The night split with a hissing roar.
It tore through the smoke-clogged air like a blade, sharp enough to rouse even the dead. The people of Tyrosh- soldiers, slaves, and merchants alike, lifted their heads as a shadow blotted out the moons. Then Sunfyre descended, a golden comet trailing fire.
His scales burned with their own radiance, molten gold washed in crimson light. Every beat of his vast wings sent gusts rolling across the city; torches flared, banners snapped, and men who had stood in perfect ranks only moments before felt their courage bleed out through their boots.
A column of reddish-gold flame plunged downward, carving through the Tyroshi regulars as if the very sky had decided to fall upon them. Shields and spears, disciplined, drilled, and unyielding when facing other men, offered no more resistance than frost meeting boiling water. The front ranks vanished in a flash, charred to drifting ash before they even screamed.
"AAAHHH DRAGON!" Kalom gasped. His face flushed with fear, voice cracking beneath the roar of wings. "Scatter! Scatter!"
But his soldiers were already breaking. Order dissolved in heartbeats as men trampled each other to flee the descending wyrm. Against other armies, they could stand. Against a dragon, no Tyroshi formation held. Not tonight.
"Archers! Archers-form up!" Kalom bellowed, fighting to keep the tremor from his voice.
Six hundred bowmen, Tyrosh's pride, its best-equipped and best-fed, fumbled into five staggered squares. They raised trembling bows, trying to track the gold dragon as he wheeled low, wings almost brushing the rooftops.
Above them, Aegon smiled.
He sat low in Sunfyre's saddle, the night wind stinging his face, hair whipping back like a silver banner. His blood thrummed with the dragon's fury. The archers' fear tasted sweet to him, sharp as wine.
Faster, Aegon urged silently. Take their courage from them. Rip it out by the root.
He slowed Sunfyre's glide intentionally, letting the archers believe they had a chance.
He could hear their hope.
The frantic breath.
The desperate thought- Aim. Aim. Aim. Gods, let this work…
And Kalom seized the bait. "Loose! Loose!"
Hundreds of arrows shrieked upward.
Sunfyre twisted in an impossibly tight roll, gold wings folding briefly before snapping open. Most arrows screamed past his belly, missing by yards. Those that struck merely shrieked against his scales and fell away, broken stubs littering the burning streets.
The archers froze in horror.
Aegon felt Sunfyre's contempt.
Again, he urged softly. Make them fear the sky.
As the bowstrings fell silent and the archers scrambled to nock again, Sunfyre surged forward. His chest swelled.
A torrent of crimson-gold fire washed over the archers. In the brief flash before their bodies disintegrated.
His flame spilled over the bowmen, drowning them in red-gold light. Some tried to flee. Some curled in on themselves. Some did not even move, their minds numbed by horror.
They all burned the same.
And Aegon did not look away.
Across the city, Vhagar's roar rolled like the breaking of the world.
From the heights around the Temple of the Three-Headed God, Vhagar descended in a canopy of black-green flame. Her fire did not roar the way younger dragons' did... it rumbled, like the earth itself was cracking open.
The temple vanished beneath the onslaught.
Stone walls burst. Marble pillars snapped. The colossal statue of the Three-Headed God sagged as if melting candlewax, heads drooping and merging as Vhagar's fire consumed it. A holy symbol reduced to slag.
A grim omen of the night yet to come.
With the temple in ruins, Vhagar banked toward the Palace of the Chief- Tyrosh's center of wealth and power.
The Tyroshi elected their leaders through bribes, threats, favors, and the occasional dagger in the dark. A man who could not buy loyalty, they believed, had no right to rule.
Yet none of their schemes mattered now. Vhagar's shadow swallowed the palace whole.
After tonight, Tyrosh would have no ruler at all.
Aegon had not expected such a gift.
He had arrived seeking a swift, brutal strike, something to weaken the slavers' influence. But instead he had flown into the heart of a slave rebellion, one that now surged through the city like a storm with no master.
A stroke of fortune delivered by fire and blood.
If the slaves of Tyrosh rose, even briefly, the city's power structure would crack. And cracked power could be remade. Controlled. Bent toward a future throne.
Aegon had no time for slow manipulation. He had a decade, perhaps less, before the war for the Iron Throne devoured the realm. Ten years to secure allies, wealth, armies, dragons, and ruthlessness.
Time would not permit delicate politics.
But fire? Fire made swift work.
Through his bond with Sunfyre, clearer than ever, Aegon felt every shift of the dragon's wings as if they were his own limbs, every swell of flame like breath in his lungs. Man and beast moved as one.
And together, they would carve a place for him in the world.
Below, Kalom fled.
The proud commander who had earlier marched with confidence now careened through alleys, stumbling over corpses and discarded shields. His breath rasped, sweat streaming into his eyes. That proud commander who had marched with confidence earlier now stumbled like a drunkard, sobs choking his breath.
He had believed in tactics, in discipline, in planning.
But all his training, his pride, collapsed under dragonfire.
He stumbled into an alley, clutching his side. His vision blurred.
"Damn-Damn you, Recharino-your tricks-your lies-" His voice broke into a pained laugh. "Scatter and shoot- scatter and shoot-gods damn you-"
The plan had been simple, scatter at the dragon's dive, then counterattack with arrows, bolts, and ballistae. A foolproof method, Recharino claimed, borrowed from old Ghiscari tactics.
Kalom had believed it.
He had scattered. He had counterattacked... but the dragon had humiliated him, baiting his archers into firing too soon, then burning them before they could blink.
This was no ordinary dragon.
It was faster, more agile, almost cunning... a creature that seem to learn, that adapted mid-flight, that seemed to understand traps and answer them with traps of its own.
Kalom continued to run, and Sunfyre's shadow passed overhead.
He whimpered, and got so distracted that, he didn't even hear the slaves approach.
A hoe smashed into the back of his skull with a wet crack. The world flashed white, then black.
"He's here!" the slave who struck him cried, voice trembling with exhilaration.
Dozens surged in. Shackled hands, calloused fists, makeshift weapons, rage transformed into flesh and bone. In moments, Kalom's unconscious body was torn apart, flesh beaten into paste against the cobblestones.
Justice, crude and merciless.
Above, Sunfyre banked again, keeping clear of the swelling rebel tide. His fire fell only on the Tyroshi regulars, never on the slaves. A deliberate choice.
Hidolf, stared at the golden dragon with a hunger bordering on reverence. The wyrm's flame had skimmed past him moments earlier, taking twenty soldiers but sparing every slave.
"He helps us," Hidolf whispered. He could scarcely believe it. "The dragons… they help us!"
His voice broke. Years of torment hardened the edges of his words.
With a roar of his own, Hidolf raised a bloodied spear. "Spread out! Free them all! Tonight, Tyrosh belongs to us!"
And like wildfire, the revolt spread.
Rebels swept through alleys and marketplaces, cutting collars from slaves who joined without hesitation. Every freed man added his fury to the storm. The rebellion surged outward from the Weeping Tower and soon devoured entire districts.
Slavers were dragged from silken beds and beaten in the streets. Storehouses were plundered, manors torched, temples toppled. Tyrosh's wealth, the wealth built upon broken backs, burned beneath smokeless sky.
Statues of foreign gods stared blankly at the carnage, their stone faces lit by the inferno. Their silent judgment meant nothing. The oppressed had waited too long.
Oppression always demanded its price.
Tonight, the debt came due.
High above, Aegon watched all through Sunfyre's eyes, the chaos, the vengeance, the cleansing fire spreading through the city.
Not a flicker of pity stirred within him.
These slavers had built their wealth upon chains. Breaking them was no sin. It was necessity.
If he had years, he would dismantle their alliances piece by piece. Slowly... Politically and Carefully.
But time did not serve him. And so he would seize the simplest path,
Burning the rot away.
Let the flames decide who survived the night.
Aegon leaned forward, eyes gleaming like molten steel as Sunfyre banked toward the last surviving Tyroshi lines.
"Again," he murmured into the wind, voice low and merciless. "Burn them. All of them."
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A/N: The world is moving in shadows, schemes brewing, alliances breaking, and every soul chasing wealth or survival. No one knows what comes next…
Who wins? Who falls? Only time will tell.
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