghost of the North or the dread-shadow of Essos.
He was simply a dragon at rest.
He dozed. Not deep sleep, dragons rarely truly slept but a kind of waking stillness. His eyes remained half-lidded, watching the clouds shift, the sea breathe.
And in that haze between wakefulness and dream, he saw flickers of the boy he had once been.
The boy who had died.
The boy who had been reborn in fire.
But even those thoughts drifted away like smoke.
He was not a boy.
He was not a man.
He was Vezdaryon.
Son of flames and destruction.
And tonight, he was home.
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Hope you enjoyed the chapter