100AC.
The harbor and the great mansion had given up their secrets first. There, amidst the blackened bones of ancient vessels, Hadrian had found the scale of a beast not born of fire, but frost, he had summoned the scales with an accio and it had worked. It was pale as milkglass and veined with blue, cold to the touch even in the steaming Valyrian heat. The texts recovered near the sunken quay spoke of fusion and fire, of ice-born wings and bloodless breath. Mad dreams, he thought at first—until the scale burned his fingers with cold, and refused to melt.
But deeper truths lay not upon the shore.
Inland, through avenues of ashen trees and basalt towers bent like broken spears, Hadrian and his men came upon the palatial ruins of the dragonlords. The estates were half-buried, as if the Doom had tried to swallow them whole and failed. Cracked domes, fluted spires, and flaking murals whispered of wealth beyond reckoning. They entered through doorways shaped like dragon jaws, stepping over bones that snapped like kindling beneath their boots.
The grand halls were vast, echoing things. Here and there a pillar still stood, scorched but proud, wrapped in obsidian serpents. The floors were a patchwork of melted marble and burned silk, littered with charred skeletons, many still seated where they'd died—banqueters turned to ash mid-feast. Golden plates clung to blackened tables; gems were fused into the stone by dragonfire. One chamber held a throne of obsidian carved to resemble wings—its seat was scorched, as if the one who ruled it had burned from within.
Among the wreckage they found ornaments of rare and exotic gold, circlets and torque chains twisted with rubies and pearls, seals engraved with glyphs none alive could read. Gemstone-inlaid sigils bore the marks of ancient Valyrian houses—some lost to time, others remembered only in whispers and bloodlines diluted. Hadrian uncovered a pair of dragonbone daggers resting beside the remains of what might once have been a child.
Even the servants' quarters yielded treasures. Silver dishes engraved with maps of far-off lands, scroll cases of cracked lacquer, tapestries half-consumed by mold, and once-beautiful stained-glass windows—melted and run like wax, but still depicting dragons in flight over cities that no longer stood. Every step in the palaces brought wealth—and wonder—but also the ache of something long dead, something that once dreamed and ruled and burned.
Yet it was the forges that held Hadrian longest.
He found them beneath a shattered dome, open to the sky, where ivy clung to slag-heaps and the air stank of rust and old fire. The forge hall was vast, a cathedral to flame. Anvils the size of wagons stood in rows like altar stones. Stone vents rose behind them like the gaping mouths of giants. Bronze tubes coiled along the ceiling, leading to a great pit that had once been a lair—for a dragon, surely. No other beast could have fueled such heat.
Half-forged blades lay scattered across the blackened ground—some still glowing faintly with dormant enchantments, others warped and broken, as if they had screamed in agony before the Doom silenced them. Molds of rare alloys were stacked in corners, and casks of powdered ore glittered with unearthly shimmer. Hadrian ordered no one touch them until he could divine their purpose.
But it was the runes that haunted him.
Carved into the anvil stones and inlaid with red gold were glyphs older than Valyria's founding, serpentine and sharp as claws. When Hadrian traced them with his gloved hand, they pulsed faintly—like embers refusing to die.
"These forges were not built by smiths," one of his warlocks whispered. "They were temples."
Hadrian said nothing, but he knew the truth of it. The glyphs were not just words—they were spells, incantations etched in stone, binding fire to metal, perhaps even soul to steel. This was not mere craftsmanship. This was sacrifice. Here, dragons had given their breath, and perhaps more, to temper the weapons of conquest.
He lingered late, long after the others had gone. Smoke curled from the broken hearths, though no flame burned. In the silence of the forge, with the weight of gold behind him and ice-blooded dragons whispering in his dreams, Hadrian could almost hear the hammers ringing again. Not the sound of work—but of war to come.
The sky over Valyria hung heavy, a rusted dome above a city long turned to cinder. Even after two weeks, the stench of scorched stone and brine lingered in the nostrils like old blood. The sea wind carried whispers, though none dared speak of them aloud.
Hadrian stood still in the courtyard of what had once been a palace. Only fragments remained—arched colonnades split by fire, a mosaic of dragons fractured by time. Behind him, the others waited: Riff and Toff, once elves, now marked by manhood and time, their faces shadowed with dust and fatigue. They trusted him, as always, without asking why.
He had felt it for days now, a tug in the marrow of his bones, something deeper than memory and more ancient than fear. There was something beneath the city. Not ruin. Not rot. But power. Old power. Power older than Valyria itself.
The courtyard beneath him was cracked, the stone laced with silver veining and obsidian flakes. Without a word, Hadrian raised his staff—it had the form of a gnarled thing, shaped of blackened weirwood and dragonbone, worn from use and soot-streaked from fire he had chosen that form for now because he had decided that it would be more appropriate then the form he had in his old world or in private.
He struck it against the ground.
The sound was not loud, but it resonated. Deep. Slow. Like a war drum heard underwater. The stone beneath him pulsed once, then split—not with violence, but purpose. Thin lines of light traced outward from the point of impact, coiling in runes too old for tongues. The earth sighed, and a perfect seam opened at Hadrian's feet.
The staff changed as the ground gave way. What had been a simple walking stick lengthened and straightened, its tip crowned now with a smooth orb of smoky crystal. Within the glass, a flicker of pale blue light ignited—soft at first, then brightening like a lantern touched by moonfire. The glow painted Hadrian's face in sharp relief, casting his grey eyes like iron beneath frost.
"This way," he said, and descended.
His men followed without question, their own blades drawn not for danger, but for reverence.
The steps beneath the courtyard were smooth and old, untouched by the Doom. Carved not by man's hand, but by something more precise. There were no torches. No sconces. Yet the path was clear, the walls alive with faint runes that drank in the staff's light and shimmered back their secrets.
Down they went, past forgotten bones and carved dragon heads. The air grew colder. Not with the bite of death—but with stillness. The kind found in crypts that have never been breached.
At last, they came to the vaults.
The first was a hall of gold.
Chests, vast and uncountable, stacked three men high and ten deep, all overflowing. Coins stamped with the faces of dragonlords long turned to ash. Crowns and diadems inset with star sapphires. Rings carved from black opal. Chains meant for kings.
But this was not wealth. It was tribute. Conquest made metal. Hadrian walked among it not like a thief, but a judge, and the staff's light made the gold seem pale and small.
The second vault was stranger.
It smelled of salt and silk and old oils. Treasures from every reach of the world rested on velvet-lined tables: scrolls wrapped in jade from Asshai, goblets of translucent bone, incense boxes still heavy with the scents of Sothoryos. There were amphorae filled with wine so ancient the corks had turned to crystal. Blades from Yi Ti, books from Leng, plundered from worlds that had once dared to defy Valyria.
And then—steel.
It lay in the third chamber, cold and waiting.
Valyrian steel. Ingot upon ingot. Blades broken and warped, half-melted in the Doom yet unyielding in spirit. Some bore glyphs that shimmered like oil in the light. Others were jagged, hungry-looking things, whispering of war. There was enough steel to arm every lord of the North—and more. Enough to forge not just swords, but an age.
Toff, silent now, ran a finger along one ingot and flinched. It had cut him, though he had not pressed. The blood hissed where it touched the metal.
"These remember," Hadrian murmured. "Every wound. Every fire."
But it was the last vault that shook him.
Not for its treasures—but its truth.
The gallery beyond was lined in tapestries and murals preserved by spell and silence. The walls sang with color—red and black, gold and ash. They showed the rise of Valyria: dragons devouring cities, kings bowing beneath the wings of fire. In one, the Fall of Ghis—the streets soaked in blood, the sky a maelstrom of wings and wailing. In another, the First Binding, when dragonlords carved glyphs into their own skin and summoned flame into bone.
And then—at the end of the hall—a final mural.
A family. Clad in white. Pale of hair, eyes like polished amethyst. They stood together in a ring of flame. A great dragon circled them, not to devour, but to bless. Fire bathed them, licked their skin like a lover's breath—and they did not burn.
They smiled.
Not in conquest. Not in cruelty. But in peace. As if the fire was a sacrament. As if they had found joy in its embrace.