The sun over Meereen was a merciless coin of white iron. Its glare poured down the pit walls, making the blood on the sand shine like rubbed bronze. The crowd roared above — thousands of throats screaming for slaughter, for spectacle, for the kind of violence that fed their boredom.
I stood in the center of it all. Barefoot. Unarmored. Breathing dust and salt.
Before me loomed the troll.
A massive brute of muscle and callused hide, its face half a skull and half a snarl, its breath fogging like steam around curved tusks. It held a sword long as a galley mast, dragging it through the sand as if it weighed nothing.
I had no weapon.
Not since they took it from me, laughing.
"Fight, red-eye. Let's see if the stories are true."
Two years of blood. Two years of being chained like an animal.Two years of learning I did not heal like other men.That my bones knit faster, my wounds closed in hours, and when rage took me—
—everything inside me felt too small to hold what wanted out.
But none of that mattered standing in front of the troll.
It swung.
Wind howled past my face as I dove aside. The blade carved a trench through the sand, ripping three men in half behind me. Their screams were short. Their bodies hit the dirt like discarded sacks.
Ten men had died in less than a minute.
The Meereenese masters were already turning away in their silk seats, bored by the ease of their deaths. One yawned. Another tossed a grape into his mouth.
They don't even see me.
Not man enough to watch.Not important enough to cheer.
A fire rose in my chest — not heat, not power.Humiliation.
And then rage.
Pure. Scalding. Unfiltered.
I threw myself at the troll's leg, slamming my full weight into its knee. Bone cracked. The beast staggered. For an instant, I thought I'd felled it.
Then its backhand came down like a boulder.
The world spun.
I crashed into the wall of the pit. My ribs screamed. My skull rang. The copper taste of blood filled my mouth.
My vision flickered——and in the wavering haze of heat and pain, I saw him again.
Bayle.
Not fully. Never fully.A shape in the smoke. A serpent of red fire and gold lightning.A wounded, wrathful god whose rage had once melted mountains.
He stared at me with molten eyes.
And I understood:He wasn't waiting to help me.
He was waiting to be let out.
I whispered his name.
"Bayle…"
Heat flooded my limbs. My fingers trembled. My bones sang like iron pulled from the forge.
The troll raised its sword for the killing blow.
"I… can't…" I gasped. "Not alone."
And something inside me answered.
Give. Me. The. Body.
The world went white.
ANARI
I had never seen the boy afraid before.
Corwyn — that was his name. The only name he had left. The only thing the slavers hadn't stolen.
He was strange. Too quiet.He healed too fast.His skin burned when he dreamed.
But even when the whips tore him open, he didn't scream like the others.
I never thought I would see him fall.
Yet now, in the pit below, he lay broken against the wall while the troll raised its blade to carve him in two.
The crowd roared for the kill. Their voices shook the stone under my feet.
Corwyn did not move.
Then — all at once — he did.
Not like a man rising.
Like something waking up inside him.
Heat rolled through the pit. People leaned back in their seats. The sand shimmered. The very air changed — heavy, hot, stinging like smoke.
Corwyn stood.
But it wasn't him anymore.
His eyes glowed — not red like fever, but like the heart of a forge.Lines of light crawled beneath his skin, tracing up his arms, along his neck.His breath came out as steam.
The troll swung.
Corwyn caught the blade.
He caught it.
With one hand.
The crowd fell silent in an instant that felt like a lifetime.
Then lightning cracked.
Golden. Blinding.It burst from Corwyn's arm, racing down the steel and erupting in the troll's chest. Flesh and bone dissolved into a spray of glowing embers. The creature didn't even have time to scream.
Corwyn stepped forward
Flame unfurled from his shoulders like wings.
A spear of fire and lightning coalesced in his hand — elegant, perfect, radiant with a god's fury.
He raised it.
When he spoke, the voice wasn't his.
"I am Bayle the Dread. Let all remember my name."
He cast the spear.
It tore through the pit like a streak of the sun, through stone, through flesh, through the grandstand where the slavemasters watched. It did not stop until a whole section of the arena burned — men shrieking, robes turning to cinders, silk banners bursting into flame.
Chaos erupted.
People trampled each other in panic, spilling wine, flesh, blood.
Bayle didn't watch.
He simply walked — each step cracking the sand beneath him — toward the wall, leaping high, landing among the fleeing crowd with the grace of a wolf and the weight of a hurricane.
I crouched low, shaking.
And for the first and only time, he looked at me.
But it was not Corwyn.
Not the boy who whispered his name to me in the dark of the galley.Not the boy who trembled when he dreamed.
It was a dragon wearing his face.
And then he vanished in the smoke.
JON ARRYN – The Small Council
King's Landing suffocated under the weight of summer.
Heat shimmered off the red stone walls of the Keep, and the air stank of tar, salt, and something rotting in the harbor. Even within the Tower of the Hand, the stone corridors baked in a low, oppressive warmth that seeped into Jon Arryn's bones.
He stood at the window of the Small Council chamber, hands clasped behind his back, listening to the fluttering of banners on the breeze. The crowned stag of House Baratheon whipped back and forth above the battlements, and somewhere far below, a crowd screamed as a thief was strung up in the square.
The door opened with a bang.
"I hope someone's got wine," came a booming voice like thunder over wet stone. "Gods know I'll need it."
Robert Baratheon, Storm King of Westeros, entered like a stormfront. His boots clapped against the floor with no regard for decorum. Sweat beaded across his brow despite the fine breeches and heavy black doublet, stitched with golden thread in the shape of antlers.
A squire scurried behind him carrying a goblet already full.
"You're late," Jon said mildly.
He collapsed into the high-backed chair at the head of the long table and took a gulp so deep the wine spilled down into his beard. He wiped it with the back of one hand and squinted at the rest of the council.
"Let's get on with it. I want to be out of this oven before my balls cook."
Around the table sat the lords of court and power:
Grand Maester Pycelle, blinking behind his scrolls, smelling faintly of must and rosewater.
Stannis Baratheon, stone-faced and silent, fingers drumming a rhythm only he understood.
Renly Baratheon, smug and resplendent in green and gold, the very picture of charm wrapped around fake steel.
And in his favored shadowed seat, Varys, hands folded beneath his sleeves, face soft as candle wax.
Jon moved from the window and took his place beside the King.
"We've had another raven," he began.
Robert groaned.
"Unless it carries the heads of Viserys and his sister, I don't want to hear it."
"This one comes from Lys. A knight in the Free Company of the Winged Spears swears he saw Aegon and Rhaenys alive. Traveling with loyalists. Dornish by the looks of them."
Stannis's fingers stopped.
"That's three reports in as many moons," he said.
Renly rolled an apple across the table. "Or three liars looking to sell false news."
"This one claims Ser Arthur Dayne rides with them," Jon continued. "The sword of the morning."
"He's dead," Robert snapped.
Jon gave him a look. "He was. But the reports are growing consistent. And the Free Cities aren't laughing anymore. Braavos has begun watching their movements."
"They died during the sack" Robert growled.
"They lived," Varys said with fake nervousness. "I was… misinformed."
Robert slammed the goblet on the table. "Who helped them escape!"
Varys bowed his bald head. "I apologize for your grace, it seems the old loyalist snuck them out."
Robert rose halfway from his chair. "The realm would be safer if we fed every last one of those silver-haired bastards to the dogs!"
"Sit," Jon said, quietly but firmly.
Robert glared. Then dropped back into his chair like a thunderclap.
"The threat is real," Jon continued. "The Targaryens are not alone anymore. They have followers. The Free Cities begin to whisper of their return."
"To what?" Robert scoffed. "To these shores? With what army? Half a dozen half-dead Kingsguard and a pair of dragonless brats?"
"Half a dozen is enough to rally men and start a war," Stannis muttered.
"They claim Aegon is going to meet with the golden company" Pycelle added, voice wheezing. "If it is true…"
Robert stood again. This time slower.
He circled the table like a prowling hound, wine forgotten, jaw working beneath his beard.
"I crushed Rhaegar on the Trident," he said, low and dangerous. "And i'll crush all the silver haired bastards"
Then smiled.
A dark, sharp thing.
"We get rid of them."
"How?" Pycelle asked. " Another failed knife in the dark? None of the assassin's sent for Viserys and his sister have succeeded"
"No." Robert turned toward Jon. "We send steel. We send a mad dog."
Jon's stomach turned cold.
"You don't mean—"
"Gregor." Robert said the name like a blade being drawn. "Clegane will ride for Essos with his men. No banners. No sigils. No mercy. Let Tywin off the leash and send his monster to do what cowards couldn't."
Renly chuckled without humor. "And if the Free Cities cry foul?"
Robert shrugged. "Let them. They've never feared words from Westeros. Maybe they'll fear blood."
Jon glanced to Varys.
The eunuch was very still.
"Your Grace," Jon said slowly. "This will not be a quiet thing. If the free cities see westerosi men on their land they might think we mean war."
"I don't want war," Robert said. "I want silence. No songs. No silver. No survivors."
Stannis gave a sharp nod. "Then send Gregor."
And just like that, it was decided.
That night, Jon wrote the raven himself.
To Lord Tywin Lannister of Casterly Rock,
By order of King Robert Baratheon, your knight Ser Gregor is to ride east.
Find the dragonseed. Burn it out.
He sealed it with wax.
And as he watched the black-feathered bird vanish into the stars, a knot twisted low in his belly.