— Summerhall (259 DC)
The night in Summerhall was not dark - it was green.
Green like the immense flames that consumed the castle. Summerhall, once a summer retreat for Targaryen kings, burned like a nightmare of stone. The gardens where Targaryen children had played among roses and marble dragons were covered in ash. The once-proud spires of the castle bowed under the weight of the green fire that rose to the sky - a fire that did not warm, did not light, only devour.
King Aegon V, called "The Unlikely," stood in the central courtyard, his trembling hands raised to a dragon's egg as cold as the heart of winter. His face, lit by dancing flames, was a mask of desperation, obsession, and madness.
"Blood for blood!" his scream ripped through the night, echoing off the cracked walls.
Pyromancers in flowing robes danced in circles, pouring vials of green liquid into the sacred fires. Live horses, their eyes wide with terror, were thrust into the flames. Their anguished whinnies mingled with the loud Valyrian chants.
During the madness that raged in the center of the castle, in its bowels where the walls sweated with hysteria and the air was heavy with tension, Rhaella Targaryen gave birth...
Inside, between sheets soaked with sweat and blood, the dragon prince was born, a poet, the child of prophecy.
Maester Harwyn - a thin man with a gray beard and a warden's chain with a shiny ruby link - was helping Aly, a bastard midwife from the Stormlands, who was shouting orders to her maids:
"Hot water! Clean cloths! And for the love of the Seven, close that door before the fire devours us!"
The door was already warped by the heat. Ellyn de Hayford, a dark-haired maid with shrewd eyes, pressed a soaked towel against the princess's forehead, whispering:
"The Mother has heard your prayers, Your Highness. The boy will be strong."
Rhaella could not hear. Her screams mingled with the shattering of glass and the muffled cries of Mara, another maid, who hid under the bed and prayed aloud.
"More strength, Your Grace!" Harwyn commanded, but his hands were already shaking. The floor vibrated as if the castle itself were in labor.
And then, between a moan from Rhaella and the crash of a tower collapsing outside, Rhaegar came into the world.
There was a hush. The baby did not cry. Aly held him in the light of the green flames that leaked through the cracks, and even the fearless midwife recoiled:
"Seven hells... Your eyes...".
Rhaella, exhausted, dragged herself up to look. And she understood:
Her eyes were not violet.
They were flames trapped in amber, pulsing to the rhythm of dreams not yet dreamed. Visions of a future burning beneath the eyelids.
"Is it, is it, is it a curse?" whispered Mara as she approached the baby.
Maester Harwyn, however, knelt in fascination:
"No. It's the prophecy being born."
Rhaegar's birth was followed by silence. The baby just looked at everything around him.
Then the ceiling began to collapse. Mara screamed as a glowing rock crashed into the bed where she had been. Aly pushed Rhaella away from the burning beams while Ellyn tried to cover the baby with her own body.
"Take him away!" Rhaella roared, but Maester Harwyn was already dead, clutching a charred parchment.
The green fire - that cold fire that consumes even hope - invaded the room like a hungry beast. Rhaella, now among the corpses and ashes, took Rhaegar from Ellyn and held him to her chest, her eyes shining with intense love as she looked at her son while whispering poetry in High Valyrian to the newborn:
"Dārys Zaldrīzeso!
Kesīr sȳndor... ñuha dōna!
Perzys ānogār... hen mēre!
Se hāedar... brōztagon!..."
("Dance, Lone Dragon!
In this darkness... my sweet!
Fire rises... from the ashes!
And the night... recedes!...")
The melody bent the flames. For a moment, the green fire was static, as if frozen in time. On the walls, the shadows danced in spirals, creating dragon shadows that immediately caught the attention of the newborn child and the maids, who wasted no time in lifting Rhaella from the bed with Rhaegar to get them out of the burning room.
"You see, don't you?" she whispered, her cracked lips touching Rhaegar's forehead. "The fire is afraid of us."
But the spell lasted less than a verse. The ground shook, and a burnt beam fell on Rhaella's feet. She did not scream. She sang louder, hugging Rhaegar as the world collapsed and she was carried from the castle:
"Lyks!... Ānogār hen zālȳño!
Aōha perzys... kostōba!
Kesīr... sȳndor!"
("Ascend!... Be born of pain!
Your fire... custody!
Here... darkness!")
As the rubble buried the room, the last thing Rhaegar heard was the whisper of the fire answering his mother.
— Library of the Red Keep (262 AD)
Grand Maester Pycelle Pov:
He knew the lord wasn't paying attention again. He'd never seen a child so prodigious in his studies - Rhaegar was already reading, and as if that weren't enough, he read High Valyrian better than half Council - but perhaps that was to be expected. After all, the prince had started walking and talking much earlier than he should have.
"Ahhh..." the sigh escaped him before he could stop it. A sound that mixed weariness and fascination.
At the oak table, Rhaegar wiggled his short legs, drawing dragons in black ink on an ancient parchment. His fingers smeared the paper with fluid shapes, as if the creatures came to life between the smudges.
Pycelle, forcing his hundredth smile of the day, said:
"Your Grace... imagine: Aegon riding Balerion, black wings obscuring the sun! That's how he conquered Westeros!"
Without raising his eyes, Rhaegar dipped his quill into the ink and said quietly:
"The sun doesn't let itself be covered..." as he drew a golden circle with scraps of gold leaf stolen from the workshop.
Pycelle squinted, uncomfortable with the precision of the drawing.
"The conqueror used fire, not... golden toys, my prince."
An icy gust of wind blew through the ajar window, blowing out half the candles and sending the wooden frame crashing against the wall.
Pycelle jumped, knocking the book on Balerion to the ground. As he bent down to pick it up, his gray hair tangled in the wind, he muttered a curse to the Faith of the Seven. He stood up, adjusted the Master's chain and -
"Where...? Not again..."
The table was empty. Only the parchment with the black-inked dragon and the golden sun remained, now stained by the melted wax of a fallen candle. Pycelle swallowed dryly, his wide eyes scanning the room until they settled on the half-open door to the corridor. There, a tuft of white hair disappeared into the dim light, accompanied by the echo of children's laughter that seemed to whisper: "I told you, old man... the sun won't be hidden."
Pycelle let out another sigh from the depths of his gut, longer and heavier than the previous one. His bony fingers clenched the edge of the table, as if the wood could absorb his despair.
"This time the queen will kill me," he muttered, and even the irony in his voice sounded tired.
He looked down the empty corridor, where the last glimmer of silver had disappeared, and imagined Rhaella Targaryen with those wounded dragon eyes - the same ones that had stared at Aerys in those nightmarish early hours. He knew she would not hesitate to poison his wine if she knew he had "lost" the prince again.
He adjusted the Master's chain again, as if the weight of the links could protect him from something worse than death, and murmured to the portrait of Jaehaerys I on the wall:
"I should have let him draw dragons in peace... or given him to the lion."
In the corner of the room, a golden candle - a not-so-discreet gift from Tywin Lannister - flickered as if laughing at the situation.
.
The handmaids found Rhaegar kneeling on the icy floor of the east passageway, where the black stone walls served as a canvas for his dragons. He drew with charcoal ink and gold leaf stolen from the goldsmith's shop: winged creatures whose scales glistened like golden blood in the moonlight.
Mara (whispering to Ellyn):
"By the Seven... it looks like the walls are breathing."
Before they could touch it, Rhaella appeared, silent as a ghost, her long shadow swallowing the drawings.
"Leave us," she commanded without raising her voice.
The maids fled, leaving behind a candle that cast dancing shadows over Rhaegar's dragons.
Rhaella Targaryen's POV:
As my eyes scanned the twisted dragons on the walls - creatures of coal and gold that seemed to whisper secrets in archaic Valyrian - my eyebrows arched. "Impressive," I let slip. And there, in the flickering light of the canlde, I encountered a paradox as I turned my eyes to my little dragon: Rhaegar's violet eyes, as pure as any Targaryen's, no longer sparkled with the visionary amber that reminded him of the twilight of Summerhall. But something remained, a spark buried beneath the surface like embers beneath ashes. It was as if the prophetic flames that had once ignited his childlike gaze had been extinguished, only to reveal something more terrifying: the cold clarity of one who already understood more than he should. He stared at her without blinking, and in that moment Rhaella understood that her son did not see beyond his years - he remembered beyond them, as if the bloody centuries of his homeland were mere verses written in his iris.
As I drew closer to the drawings, I could see that there were dragons intertwined with what must have been "verses" - still childishly written - in High Valyrian, their wings made of crooked letters that seemed to bleed scarlet ink.
Then I turned to him, my little violet-eyed dragon with his charcoal-smudged hands, and I knew: A dragon poet had been born.