The first time they saw him after the wedding, the boys stopped speaking altogether.
High on the cliffs of Dragonstone, far from the Dragonmont stables and the whistling calls of dragonkeepers, he lay still. Vast. Silent. Watching. A shape so immense he seemed born of the mountain itself until he moved.
That was when they named him.
"The Shadow."
It was Aegon who first said it aloud, laughing with a sharp edge. But the name stuck. Even the keepers began to use it, murmuring it beneath their masks with a sideways glance toward the dark eastern cliffs where he sometimes perched.
His wings, when spread, could darken a field. His tail coiled like a serpent of smoke. Black as soot, with faint traces of molten bronze shimmering under sunlight, he gleamed like a forge gone quiet. But what chilled most was not his size or his shape.
It was his stillness. He never roared. Never chased the skies like the others. He watched.
And no one had gotten close.
Not even the queen's sons.
Jacaerys Velaryon stood near the edge of the lower plateau, squinting into the distance. The wind tugged at his dark curls.
Lucerys stood beside him, clutching his riding cloak tighter, his dark eyes narrowed.
"He's not like the others," Luke whispered. "He doesn't move unless he wants to."
"He's just a dragon," Jace said, though not as confidently as he meant to. "A young one, even. No rider. No bond."
"But he's bigger than Vermithor," Luke said, voice almost breaking on the name. "Mother said he flew over the Stepstones before we were born."
"He didn't come to her," Jace muttered. "Didn't come to anyone."
Neither said it, but both were thinking the same thing: if they could be the ones to approach him if he let them near…
They had tried once. At a distance. When his head turned, tracking their movement with those ancient gold eyes, Jace had taken one step forward and then stopped.
The air had changed. Not with heat, but with pressure. Like the world itself had stopped breathing. The dragon had not moved, had not growled, but the message had been clear.
Do not come closer.
Now they only watched him from afar, with quiet reverence.
——
In King's Landing, the tale had reached young Aemond's ears like fire to dry kindling.
"They call it The Shadow," he said aloud to himself in the royal library, fingers tightening around the corner of the dragonlore tome he'd been thumbing through. "And even mother cannot speak of it without unease."
He'd heard the whispers: Larger than Vermithor. Blacker than the night sky. Young, but forged in some forgotten furnace. His brother had scoffed Aegon cared little for anything beyond wine, women, and whispers. But Aemond… Aemond burned.
He had no dragon.
But he had ambition.
"A dragon that powerful… unclaimed?" he muttered.
Across the table, Daeron looked up slowly. His voice barely above a whisper. "Do you think he can be claimed?"
Aemond's gaze darkened.
he said, "he can be ridden."
"But he's different," Daeron said cautiously. "Not like the others. Even the keepers avoid his cliffs."
Aemond rose. His fists clenched.
"I will have a dragon," he said, not to Daeron, not to the room but to himself. "And not one birthed in a cradle or given like a toy."
He turned toward the window, eyes narrowing east.
"I'll have that one."
Back at Dragonstone, the wind howled against the mountainside.
Vezdaryon stirred, slow and deliberate. He could feel them watching the hatchlings, the ones with dark hair and restless eyes. They came with longing. With greed. With dreams of conquest. They spoke in soft voices, thinking themselves clever. But their hearts beat fast with fear.
He tasted it in the air.
He had no name to them, only myth. The Shadow.
It amused him.
They were not wrong to fear. He did not want their hands. Their commands. Their voices shouting from his back. He had seen too much to bow to any mortal child again.
He moved his head slightly, the heavy air shifting around him like a storm preparing to fall.
And in that moment, even from so far below, Lucerys felt it, that subtle, terrible presence and shivered.
Jacaerys did not speak. Neither did he turn away.
The dragon did not blink.
He simply stared. Silent. Knowing.
He did not belong to them.
Not now. Not ever.
—————-
Hope you enjoyed the chapter