A/N: And the plot thickens! :)
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Year 300 AC
Harrenhal, The Riverlands
Harrenhal was the largest fortress ever raised by the hands of men, a monument to hubris built with blood and mortar, yet it felt fragile under his weight.
Aemon lay draped across the ruins of the Tower of Dread. His bulk crushed the crumbling masonry of the upper battlements, grinding centuries-old stone into dust. His left wing hung heavy and loose, the membrane shading the Flowstone Yard below like a storm cloud, while his tail spilled over the curtain wall, the spiked tip resting in the mud of the Kingsroad outside.
He was too hot. The fire inside him was a furnace that never banked, a roaring sun trapped within a cage of flesh and scale. Steam hissed as it rose from his flanks, meeting the damp, grey air of the Riverlands to wreath the castle in a thick fog. The rain that fell upon his back sizzled and evaporated instantly.
Below him, the world was small.
Men were screaming. They were tiny, frantic shapes, scattering like ants when a boot kicks the hill.
"Get inside! To the cellars! Go!"
The voice was thin, a reed snapping in a gale, yet it carried a desperate authority.
Aemon shifted his head. The movement caused a cascade of loose stone to tumble from the tower, crashing into the yard with the force of a trebuchet strike. Dust billowed.
Through the haze, he saw a single figure standing firm.
The man wore plate armor of enamelled white, the seven-pointed star of the Faith emblazoned upon his surcoat. He stood alone in the center of the Flowstone Yard, his sword drawn, a sliver of steel against a mountain of black fire. He was not running. He was placing himself between the dragon and the retreating soldiers, a shield of flesh and faith.
It was a suicide courage that Aemon recognized. It was the courage of the Night's Watch standing against the tide of dead men.
Inspired by their commander, the rout faltered. A handful of soldiers, perhaps twenty men in the white cloaks, stopped their flight. They turned, trembling, and formed a ragged line behind the knight. They raised spears.
The gesture was absurd. They might as well have raised twigs against a landslide.
Aemon felt a flicker of pity dampen the dragon's instinctual rage. The beast within him wanted to bathe them in violet flame, to silence their insolence with ash. The man within him remembered what it was to be small and afraid.
He opened his jaws.
"PEACE."
It was not a shout. The sound did not travel through the air so much as it displaced it. It shut down thought. It rattled teeth in skulls and stopped hearts for a singular, terrifying beat.
In the yard below, the formation faltered. Men stumbled back, lowering their spears, their discipline shattering not from magic, but from the simple, overwhelming reality of a dragon commanding them to stop. They looked to their leader, their faces pale masks of terror.
The commander remained standing, though his knuckles were white where he gripped his sword. He did not drop to his knees. He did not cover his ears. He stood his ground, a speck of white faith against a storm of black fire.
Aemon lowered his head. One great eye, a burning pool of magma with a slit of midnight at its center, focused on the white knight.
"Who are you," Aemon rumbled, the words grinding like millstones, "to stand without fear?"
The knight trembled. His sword point wavered, but he did not lower it. He looked into the eye of the beast and found his voice.
"I am Ser Bonifer Hasty," the man rasped, the words thin but clear. "Castellan of Harrenhal. I hold this castle by the grace of the Iron Throne and the Seven."
Bonifer Hasty. The name stirred a faint memory in Aemon's human mind, something from the lessons of Maester Luwin, or perhaps stories from Old Nan. A pious man. A man who had once loved a Targaryen princess, if the rumors were true.
"Where is he?" Aemon asked.
Bonifer blinked, sweat stinging his eyes. "Who?"
"The Mockingbird," Aemon said. "Petyr Baelish. Bring him to me."
The dragon's rage flared, and a plume of smoke vented from Aemon's nostrils, washing over the knight. Bonifer coughed, staggering back, the heat singing his eyebrows.
"He is gone," Bonifer gasped. "He is not here."
Aemon growled, a low thrumming sound that shook the puddles in the yard. "Do not lie to me, Ser Bonifer."
"I do not lie!" Bonifer shouted, gripping his sword with both hands to keep from dropping it. "Lord Baelish received ravens four days past. Dark wings, dark words. He was... agitated. He mustered the garrison and marched south. He rides to King's Landing to secure the capital!"
"To King's Landing?" The question rumbled deep in Aemon's chest, vibrating through the stone.
The dragon narrowed his great eye. To march an army into the Lioness's den now, when she was cornered and lashing out with wildfire, was not the act of a survivor. It was the act of a martyr. And Petyr Baelish was no martyr.
"He rides into the fire?" Aemon growled, smoke curling from his nostrils. "You believe the Mockingbird would clip his own wings to save a burning city?"
"He led the vanguard himself!" Bonifer insisted, though his voice wavered under the weight of that burning gaze. "He rode south with the banners flying! He goes to serve the Crown!"
"A mummer's show," Aemon said, the heat of anger rising in his gullet. "He sent the men to draw the eye. He fed the army to the lion to clear his own path. He is not in that column, Ser Bonifer. He is cowering in the dark."
Gone. He could be anywhere now.
The realization settled over Aemon like a shroud. He had flown across the continent, driven by vengeance and necessity, only to find an empty nest. Baelish had sensed the shifting winds. The man was a survivor, a cockroach who scurried into the cracks before the boot could fall.
Aemon felt a wave of exhaustion crash over him. The magic consumed him, eating at his stamina, blurring the lines between the man who wanted justice and the beast who wanted only to feed and sleep. He could hunt Baelish down. He could scour the Riverlands, burn every hedge and holdfast until the rat was flushed out.
But winter was coming. The Wall was weeping. He did not have time to chase one man across the mud.
Aemon lifted his head, looking up at the twisted, melted towers of Harrenhal. It was a cursed place, a ruin of kings.
"Prepare this castle," Aemon commanded.
Bonifer stared up at him, bewildered. "My Lord Dragon?"
"Clear the rubble," Aemon said. "Stock the larders. Send riders to the nearest holdfasts for grain and meat. Tell them the Iron Bank pays in gold."
He shifted his weight, claws digging into the stone, preparing to launch.
"I am calling a Great Council," Aemon declared, the words ringing with finality. "All the Lords of Westeros. Friends and foes. They will come here. They will look upon the ruin of Harren the Black, and they will decide if they wish to live or die."
The fire in his chest was dimming, the adrenaline of the transformation ebbing away to reveal a vast, hollow exhaustion. He could not rest here.
He lifted his massive head, gazing past the broken walls toward the south. The God's Eye lay still and dark under the moon, but in its center, the Isle of Faces pulsed. He could feel it—a hum in his blood, a whisper of wind through weirwood leaves that called to the wolf buried deep beneath the dragon's scales. Come, it seemed to say. Rest.
He flexed his wings, the sound like sails snapping in a hurricane. The wind generated by the movement knocked two of the standing soldiers to the ground.
"Lord Dragon!" Bonifer cried out. The knight fell to his knees, his sword finally clattering to the stones. He looked up, his face a mask of awe and terror, tears cutting tracks through the soot on his cheeks.
"Are you a god?" Bonifer asked, his voice cracking.
Aemon paused. He looked down at the small, broken man. He felt the fire in his chest, the terrible power that could melt stone and boil rivers. He felt the memories of a boy who just wanted to be a Stark, of a brother who died for his watch, of a lover who died in his arms.
The violet glow in his throat dimmed. The heat receded, leaving only the damp chill of the Riverlands.
"No, I am not a god." Aemon said simply.
Aemon launched himself into the air. The downstroke of his wings shattered the remaining masonry of the Tower of Dread, sending a landslide of stone into the yard behind him.
He did not look back.
He flew low over the God's Eye, the water rushing beneath him like a sheet of dark glass. The island rose from the center of the lake, a tangle of green in a world turning white.
The Isle of Faces.
Few men dared set foot here. The Green Men guarded it, ancient and silent. But they would not bar the way of a dragon.
Aemon circled once, spotting a clearing amongst the weirwoods. The trees here were immense, their pale trunks thick as towers, their leaves a canopy of blood-red hands whispering in the wind. He landed heavily, the earth shuddering under his impact. Roots snapped. Mud flew.
He let go.
It was a sensation of falling. The fire constricted, the scales receded, the bones shifted and shrank. The pain was sharp and familiar, a thousand knives carving him down to size.
He collapsed onto the mossy roots of a heart tree. He was naked, human, shivering in the damp air. But the cold did not bite him. It washed over him like a lover's touch, soothing the fever in his blood.
He closed his eyes. The darkness took him instantly.
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The sun was a hammer.
It beat down upon the red stone, relentless and cruel. The air shimmered with heat. He was standing on a ridge of jagged rock, looking south. But this was not the Dorne he knew. There was no Sea of Dorne, no broken islands. There was only a bridge of land, a solid arm of stone and dust stretching all the way to the continent beyond.
He was not alone.
She stood at the edge of the precipice. She was small, her skin dappled like a fawn's, her eyes large and liquid gold. A child, yet ancient. In her hands, she held a horn.
It was massive, curved and black, spiraling taller than she was. It seemed to drink the sunlight. Runes were etched into its surface, glowing with a dull, rhythmic pulse. The Horn of Winter!
She placed her lips to the mouthpiece.
She blew.
There was no sound. Not at first. There was only a vibration. Aemon felt it in his teeth. He felt it in the marrow of his bones. The world blurred.
Then the earth screamed.
The sound was tectonic. It was the groan of the world's spine snapping. The ridge beneath his feet turned to liquid. The land bridge ahead began to undulate, stone rippling like water. Dust rose in a choking cloud, turning the sun to a bloody eye.
The ocean rushed in. Walls of water a thousand feet high, white-capped mountains of foam, crashing down upon the shattering rock. The Hammer of the Waters. The land broke, drowned, and died.
Aemon understood. The Horn was not a weapon of war. It was a World Breaker.
The vision shifted.
The heat vanished. The red sun was gone. There was only the white void, the howling wind, the crushing weight of the Long Night.
He stood on a field of ice. The cold was absolute. It was a cold that stopped time.
Shadows moved in the blizzard. Pale shapes with eyes like blue stars. The Others. They came in the thousands, a tide of silence, their armor shifting like moonlight on water.
A man stood before them. He was tall, grim, wrapped in furs that were frozen stiff. His face was Stark. The long face, the grey eyes, the hardness of the North. Brandon the Breaker.
He held the Horn.
He did not hesitate. He lifted the black spiral to the sky and blew.
This time, the sound was a song. A high, keening note that cut through the wind. It was the sound of ice cracking in the spring thaw.
The Others halted. Their armor, that impossible, magical ice that shattered steel, began to vibrate. Cracks appeared on their breastplates. Their swords of crystal shivered and exploded into dust.
The ground beneath the snow erupted.
They rose from the earth itself. Not from the sky, but from the deep permafrost. Massive shapes, winged and terrible. They were made of ice, but it was living ice, translucent and hard as diamond. Ice Dragons.
They did not attack the man. They answered the call. They fell upon the Others, their breath a freezing fog that turned the white walkers into statues, brittle and dead.
Brandon blew again. He poured his life into the black throat of the horn.
The magic was too much. It was a power meant for gods, not men.
The Horn groaned. A hairline fracture appeared near the rim. It spread, a spiderweb of light racing down the spiral. With a sound like a breaking heart, the Horn exploded.
Brandon was thrown back, blood pouring from his ears. The Horn lay in pieces. But one shard—a large, jagged fragment of the rim—spun away into the blizzard. It flew through the storm, lost in the endless white.
The weapon was broken. The song ended. The Ice Dragons screamed and dissolved into snow.
The vision swirled.
Darkness. Stone. The smell of dust and dry rot.
He was back in the crypts of Winterfell. The long rows of granite pillars stretched into the gloom. He saw the statue of Robb, the stone direwolf at his feet. He saw Lord Eddard, his face solemn and sad. He saw his mother, the stone tears frozen on her cheeks.
They were silent. They had no answers for him.
But the darkness beyond them was not empty.
The lower levels. The ancient levels. Where the Kings of Winter sat on their frozen thrones, swords across their laps.
A sound drifted up from the black stairwell. It was faint, weak, but undeniable.
It was a call.
Deeper.
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Aemon woke with a gasp, his hand clutching at the roots of the weirwood.
His heart was hammering against his ribs. The images were seared into his mind—the red stone melting, the white walkers shattering, the black horn breaking.
He sat up, wiping cold sweat from his forehead. The Isle of Faces was quiet. The leaves whispered above him, but they spoke in a language he could not translate.
He looked at his hands. They were human hands, scarred and calloused, but they felt strange. He could still feel the phantom weight of the horn, the vibration of the world breaking apart.
The Horn of Winter, he thought. Joramun's Horn. It wasn't just a legend.
It was a key. And it was broken.
Aemon stood, his legs shaky. He leaned against the white trunk of the tree, looking north across the water. The sun was rising, a pale disc behind the grey clouds.
The hair on the back of his neck stood up. The sensation of being watched was sudden and absolute but it was a gaze that… familiar.
He turned slowly.
Perched on the lowest branch of the heart tree, black as a shadow against the pale bark, sat a raven. It did not caw or flutter. It simply watched him with bead-black eyes that held a depth no bird should possess.
It tilted its head, and for a heartbeat, Aemon thought he heard his name whispered on the wind, not spoken, but felt in the roots of his mind.
Brother.
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The Shivering Sea
The world was grey and heaving.
Bran gasped, the air rushing into his lungs cold and tasting of salt. He tried to sit up, but his body felt distant, a heavy thing of wood and stone that did not belong to him.
"Easy," a voice murmured. A hand, rough with calluses but gentle, supported his head. "Drink."
A waterskin was pressed to his lips. The water was stale, mixed with the grit of oat paste. He swallowed, the simple mechanical action exhausting him.
"Hodor," a deep voice rumbled nearby, filled with anxious vibration.
Bran blinked, the grey blur resolving into shapes. He was lying on a boat. Not a proper boat, but a thing of scavenged driftwood and desperation, held together by frozen sap and song. Above him, the sky was a sheet of hammered iron. Around him, the sea rose and fell in slow, rhythmic swells that made the timbers groan.
"Meera," he whispered.
She leaned over him. Her face was gaunt, the bones sharp beneath skin windburned by the Shivering Sea. Her eyes, once bright with the fierce humor of the crannogmen, were dull pools of exhaustion.
"I'm here, Bran," she said. She wiped a smudge of paste from his chin. "We're all here."
Hodor huddled in the stern, his massive frame curled tight against the cold, rocking back and forth. Summer lay beside Bran, his fur matted with salt spray, radiating a faint, damp warmth. The direwolf lifted his head and licked Bran's hand, a rough, wet comfort.
Leaf sat at the prow. The Child of the Forest did not look cold. She sat perfectly still, her large golden eyes fixed on the horizon where the grey sea met the grey sky.
"How long?" Bran asked.
"A few days since… the cave." Meera said.
Bran remembered the cave. He remembered the song. He remembered the roots withering and the single red eye of the Three-Eyed Crow going dark. He is gone. And I am here.
"Food?" Bran asked.
Meera shook her head, a small, tight movement. "The paste is gone. We have a few strips of dried fish. Half a skin of water." She looked away, toward the endless expanse of water. "We're steering for Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. Leaf says the currents are with us."
"But?"
"But we are days away," Meera said. "Maybe a week. And the cold..." She pulled her furs tighter. "The cold doesn't stop."
Bran closed his eyes. The boat pitched as a larger wave rolled beneath them. He felt the vastness of the ocean, the crushing depth of it. He felt small. Helpless. A cripple in a basket of driftwood.
I need to see, he thought. I need to know what is happening.
Panic flared in his chest, cold and sharp. There were no trees here. No weirwoods with their white bark and red eyes. No roots drinking deep from the earth. He was adrift in the dead lands of the salt sea. He was blind.
"I can't see," he whispered, the panic rising in his throat. "There are no trees. I can't reach them."
A small, dappled hand touched his forehead.
Bran opened his eyes. Leaf was there. She smelled of pine needles and old earth, a scent that had no place on this barren ocean.
"The tree is not the source, Brandon Stark," she said. Her voice was like the rustle of dry leaves. "The tree is merely the door."
"I need the door," Bran said. "I need to see."
"You have eaten the seed," Leaf said. She pressed her thumb against the center of his forehead, hard. "You have drunk the sap. You carry the memory of the earth in your blood now. You are not a guest in the green anymore."
Her golden eyes bore into his.
"You are the root system now," she whispered. "You do not need a tree to see. You only need to look."
You are the root system.
Bran let out a breath. He focused not on the sky, or the boat, or the cold biting at his nose. He focused inward. He sought the darkness behind his eyes, the deep, silent place where the green dreams waited.
It did not come as a vision this time. It did not come through the eyes of a carved face.
It rushed out of him.
His consciousness expanded, exploding outward like a flock of ravens taking flight. The sea fell away. The cold vanished. He was rushing south, faster than the wind, faster than thought.
The world opened up below him, a tapestry of snow and stone and blood.
He saw the Wall, weeping, a hairline fracture running through its ice. He saw the wolfswood, white and silent. He saw Winterfell, broken but breathing, the direwolf banner snapping in the wind.
He pushed further. South.
The city smelled of shit and smoke. King's Landing.
Bran drifted over the Mud Gate. The Blackwater Rush was choked with ships. On the banks, an army was arrayed like a spilled box of toy soldiers. Golden banners flapped in the breeze—the Golden Company.
He saw a young man with silver-gold hair standing beneath a standard of a three-headed dragon. Aegon. The Mummer's Dragon.
Bran watched as siege engines loosed stones against the city walls. He saw men dying in the mud, screaming for mothers who could not hear them. He saw gold cloaks firing crossbows from the battlements.
It was loud. It was bloody. It was war.
But Bran felt nothing.
Men fighting men, he thought, dismissing the scene. It is just a game to them. It does not matter. The dead are coming.
He pushed away, letting the currents of the air carry him. Further south. Toward the heat.
The light changed. It grew harsh, blinding. The air shimmered.
He pushed further. South.
The world blurred into a smear of color. He was moving too fast, skimming the surface of the green dream. He needed an anchor. He needed something real.
The Horn, the voice of the roots whispered. Find the Horn.
The image snapped into focus.
Heat. Blinding, shimmering heat.
Bran was standing on a stone rampart. The air smelled of oranges and dust. Beside him, a man in black wool was sweating, his face pale and terrified.
Samwell Tarly.
Sam was clutching a leather pack to his chest as if it contained his own heart. Inside, Bran could feel the cold, heavy pulse of the Horn of Winter. It hummed in the green dream, a discordant note of ice in the desert sun.
"Look," Sam whispered, pointing at the horizon.
Bran followed his gaze.
The Sea of Dorne was bleeding.
The water was not blue. It was churning, frothing black. The horizon was choked with a unnatural grey fog that moved against the wind, swallowing the light of the sun. Ships were burning within the mist—hundreds of them.
But it was what moved beneath the ships that made Bran's spirit recoil.
Massive shapes, dark as bruised plums, surged through the water. Tentacles thick as weirwood trunks broke the surface, wrapping around hulls and snapping masts like dry twigs. Krakens. Not one, but a pod of them, herded by a will that felt like a rusty nail in Bran's mind.
And at the center of the storm, a single ship cut through the carnage.
The Silence.
It was painted red as fresh arterial spray. On its deck stood a figure wrapped in shadow. Euron Greyjoy.
He wore armor of Valyrian steel that seemed to ripple like smoke. But it was the crown on his head that drew Bran's eye, a band of iron set with a bloodstone that pulsed with a sickly, bruised light.
Euron raised his arms. He wasn't just watching; he was conducting. The fog rolled forward at his command. The krakens surged toward the harbor walls.
He sees us, Bran realized with sudden horror.
Euron's single blue eye looked up, past the burning ships, past the stone walls of Sunspear, directly at the rampart where Sam stood. He smiled.
He wants the Horn.
Bran felt the hunger radiating from the man. Euron wasn't just a reaver; he was a hole in the world, trying to swallow the sun.
This, Bran realized, the chill going deep into his spirit form. This is the danger. The Night King brings the cold, but this man brings the end.
Euron was moments from the harbor. Sunspear would fall. Daenerys Targaryen was sailing straight into a trap she could not see.
Bran pulled back, his spirit reeling. The connection to the Horn snapped.
He was falling. Falling back through the map of Westeros. Back to the cold. Back to the boat.
Aemon.
The name anchored him.
Bran cast his mind across the continent, searching for the heat. He ignored the small fires of hearths and campfires. He looked for the inferno.
He found it in the Riverlands.
It pulsed on the Isle of Faces, a heartbeat of fire amidst the green.
Bran dove.
The descent was dizzying. The green canopy of the Isle rushed up to meet him. He felt the ancient power of the place, the pact of the First Men and the Children singing in the soil.
He needed a voice.
He saw a raven perched on a low branch of a massive weirwood. Its feathers were sleek and black, its eyes intelligent. It was watching the man sleeping at the base of the tree.
Bran slammed into the bird.
The transition was jarring. Suddenly he had wings. He had claws gripping bark. He had a beak and a hunger for carrion. He suppressed the bird's instincts with a thought, seizing control of its throat, its lungs, its voice box.
Below him, the man stirred.
Jon sat up. He looked both rested and exhausted.
But Bran could see the fire inside him. It coiled around his heart, a dormant sun waiting to rise.
Aemon looked around, sensing the intrusion. His hand went to his belt, reaching for a weapon that wasn't there.
Bran hopped to a lower branch. The wood creaked under the bird's weight.
He opened the raven's beak. It was not made for human speech. The words had to be forced out, shaped by will alone.
"Brother."
The word was a croak, harsh and guttural, but clear enough.
Aemon froze. His head snapped up. His grey eyes, flecked with the violet of his blood, locked onto the bird.
"Bran!"
Aemon walked towards the tree, his hands reaching out as if he wanted to grab the bird, to hold it. His face crumbled, the stern mask of the King in the North melting away to reveal the boy who had once mussed Bran's hair at Winterfell.
"Bran," Aemon choked out. "Gods, Bran. I thought you were dead. You weren't answering." He stopped, swallowing hard. "Where are you? Are you safe?"
"Escaped," Bran said, the raven's voice scraping like stone on stone. "True North. Boat. Shivering Sea. Eastwatch."
"You're alive," Aemon breathed. He leaned against the trunk of the weirwood, his forehead resting against the white bark. "You're alive."
He looked up again, his eyes burning with a fierce, desperate light.
"I'm coming," Aemon said. "I can be at the Wall in a few days time. I'll find you. I'll bring you home."
It was the big brother speaking. The protector. The shield that guarded the realms of men.
Bran felt a pang of longing so sharp it almost broke his hold on the bird. To be saved. To have Jon swoop down and lift him from the freezing sea. To be warm. To be home.
But he saw the black water. He saw the krakens. He saw the crown on Euron's brow.
"No."
The word cracked through the clearing like a whip.
Aemon stopped. He turned back, confusion clouding his face. "What? Bran, you're in the Shivering Sea. You'll freeze. I have to—"
"No," Bran said again. He forced the bird to spread its wings, to look big, to look commanding. "Cannot come North. Not yet."
"Why?" Aemon demanded, his voice rising. "You are family so I say I'm coming for you."
"Listen," Bran croaked. He poured his will into the bird, making its eyes flash. "Kraken eats the Sun."
Aemon frowned. "What?"
"Euron Greyjoy," Bran said. Each word was a struggle against the bird's vocal cords. "Sunspear. Blood magic. Trap."
Aemon shook his head impatiently, his hand already reaching for his boots. "The Greyjoys are raiding. I know. I'll deal with them after I get you—"
"Sam," Bran croaked.
The name stopped Aemon cold. He froze, one boot half-laced. He looked up at the bird, his brow furrowed in confusion.
"Sam?" Aemon whispered. "Sam is at the Citadel. He's safe."
"No," Bran said. "Fled. At Sunspear. Now."
The raven bobbed its head, fighting for air.
"Euron is... on the horizon," Bran forced out. "Sam dies without you."
Aemon paled. The fire in his eyes dimmed, replaced by a very human fear. Sam.
"And Daenerys," Bran continued, pressing the advantage while Aemon was reeling. "Sailing. Into trap. If she dies... dragons lost. South falls."
Aemon stood up slowly, the blood draining from his face. "Sam is there? With a dragon queen and a sorcerer?" He looked down at his hands, then back at the bird.
"Go further South," Bran said. His voice was hard, devoid of the boy's longing. "I am safe. Meera and Hodor with me. And company. We will live."
Aemon closed his eyes. He took a shuddering breath, and when he opened them again, the boy was gone. The King remained. His jaw set. His eyes hardened into flint.
"Eastwatch," Aemon said. "You swear it? You'll be at Eastwatch?"
"Yes."
Aemon nodded. He straightened his spine, the movement sharp and military.
"I cannot go back to Raventree," Aemon said. "It would take too long. I have to fly straight for the coast if I'm to catch this... trap."
He fixed the bird with an intense stare.
"You must be my voice, Bran. You have to tell them."
"Tell who?" Bran asked.
"The Blackfish," Aemon said. "Tell him to bring order back to the Riverlands. The fighting is done, but the dying isn't. Tell him that once the grain from Braavos arrives, he is to distribute it. Feed the starving, and he secures the peace."
"And Jaime," Aemon added, his voice dropping an octave. "Tell Jaime Lannister to take men to King's Landing. He knows what he must do."
Bran dipped the bird's head. "I will."
Aemon stepped back. The warmth was gone from his face. In its place was a terrifying, cold promise.
"And Bran..."
Aemon's eyes flashed with a crimson light that had nothing to do with the sun.
"When I see you in person," Aemon said, his voice low and dangerous, "we are going to have a discussion about Jaime Lannister."
Bran felt the phantom ache in his legs. He remembered the push. The fall.
"And why," Aemon finished, "he is still breathing."
Bran hesitated. He could feel Aemon's protective fury, a heat that radiated even through the link. He could offer excuses. He could speak of necessity, of roles to play, of threads in a tapestry that Aemon could not yet see.
But he didn't.
"We will," Bran said.
The bird dipped its head, accepting the judgment.
Aemon nodded. He turned away from the tree, facing the south-west. He spread his arms wide.
"Fly safe, little brother," Aemon whispered.
Then he closed his eyes.
The air around him shimmered. A roar built from nowhere, a sound like a furnace door being thrown open. Violet fire erupted from Aemon's skin, consuming the man, burning away the flesh to reveal the truth beneath.
Bran watched, awestruck even now, as the fire solidified into scales black as midnight. Wings, vast and leathery, snapped open with a sound like a cracking whip, scattering leaves and snapping branches. The dragon rose onto its hind legs, its roar shaking the very roots of the Isle.
It did not look back.
The great beast launched itself into the air, the downdraft nearly knocking the raven from its perch. It banked hard, turning its back to the Riverlands.
It flew South, toward the bleeding sun.
Bran watched until the black speck vanished against the clouds. Then he released the bird.
He slammed back into his body.
The cold hit him like a physical blow. The grey sky. The rocking boat. The smell of salt.
Bran gasped, his eyes flying open.
"Bran?" Meera was leaning over him, worry etched into every line of her face. "You were... you were twitching. Making sounds."
Bran stared up at her. He felt drained, hollowed out. But he also felt a strange, grim certainty.
"He knows," Bran whispered. His teeth chattered.
"Who?" Meera asked.
"Jon. Aemon," Bran corrected. "He knows. He's going South."
Meera looked confused. "South? But... you said he was our only hope. You said we needed him here."
"We do," Bran said. He looked at Leaf, who was watching him with her ageless, knowing eyes. "But the war is not just ice."
He tried to sit up, but his strength failed him. He slumped back against the wood.
"Eastwatch," Bran murmured, closing his eyes as the exhaustion pulled him down. "We have to make it to Eastwatch."
"We will," Meera said, her hand finding his. "I promise."
Bran drifted. In the darkness behind his eyelids, he saw a black dragon racing a black storm. And far below, in the deep dark water, the krakens waited.
Fly fast, brother, Bran thought. Fly fast.
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