Somewhere beyond time and sanity, where the stars whispered secrets too old for gods to remember, a being reclined in a throne woven from the strands of unmade fates.
He looked human—mostly. Robert Carlyle on a good day, if Carlyle had been dipped in liquid madness and gifted with the smirk of someone who once played chess with Death and cheated just to see what would happen. He wore a coat that shimmered like spilled oil, stitched with threads of forgotten dreams, and he spun dice made of bone and starlight between his fingers.
"Let's see what the little mortals are up to," he murmured, voice curling like smoke. He dragged his gaze across the multiverse, flicking aside worlds like dog-eared paperbacks.
Two threads caught his eye.
He leaned in.
—
In one world...
The Forbidden Forest was silent but for the whisper of trees and the sound of a boy walking to his death.
Harry Potter's boots crunched softly over leaves and ash. His emerald eyes—fierce, haunted, so bloody tired—stared straight ahead. His shoulders were squared, his wand tucked away. Death waited, but he had made peace with it.
"Last time I let a prophecy plan my schedule," he muttered. His voice was dry, sarcastic, the kind of humor you learn when half the people you love are dead and the other half expect you to save the world.
The Snitch opened in his hand. The Resurrection Stone lay there, heavy and cold.
James and Lily appeared beside him. Sirius. Remus.
"You're almost there, Prongslet," Sirius said, pride and sorrow mingling in his voice.
Harry looked at them all and smiled faintly. "Tell Fred he still owes me five Sickles."
Then he stepped into the clearing. The last words he heard before the green light hit him were Voldemort's cruel hiss and his own calm whisper: "I'm ready."
—
In another...
Daenerys Stormborn stood in the throne room of the Red Keep.
The Iron Throne loomed before her—twisted, jagged, the symbol of all she'd bled for. But it was Jon she looked at.
"Do you believe in me?" she asked, her voice trembling under the weight of everything she'd lost. Her silver-blonde hair clung to her face, her eyes wide and wounded.
"I love you," Jon said, tears in his eyes. His hand trembled on the hilt of the dagger.
"And always will," he added, voice breaking.
Then came the kiss. Soft. Final.
The blade slid home.
Daenerys gasped, the cold metal slicing through more than her flesh. Her legs gave out. She crumpled against Jon's chest, her breath fleeing in ragged gasps.
"I dreamed of breaking the wheel…" she whispered. "I didn't want to be... alone."
The light faded from her violet eyes as the world around her crumbled into ash and betrayal.
—
Somewhere else...
The Being clapped once—sharp and amused.
"Oh, I do love a good tragedy. But two at once? How utterly exhausting. Where's the fun? Where's the chaos?"
He stood, arms wide as he spun, dragging starlight into motion around him. "Let's spice things up. Give the boy hero and the broken queen a... second act."
He reached into the folds of possibility and plucked two dying souls from the moment before the end.
"1918 sounds nice," he mused. "Pestilence, panic, plague... ah, vintage apocalypse. And a kind vampire doctor with a bleeding heart. Perfect host."
The dice dropped from his fingers.
The universe screamed.
—
Chicago. 1918. Mercy Hospital.
Dr. Carlisle Cullen sat hunched over a flickering oil lamp in his small office, scribbling notes on a death certificate with shaking hands. The Spanish Influenza was ravaging the city. The hallways were packed with coughing, dying, begging. He hadn't fed in days.
He scrubbed his face with one hand, exhaustion pulling at his bones.
And then—
CRACK.
A burst of wind exploded through the room, sending papers flying. The lamp flickered violently.
Carlisle shot to his feet.
Two bodies materialized in the center of the room. One male, one female—both unconscious. Both drenched in sweat and blood and the unmistakable scent of otherness.
The boy was tall, broad-shouldered, maybe eighteen. Black hair messily tousled, features handsome in a way that was both noble and oddly familiar. The girl beside him was a vision of moonlight and ruin—pale skin flushed with fever, long silver-blonde hair fanned out behind her like a halo, her breathing shallow.
Carlisle knelt beside them, pressing fingers to their necks. Weak pulses. Dying—but not dead.
He looked around, breath caught in his throat.
"What in God's name...?"
—
Somewhere far above, the Being chuckled.
"Not God, darling. Just me."
He leaned forward over the multiverse like a child admiring an anthill.
"Let's see what happens when you take a wizard, a dragon queen, and toss them into a world full of monsters who sparkle."
He tossed his dice again.
Game on.
—
Carlisle Cullen had made peace with death a long time ago.
He'd stood in the fire of his own making, been remade in pain and silence, and chosen—deliberately, stubbornly—to be something more than the monster he had become. For nearly two centuries, he had walked through the world as a ghost of what he might have been, healing when he could, hiding when he must.
But this?
This was new.
He stared at the two bodies sprawled on the floor of his office—so young, so beautiful, so clearly marked for death.
The girl was bleeding heavily from the chest. Knife wound, deep. Her silver-blonde hair clung to her face in damp strands, and her skin was hot with fever. Her lips trembled as she whispered something in a language that sounded ancient and broken.
Carlisle knelt beside her, pressing two fingers to her neck. Pulse—faint, but there.
The boy…
He was a mystery. No visible wounds. No signs of illness. And yet he radiated wrongness. Not evil—no, there was a gentleness there, even unconscious—but something not quite human. His heartbeat fluttered like candlelight in a drafty room, and his skin radiated a strange heat that Carlisle could feel even without touching him.
"I don't know what you are," he murmured, brushing the boy's damp bangs from his forehead. His hand trembled. "But you're dying. All three of you are."
His eyes flicked toward the papers on his desk. The ones detailing Edward Masen's decline.
The ones that haunted him.
Elizabeth Masen's final words echoed in his memory like a curse:
"Save him… please. Do what others cannot. I know you can…"
He hadn't known what to do. For days, he'd hovered in indecision, the idea unbearable: to curse a boy to immortality, to bloodlust.
But now—
Now there were three dying children in his care, and one fading chance to save them.
His mind snapped into motion.
"No time," he muttered, lifting the girl into his arms with practiced ease. She didn't weigh much—she was too thin, too frail for someone who'd worn a crown. And she whimpered in his arms, as though caught in a dream she could not escape.
He moved.
Faster than thought.
Through the empty halls of Mercy Hospital, past cots and curtains and coughing bodies, no one saw the blur that vanished into the back corridor.
Carlisle's private quarters—hidden just below the east wing—were modest, clean, and quiet. There, behind a reinforced wooden door, Edward Masen lay unconscious on a cot. His chest rose and fell with barely-there breaths, his skin pale as marble.
Carlisle laid the silver-haired girl gently on the second cot he had prepared—just in case.
He vanished again.
The boy was heavier—stronger, beneath the surface—but Carlisle carried him just the same. He reeked of magic and grief and something older than death.
As he laid the boy beside the other two, something in the air shifted. The scent of blood—so potent, so human—hit Carlisle like a thunderclap.
He staggered.
His throat lit on fire.
Three heartbeats. Three lives on the edge.
And all of them bleeding.
"No choice," he whispered hoarsely. His hands shook as he pressed them to his chest, over the crucifix he still wore.
"Forgive me."
He bit first.
Daenerys.
Her blood was fire and smoke and dragons' breath—ancient and intoxicating, thick with something more than human. It seared his throat like molten gold. He almost lost himself in it, his vision going dark around the edges.
He stumbled back, forcing himself to release her before it was too late.
Then Harry.
Carlisle braced himself, biting the boy's neck with trembling restraint.
It hit like a storm.
Lightning and thunder and grief. Magic pulsed through his veins, and Carlisle swore he saw flashes of memories—not his own—behind his eyes. Owls. Red hair. A woman screaming. A phoenix burning.
He dropped him, coughing, clutching at his throat.
Last was Edward.
His bite was gentler, almost reverent. Carlisle drank just enough—no more.
Then he fled.
In a blur of motion, he launched himself to the far corner of the room, bracing his hands against the stone wall as the frenzy rose.
Three tastes—three souls—burning through him.
He fought it, muscles locked, eyes squeezed shut.
"You are not a monster."
"You are not a monster."
"You. Are. Not. A. Monster."
But the blood was everywhere. In his mouth. On his tongue. Singing in his veins like poison and salvation.
Carlisle dropped to his knees, trembling violently.
Behind him, three hearts beat stronger.
Three new creatures began to stir in the silence of a new eternity.
And somewhere, far away, the Being lounged across a galaxy like it was a chaise lounge.
He sipped starlight from a teacup and grinned like a man watching his favorite soap opera go gloriously off-script.
"Well," he said, smirking. "Now this is interesting."
—
Once the frenzy subsided, Carlisle found himself crouched in the far corner of the stone room, his back pressed to the damp wall, head bowed like a penitent. He didn't breathe, not truly—but his chest shuddered as though trying to remember how.
The silence rang in his ears.
Then he heard them.
Three heartbeats. Erratic. Spasmodic. But unmistakably alive.
He raised his head slowly, golden hair falling across his brow, his eyes twin infernos of remorse and resolve.
Three bodies lay where he'd left them.
Still forms. Human no longer, but not yet monster.
He rose with the slow grace of something ancient remembering how to move in a world that had long outpaced him. Every motion was deliberate. Anchored. Not because he wasn't capable of speed, but because control was all he had left.
He knelt by the girl first. The one with the impossible silver-blonde hair, as if moonlight had been braided into strands.
She was thrashing now, caught in the teeth of the fever. Her lips parted in a silent scream, jaw locked so tight it might shatter. Fingers curled like talons, digging into the bedding until it tore beneath her nails.
He touched her forehead with the back of his hand. Burning.
And still, beneath the agony, something radiant shimmered in her aura. Something old. And proud.
She muttered in a language he did not know, yet the word echoed inside him as if it had always lived there.
"Zaldrīzes…"
Carlisle's brows drew together.
Dragon.
How do I know that?
He didn't linger.
The boy beside her was convulsing, his limbs spasming as if jolted by electric currents. His veins stood out like dark rivers beneath translucent skin. His jaw clenched so hard, Carlisle heard the faint pop of bone shifting.
Yet the boy made no sound. That scared him more than screaming would have.
He moved to Edward last.
Still as death. But Carlisle knew better.
His son's face—his true son, chosen not by blood but by something deeper—was flushed now, color blooming unnaturally beneath the surface. His heart galloped like a runaway horse, but the changes were already taking hold.
Carlisle sank to his knees beside him, brushing the bronze hair back from Edward's damp forehead.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "You didn't ask for this. None of you did."
His voice cracked.
He straightened and went to work.
Clothes first. Bloody, torn, and useless. He stripped them with a surgeon's detachment, bundling each article with oilcloth and tying them off in twine. Yet as he dressed each one in clean linen shifts and flannel, his hands trembled—not from fear, but reverence.
He paused again over the girl.
Her features were striking, even twisted by pain. Ethereal. Not unlike the angels in the chapel stained glass, though she seemed far more likely to set the sky aflame than sing hymns beneath it.
Who were these children?
He didn't know.
But something in his chest recognized them. Felt drawn to them like iron filings to a lodestone.
He stood, cradling the bundle of stained garments in his arms, and slipped from the room like a wraith.
The hospital's undercroft was a maze of forgotten halls and disused storage. He passed the old stone stairwell, the autopsy chamber, and finally reached the furnace room beside the morgue—mercifully empty this night. Influenza was stealing breath too quickly for ceremony.
He opened the iron grate, fed the garments in one by one.
As the flames caught, devouring the last traces of blood and sin, he stood motionless, watching until all that remained was ash and memory.
The heat licked his skin. He didn't flinch.
No evidence. No questions. No trail.
By the time he returned to the chamber, the moon had risen—high and swollen, casting a bruised glow through the upper windows. The world above had retreated into its own misery. No one noticed Carlisle Cullen had vanished.
But that was the point.
He had left his resignation that morning. Folded it cleanly. Written in his perfect cursive. No explanation, just an end.
Twenty years here. Another lie in a long string of beautiful deceptions.
"Good timing," he murmured, eyes lifting to the heavens. "You always were theatrical, weren't You?"
He checked their pulses again. Stronger now. Wild. The venom was racing through them, unraveling the fragile limits of humanity and stitching something far stronger—and far more dangerous—in its place.
There was no more time.
In three days, they would wake.
Not as children.
As newborns.
Carlisle's mind reeled at the thought of them awakening here—in a hospital surrounded by open wounds and weak hearts and so many, so many, mortals within reach of a thirst they could not yet control.
He wouldn't allow it.
He couldn't.
He slipped upstairs, quiet as snowfall, and fetched his keys. The Model T was parked behind the service entrance, buried in shadow. The night air was brittle, snow falling in gentle, wet flakes.
One by one, he carried them.
Edward first—his weight familiar. Protective instinct clenched Carlisle's chest as he settled the boy into the backseat, wrapping him tightly in a blanket.
Then the girl.
She murmured in that same language again as he lifted her, words slurred but weighted with meaning.
"Valzȳrys…"
He didn't know what it meant.
But it made him hold her just a little tighter.
Last was the boy with the scar.
Carlisle hesitated.
He knelt beside the cot, fingers brushing the boy's raven hair. The lightning-bolt scar stood out like a brand, angry and red.
There was power in it. And something ancient. Something that hummed beneath the skin like a second heartbeat.
"You feel like you were made for something more," he whispered. "Something beyond this world. And I… I hope I haven't damned you for it."
He gathered him up.
No more time for hesitation.
Carlisle drove through the city without headlights, wheels hissing over snow-covered cobblestones. The world around him was crumbling. War overseas. Plague here. The age of reason was choking on blood and grief.
And yet… perhaps it had to die.
To make room for what was coming.
They arrived at the cabin just past dawn. A modest structure—timber walls, high beams, and a roof heavy with snow. It had been prepared for decades. Stocked with everything a monster might need to pretend he could still serve a purpose.
He carried them in one by one, laying them in separate rooms. No windows. No fire. Thick walls and heavy shutters. There would be no risk here. No temptation.
Only silence.
And transformation.
He stripped off his coat. Washed the soot from his hands. Changed into an old shirt and stood in the center of the cabin, surrounded by soft heartbeats and the whispered creak of a world holding its breath.
Three days.
That's how long he had.
Three days to ready them. To teach them, if he could. To stop them, if he must.
He looked to the ceiling. Not for answers.
Just… hope.
"Let them forgive me," he said softly.
His voice barely a whisper.
Outside, the wind howled through the trees.
Inside, three souls burned.
And in the space between, Carlisle Cullen—doctor, father, monster, priest—waited.
Not for death.
But for resurrection.
—
The first light of morning filtered dimly through the cabin's heavy shutters, dust motes swirling like golden spirits in the hush. Snow had begun to fall again, quiet and clean, muffling the world in a hush of absolution.
Carlisle didn't sleep.
He never had, not since the cathedral vault swallowed him whole in the 1660s and spit him out something else. Something patient. Something enduring.
But more than that—he couldn't sleep now. Not while they burned.
They weren't screaming anymore.
That worried him.
Once they had thrashed, arching like struck matches, bodies bound by fever and venom and the slow, surgical violence of becoming. Now they lay still. Too still. As if the silence had absorbed them into its folds, their humanity flickering out one shallow breath at a time.
He moved like a shadow through the rooms, bootsteps softened by wool rugs and a preternatural grace that centuries of restraint had chiseled into habit. The fire crackled in the hearth, fed with pine and dried ashwood. It was the only sound beyond their occasional gasps and moans.
First: Edward.
He sat beside the boy in the oak armchair—hand-carved, high-backed, too large for the modest cabin—and studied the face that had once been fevered with grief and music. That face was changing.
Already, the boy's cheekbones had sharpened, jaw set with the subtle promise of elegance and austerity. The copper hair, damp with sweat, caught the light in strands of bronze and flame. The venom was sculpting him like a Michelangelo piece buried in flesh, refining every feature into something statuesque. Terrible in its beauty. Terrible in its hunger.
Carlisle laid a hand on his brow. Cool now. Not human. And not quite vampire yet. Almost.
The body had stopped rejecting death. It was remaking itself.
"I'm here, Edward," he whispered. "I'll be here when you wake. I promise."
A vow was a sacred thing. Carlisle rarely made them lightly.
He lingered, fingers briefly brushing the boy's wrist to feel the heartbeat—a slow, deliberate thump every few seconds. Measured. Inevitable.
Then he rose and crossed the hall to the other room.
The girl.
He didn't know her name. But Valzȳrys still echoed in his mind. A word she had murmured deliriously. Not Latin. Not Greek. Something older. It curled on the tongue like prophecy.
She lay beneath thick quilts, hair a wild halo of white-gold against the pillow. Not blonde, no. This was silver—metallic, iridescent, and uncanny in the winter morning. Her cheeks remained flushed even in transformation, as though the fire within her had refused to fade.
Carlisle had changed her into a soft chemise of ivory linen—old but clean, brought north from Boston in case of emergencies. It clung to her like moonlight. Where there had been bruises, bloodied scrapes, a cruel lash across her ribs—nothing remained.
Almost nothing.
One scar still shimmered faintly beneath her collarbone. Not a wound, exactly. A glyph. A mark.
It pulsed faintly—not with blood, but presence. A second heartbeat, not physical, but palpable. Resonant. Something ancient.
He leaned closer.
"You're not from here," he murmured. "Not from this time. Or this world."
The room felt colder. The light dimmed for just a moment, as if shadows had gathered around her without moving.
Carlisle straightened, jaw tightening.
"I don't know what you are," he confessed softly, "but I will not abandon you."
He reached down and smoothed a wrinkle in her quilt.
"I couldn't save her," he said. "But I can save you."
He didn't speak the name aloud. He never did. But the girl—this girl—was the same age Elizabeth would have been.
The boy with the scar was last.
Smaller than the others. Thinner. His skin was chalk-pale beneath the blanket, lips parted slightly. For a breathless moment, Carlisle feared the change had failed.
But then—
Thump… thump…
It was faint. But steady.
The scar on his forehead still remained, just barely visible to Carlisle's eyes. Not human eyes. Not even vampire eyes—his.
It wasn't just scar tissue. It shimmered faintly, a sigil of sorts. Like the wax seal on an unread letter.
He narrowed his gaze. Not a curse. Not a brand.
A door.
Carlisle shuddered.
Something was watching. Waiting.
"I don't like mysteries," he told the boy softly. "But I've lived long enough to respect them."
He straightened and sighed, running a hand through his golden hair.
Three children.
Three impossibilities.
And he had called them to life.
He dressed them next. The task was quiet. Reverent. Almost ritual.
For Edward: a dark button-up shirt, a high collar, trousers with creases so sharp they could cut glass. Somber. Proper. The attire of someone old enough to carry weight but still young enough to grieve.
For the girl: a woolen dress, deep forest green with a sash of bronze. It whispered of autumns that had passed without her. Strong fabric, yet soft at the cuffs. Something fitting for a daughter of wolves or queens.
For the boy: navy corduroy trousers, a soft white shirt, suspenders, a hand-knit pullover. Innocent things. He looked impossibly small in them. Fragile.
He paused as he buttoned the smallest shirt.
"Let them remember kindness," he murmured. "Even through the fire."
He read aloud that night. Psalms first. Then poetry—Milton's Paradise Lost, his voice slow and clear, cadence deliberate.
Later, from The Tale of Genji, his fingers tracing the brushstrokes printed in ink.
"'Even the blossom of the heart is a ghost, a phantom—just like cherry petals, falling in the dusk,'" he quoted, voice soft.
Not for comprehension.
But for rhythm. Memory.
Words mattered. Sound mattered. The first things they heard would matter.
And if he failed…
Carlisle turned and looked at the iron fireplace poker propped discreetly in the corner. Clean. Polished.
He had no illusions.
They'd remember the voice that welcomed them—or the hand that ended them.
—
The third morning.
The world outside glittered with fresh snow.
Inside, the fire had burned low—but not out. The warmth clung to the cabin like the breath of something living.
Then the silence cracked.
It began with Edward.
A twitch. A hand clenched.
His jaw shifted. His brow furrowed. His spine arched with a jolt like a lightning-struck marionette.
Then—
A gasp.
Violent. Raw. Like a man pulled from drowning.
Carlisle was already beside him.
Edward's eyes flew open. For a heartbeat, they were green—sea-glass and stormlight. Then the red surged in, crimson blooming like blood in water.
His hands shot forward—grabbing the sides of the bed frame. His chest heaved. His gaze snapped to Carlisle.
"What—" he rasped. The voice was hoarse. Terrified.
"Edward," Carlisle said, calm but firm. "You're safe. You're with me."
The boy's nostrils flared. He could smell everything. The cabin walls, the trace of pine and oil, the smoke on Carlisle's collar.
The venom in his veins.
Hunger howled behind his gaze.
Carlisle did not flinch.
He sat, not touching him—but anchoring him.
"Listen to my voice," he said. "You're not dying. You're not lost."
Edward's breath hitched.
"Am I—" He swallowed. "Am I… dead?"
Carlisle's mouth twitched. Not a smile. Something deeper. Sadder.
"No," he said. "You've simply changed."
Edward blinked. Slowly. Then again. He looked at his hands—too still. Too strong. Looked around. Saw the others. The girl. The boy.
He pressed a hand to his chest.
"I feel—" His eyes widened. "Everything."
Carlisle nodded. "You will for a while."
The boy stared at him.
"Are they—?"
"Soon," Carlisle said.
He reached out and laid a hand on Edward's shoulder. Cool. Steady.
"You are not alone."
Edward shuddered. His crimson eyes met Carlisle's—and for just a moment, there was still something human in them. Something reaching.
Then he nodded.
A slow breath.
It was beginning.
One down.
Two to go.
—
The fire had dulled to embers.
Outside, snow powdered the windowsills in crystalline hush, each flake catching the faintest shimmer like stars fallen to earth. Inside, time moved differently—slow, sacred, and steeped in stillness.
Carlisle hadn't stirred from the chair beside Edward since dawn.
He sat straight-backed, statuesque, fingers steepled beneath his chin. The shadows played softly across the contours of his face—high cheekbones, glacial eyes, the faintest crease of worry along his brow. His presence was quiet, but absolute.
Edward sat across from him, legs pulled up to his chest, forearms wrapped tightly around his knees. The blanket draped over his shoulders gave him the look of a prince caught in the act of remembering how to be a boy. His crimson eyes, usually shuttered with control, were wide now, unguarded.
"She hasn't moved," Edward murmured, voice rough with silence.
"She will," Carlisle replied, almost too softly to hear. "Soon."
And then—
A breath.
The faintest shift of cloth against skin.
Carlisle was on his feet before the sound had fully formed.
The girl stirred—not like someone waking from sleep, but like something returning to itself. A tide curling back to shore. Her fingers flexed once, then again, curling toward her chest as if cradling something she no longer held.
Carlisle approached her bed slowly, reverently.
Her eyes fluttered open.
Not red.
Violet.
Like crushed amethyst steeped in moonlight. They met his gaze with surprising calm, a clarity that unsettled him more than any blood-hunger might have.
"You're awake," he said, his voice as even and clear as candlelight.
She blinked, disoriented but not panicked. "Yes."
Carlisle knelt beside the bed. "Do you know where you are?"
"No," she whispered. "But I know I'm not… where I was."
Her voice held something strange. Not foreign. Ancient. The vowels curled, soft-edged and melodic, as if the language itself had muscle memory.
"I dreamed… of fire," she added. "And wings that broke the sky."
Carlisle felt a cold thread of recognition slip down his spine. "What's your name?"
She hesitated, considering him. Testing.
Then, simply: "Daenerys."
Edward stiffened at the name.
Carlisle repeated it under his breath. "Daenerys."
It didn't feel like a name so much as an echo—of something written long before any of them had walked this earth.
She sat up, slowly, the blanket falling from her shoulders like a discarded veil. Her skin, pale as ash, shimmered faintly in the firelight. But her eyes—they blazed.
"I… don't feel like I should," she said.
Carlisle nodded. "There's no blood-hunger?"
"No." She tilted her head. "Should there be?"
Edward finally spoke, voice quiet but firm. "Every newborn feels it. It's the first fire we know."
Daenerys looked at him then, and her violet gaze softened. "You're like me."
"I suppose I am," he replied, cautious.
She looked past him, toward the smallest bed.
The boy hadn't moved.
But she stared as if something stirred in her blood.
"He's close," she whispered. "He's almost through."
Carlisle's gaze flicked to her sharply. "You can feel him?"
She nodded slowly. "It's like… thunder under the earth."
"You said something in your sleep," Carlisle said, tone gentler now. "A word. Valzȳrys."
Her expression shifted—surprise, recognition, wariness.
"It's Valyrian," she said. "The language of my blood."
Carlisle frowned. "I've studied Latin, Greek, Old Norse. But that…"
"It's older," she said. "It means… prince. But not just royalty. The one who commands. Shapes destiny."
Carlisle rose to full height, a silhouette of thought and caution. "And the boy—he is that?"
"I don't know," she said. "But the word was his. I didn't choose it. It was given."
Edward glanced toward the bed. "Then what was the other word you said?"
She looked at the boy again, almost tenderly.
"Zaldrīzes."
"What does it mean?"
She didn't take her eyes off the boy.
"Dragon."
The silence fell heavy.
And then—
Thump.
A single heartbeat.
Then another.
Carlisle moved before the third.
Daenerys stood—barefoot, eerily graceful. Her breath came slow and shallow, as though she were afraid to disturb the moment.
Edward hovered near the doorframe, motionless, yet poised like a held note.
The boy's body arched with a sudden gasp. His fingers clenched the blanket. Muscles trembled beneath skin still pale and unfamiliar.
Then—he stilled.
And opened his eyes.
Green.
Vivid. Piercing. Like summer leaves backlit by fire.
Carlisle went utterly still.
Not red. Not violet.
Emerald.
Daenerys stepped forward, her expression unreadable.
The boy blinked, adjusting to the dim.
"…Where am I?" he rasped.
Carlisle crouched at his side, voice low. "You're safe. You've been through something… unnatural. But you're alive."
The boy's eyes flicked to Daenerys. His gaze locked onto hers like it recognized her from a place beyond memory.
"You said something," he murmured. "In my dream. Over and over."
Daenerys knelt, almost reverently. "Valzȳrys."
He nodded slowly, frowning. "I don't know what it means."
"It means prince," she said. "Or something like it."
He looked at her—deeply, curiously.
Then turned to Carlisle.
"My name is Harry," he said softly.
Carlisle stilled.
Daenerys's lips parted, as if she had expected it—and yet hadn't.
Edward let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
Harry tried to sit up. "I don't remember much. Just… light. Fire. And pain. A lot of pain."
"You were dying," Daenerys said, gently. "And now you're not."
He turned his gaze to her again, and something passed between them. Recognition without knowing. The feeling of matching pieces in a puzzle neither had seen.
Carlisle stood slowly. A physician at heart, a guardian by choice. His voice was low and final.
"I don't know what you three are. Not yet."
He looked between Edward, Daenerys, and Harry.
"But whatever this is… I'll protect you. All of you."
Even from yourselves.
---
Hey fellow fanfic enthusiasts!
I hope you're enjoying the fanfiction so far! I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Whether you loved it, hated it, or have some constructive criticism, your feedback is super important to me. Feel free to drop a comment or send me a message with your thoughts. Can't wait to hear from you!
If you're passionate about fanfiction and love discussing stories, characters, and plot twists, then you're in the right place! I've created a Discord server dedicated to diving deep into the world of fanfiction, especially my own stories. Whether you're a reader, a writer, or just someone who enjoys a good tale, I welcome you to join us for lively discussions, feedback sessions, and maybe even some sneak peeks into upcoming chapters, along with artwork related to the stories. Let's nerd out together over our favorite fandoms and explore the endless possibilities of storytelling!
Click the link below to join the conversation:
https://discord.com/invite/HHHwRsB6wd
Can't wait to see you there!
If you appreciate my work and want to support me, consider buying me a cup of coffee. Your support helps me keep writing and bringing more stories to you. You can do so via PayPal here:
https://www.paypal.me/VikrantUtekar007
Or through my Buy Me a Coffee page:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/vikired001s
Thank you for your support!