The gates of King's Landing were gone.
What remained was a blackened maw coughing smoke and ash into the dawn. Through it surged Daenerys's army—Unsullied, Dothraki, Northmen, Reachmen—a torrent of steel and rage.
The streets beyond were already burning.
Grey Worm led the vanguard. His face was an empty mask, the muscles beneath carved in stone. His spear struck with precision, never hesitation. He no longer fought for a cause; he fought for a name that had been whispered through tears atop the Red Keep. Missandei.
Behind him came Jon Snow, shouting above the roar of the charge.
"Hold the line! Protect the innocent!"
But the word innocent had lost its meaning in the smoke.
Lannister soldiers threw down their swords, crying for quarter. Some were cut down where they stood. Civilians screamed, running through the alleys like leaves before a storm. Smoke swallowed their cries.
Jon pushed forward, shoving past men who no longer listened. He seized one Northman by the collar, dragging him back from a weeping woman. "She's unarmed!" he shouted. "Enough!"
The man stared at him, eyes wild. "They killed our kin at Winterfell!"
"Not her!" Jon roared. "Not her!"
The soldier backed away, trembling. But even as Jon turned, another fire erupted ahead, and another scream was lost to flame.
The city was unraveling.
Dothraki riders poured through the avenues, their horses screaming, their blades red with blood and reflected fire. They cut through Lannister stragglers and looters alike. One rider dragged a man from his shop and trampled him beneath his hooves. Another hurled a torch through a window, laughing as the roof caught light.
Overhead, pockets of wildfire ignited—old caches buried by the Mad King, now awakened by the heat.
Green fire tore through the streets, consuming men and stone alike. Towers collapsed into the roads below, sending up clouds of emerald ash.
The sky turned black.
Ash fell like snow.
Jon raised his hand to shield his face, staring upward.
The bells were ringing.
At first, faintly—one lone sept's toll, high and mournful. Then another joined it. Then another. From the harbor to the hilltops, the city's towers called surrender.
Men froze mid-strike. Women wept.
Lannister soldiers dropped to their knees, their red cloaks streaked with soot.
The war should have ended there.
High above it all, Daenerys waited.
Drogon's wings beat slow and steady as they circled above the Red Keep. Beneath her, the city lay spread out like a map of sin and sorrow. The white flags fluttered from windows. The bells echoed, toll after toll.
She saw the streets where her father had ruled, the steps where his blood had run. She saw the sept where her brother's crown of molten gold had been poured. She saw the tower where Missandei had stood, proud and unbroken, before the sword fell.
Daenerys's breath hitched.
The sound of the bells grated like mockery.
"Mercy," Tyrion had begged her. "Let the bells be mercy."
But the Red Keep stood untouched—still proud, still whole.
The home of her father's killers. The symbol of every betrayal that had stolen her family's world.
She could see them in her mind—the nobles who had laughed when her house fell. The people who had cheered for Robert, who had cheered again for Joffrey, who had done nothing when her people were butchered in Meereen.
She could almost hear Missandei's voice again, soft but resolute:
"Dracarys."
The bells tolled.
And Daenerys Targaryen stopped hearing them.
Her fingers tightened on Drogon's reins.
The dragon shifted, sensing her anger, his scales rippling like living armor. He turned his head toward the Red Keep, exhaling a low growl that shook the clouds.
Daenerys looked at the keep once more—then past it.
To the city below.
She did not speak.
She did not need to.
Drogon moved.
The dragon banked sharply, wings slicing the air, and dove toward the heart of King's Landing.
Flame poured from his throat, white-hot and endless. It swept over the city's central avenue, turning markets to slag, melting stone into rivers of glass.
The first blast incinerated a hundred souls in a heartbeat. The second tore open the square of the Old Gate.
Jon saw it happen.
He looked up as the shadow fell, and his heart stopped.
The dragonfire struck not the soldiers—but the streets.
"Seven hells," Paxter muttered from the ridge outside, watching the inferno bloom. His men stood frozen, faces pale in the firelight. "She's burning them all."
Tyrion dropped to his knees. "No… no, she can't…"
Varys closed his eyes. "She can. She has."
The city screamed.
Grey Worm saw the flames and felt something twist loose inside him. The dragon's roar became his war cry.
A Lannister soldier in front of him threw down his sword, shouting, "Mercy!"
Grey Worm speared him through the throat.
Then he turned to the next.
The Unsullied surged forward, cutting through surrendering men. No quarter. No prisoners.
Jon ran after them, shouting until his voice broke. "Stop! The city's yielded! Stop!"
But the words were drowned by the roar of fire and fear.
A Northman dragged a woman into the mud, laughing. Jon seized him, threw him off, and struck him across the face. The man spat blood and fury. "She's one of them!"
"She's a mother!" Jon bellowed. "Is that who we've become?"
The man turned away, muttering, "We follow the dragon queen."
Jon looked up. Drogon was a storm made flesh, wheeling over the rooftops, fire trailing from his maw. The Red Keep gleamed through the smoke, then vanished behind a wall of flame.
The city was dying.
Arya Stark moved through it like a shadow of vengeance.
She leapt from rooftop to rooftop, slipping between towers as the fire roared beneath her. Her face was streaked with ash, her hair singed, her breath ragged.
The Red Keep was her target. The woman who had ordered her father's death, who had torn the North apart—Cersei Lannister.
But each step forward became harder.
The streets below were unrecognizable.
Bodies lay in heaps along the alleys. Women screamed for children already gone. Men burned where they stood, statues of ash.
A mother stumbled past, clutching a small boy whose skin was already blackened. She collapsed beside Arya, whispering, "Help him," but when Arya reached out, the boy crumbled to dust in her arms.
Arya fell to her knees, shaking. She looked around her, at the rivers of flame, at the dead who would never be avenged because they were simply gone.
A horse, pale as snow and streaked with soot, burst from a collapsing stable, its mane ablaze. It galloped through the smoke and vanished.
A roof gave way above her. Bricks fell. She dove aside, the impact throwing her against a wall. Pain exploded in her ribs. The world tilted, blackened.
When her vision cleared, she was on the ground, surrounded by bodies. The air shimmered with heat.
She pushed herself up, coughing blood, and stumbled toward what she thought was the way to the keep. But there was no path left—only ruin.
Paxter Redwyne entered through the second breach, his banner half-burned, his men reeling from the heat.
"Form a line!" he shouted. "Get the wounded out! Help the smallfolk!"
But his orders vanished in the chaos. The city was a labyrinth of terror. His soldiers—men of the Reach and the Arbor—were breaking. Some tried to aid the civilians, dragging them from collapsing homes. Others joined the slaughter, lost to madness and fear.
Paxter dismounted, his armor slick with ash. He waded through the carnage, shouting himself hoarse. "Hold your lines! The Queen commands order!"
No one listened.
Near the square, a girl no older than five knelt beside a boy's body, shaking him, sobbing. Paxter stopped, staring. The child's face was streaked with soot and tears. Her brother's chest was still, his eyes glassy.
He sheathed his sword, bent down, and lifted her. "Come on, little one," he whispered. "We'll find you safety."
She clung to his neck, trembling. He looked around—there was no safety. Only fire.
Paxter carried her toward the edge of the square, past fallen men, past the flames that reached for the sky. He saw his soldiers in disarray, saw Grey Worm's Unsullied pushing forward like a tide of death.
He wanted to shout, to demand reason, but reason was gone.
The war had become something else—a fever, a sickness.
He whispered to the child, "Don't look."
Atop the Red Keep, Cersei watched the world end.
The fires reflected in her eyes like twin suns. Her crown sat crooked, forgotten. Her lips trembled, though she forced them into a sneer.
Below, the city burned—the city she had ruled, the city she had promised to protect.
Qyburn stood beside her, his face pale. "Your Grace… we must go. The walls will not hold."
Cersei did not move. "She's not coming for the throne," she murmured. "She's come to destroy it."
The ground shook as another blast struck the base of the tower. Dust cascaded from the ceiling.
Cersei turned, her voice breaking. "The bells… they rang."
Qyburn said nothing.
Daenerys's shadow passed over them both.
Below, the last survivors ran through the streets like ghosts. Arya stumbled through the ash, half-blind. The white horse reappeared, standing alone amid the ruins. It was spattered with blood, its flanks heaving.
Arya reached for it, her hand trembling. The horse turned its head, one dark eye meeting hers.
Somewhere in the distance, the Red Keep burned, and a dragon screamed.
The city rang with bells, but no one was listening anymore.