(The Ancient Lichyard of Runestone - The Day of Departure, 126 AC)
The dead did not live in vaults of gold in the Vale. They lived in the earth, under the roots of the weirwoods and the pines, wrapped in bronze to keep their souls from rusting.
Aeryn Royce-Targaryen walked alone.
He had left the castle behind. He had left his commanders, his ledgers, and his machines. He walked through the morning mist that clung to the lower valleys, a ghost moving through a graveyard of kings who had ruled before the dragons ever looked west.
He didn't bring flowers. Flowers were inefficient; they withered and required cleanup. He brought a chisel and a small hammer.
He reached the newest cairn. It was not a grand mausoleum like the ones in the Great Sept of Baelor. It was a mound of grey granite stones, piled high in the First Men tradition. At the top stood a simple slab of rune-carved slate.
RHEA ROYCE
LADY OF RUNESTONE
82 AC - 115 AC
She Hunted Alone.
Aeryn stood before it. The silence was absolute. No birds sang here. The mist dampened all sound, turning the world into a soft, grey void.
"I am leaving, Mother," Aeryn said. His voice was flat, conversational. "I am going to the place where they killed you."
He waited. He didn't expect an answer. He wasn't superstitious. He knew that Rhea Royce was decomposing organic matter, her carbon returning to the soil to feed the moss.
But the Data of her... that remained.
Aeryn closed his eyes.
He needed to access the file.
For years, he had avoided it. He had built a city to distract himself. He had filled his mind with structural engineering, economic theory, and military logistics to crowd out the noise of that single afternoon in the valley.
But if he was going to King's Landing, he needed to know. He needed to be sure.
"Access," Aeryn whispered.
He utilized the mental discipline the Braavosi masters and his own unique mind had cultivated. He visualized the Vault in his head. He walked past the shelves of crop yields and shipping manifests. He walked to the back of his mind, to the door that was charred and blackened.
Memory File: 115 AC. The Accident.
He pushed the door open.
Sensation returns first.
Smell: Pine needles. Horse sweat. Ozone. The metallic tang of fear.
Sound: The wind whistling through the rocks. The heavy, panicked breathing of a horse.
Temperature: Cold. The biting wind of the Vale.
Aeryn stood still in the graveyard, his breathing shallow. In his mind, he was two years old again. He was small. He was hiding behind a boulder, wrapped in furs.
The Image:
He saw her. Rhea Royce. She was riding her stallion. She looked strong. She looked angry. She was shouting at someone.
Who?
Aeryn frowned, his eyes scrunching tight.
He tried to pan the camera of his memory to the left. He tried to see the face of the man she was arguing with.
Error.
The image distorted. It wasn't blackness; it was white mist. A wall of static. Thick, impenetrable fog that swirled and erased the details.
Focus, Aeryn commanded himself. Extrapolate.
He knew Daemon was there. Logic dictated it. Daemon was her husband. Daemon hated her. Daemon was the one who benefited from her death.
But memory did not work on logic. It worked on sensory input.
He tried to hear the voice.
Rhea: "You are a coward! Go back to your..."
The Man: [Redacted by Static]
He couldn't hear the voice. It was a low hum, like a vibration in the skull, but the words were scrubbed out.
Then, the event.
The horse rearing. The stone.
Aeryn saw the horse rise. He saw the shadow detach itself from the rocks. A cloak? A hood?
The Mist thickens.
The figure moved. It wasn't a stumble. It was a strike. A rock? A spell?
Rhea fell. The sound of her spine hitting the granite was sickeningly clear. CRACK.
Aeryn flinched in the graveyard, his physical body reacting to the phantom sound.
Then, the fire.
This part was clear. Too clear.
He remembered the heat. He remembered toddling out from behind the rock. He remembered the pain of his own arm melting as he tried to pull her away, his small hands useless against the weight of her armor.
But the moments before the fire... the moments that proved murder... they were gone.
"Why?" Aeryn hissed, clenching his fists. "Why can't I see him?"
He pounded his forehead with the heel of his flesh hand.
"It is there. The data is there. It was recorded."
He tried again. He forced his mind to rewind.
The horse rears. The figure steps forward.
Mist.
The figure holds a rock.
Mist.
The figure lowers the hood.
White. Blinding. Mist.
Aeryn gasped and stumbled back, his eyes snapping open. He fell to his knees in the wet grass. He felt nauseous. His head throbbed with a migraine that felt like a spike being driven through his eye.
It was a Defense Mechanism.
His brain was protecting him. The trauma of that day was so severe, so fundamentally breaking for a two-year-old mind, that his psyche had walled it off. It had encrypted the file to prevent the system from crashing.
"Inefficient," Aeryn spat, vomit rising in his throat. He swallowed it down. "Weakness."
He looked at the tomb. 82 AC - 115 AC. Thirty-three years. That was all she got.
He knew Daemon had done it. Every logical variable pointed to Daemon. But Aeryn didn't remember seeing him do it.
And that gap... that missing frame of film... it terrified him.
Because if he couldn't see the killer's face in his memory, how could he be sure he would recognize the danger when it stood in front of him?
"You saw him," Aeryn said to the stone slab. "You saw him smile as you died."
He reached out and touched the cold runes.
"I need the key, Mother. I have the lock, but I lost the key."
He realized then that the key wasn't in Runestone. The key was the trauma itself. To unlock the memory, he would have to be in the presence of the trigger.
He had to see Daemon Targaryen.
Only the presence of the Rogue Prince would dissolve the mist. Biology would react to the predator.
Aeryn used the stone of the grave to pull himself up. His mechanical leg clicked loudly in the silence.
He took the chisel and hammer he had brought.
He wasn't there to carve a prayer. He was there to carve a promise.
He leaned over the slate. With precise, angry strikes, he added a new line of text beneath the dates.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Stone dust flew into the air, mixing with the fog.
When he was done, he blew the dust away.
WE DO NOT FORGET.
"I don't remember the face yet," Aeryn whispered, tracing the fresh groove. "But I remember the fire. And I will return it to them."
He stood there for a long moment, letting the cold seep into his bones, grounding him. He needed to be cold. Where he was going, heat was a weakness.
"Goodbye, Rhea," he said.
He turned and walked away. He didn't look back.
...
(The Gates of the Moon - Two Hours Later)
The mist had burned off by the time Aeryn reached the lower gates. The sun was harsh and bright, illuminating the army that waited for him.
It was a sight that would have made Aegon the Conqueror pause.
The Black Phalanx.
Nine hundred Unsullied stood in formation. They were not a mob; they were a geometric shape of bronze and black leather. They stood perfectly still, their spears upright, creating a forest of steel points.
At the front, Commander Aegis held the reins of a black charger. He saw the Prince approach and signaled.
CLACK.
Nine hundred spears hit the ground in unison.
Aeryn walked past them. He didn't ride a horse. He walked toward the open space where the monster waited.
Vermithor was not a pet. He was a geological event with wings.
The Bronze Fury was crouched low, eating the carcass of a bull. When he saw Aeryn, he raised his massive head. Steam hissed from his nostrils, hot enough to scorch the grass. His eyes, pools of molten bronze, locked onto the boy.
Vermithor was huge. He was the second largest living thing in the world, dwarfing the knights, the castle, and the mountain path. His scales were thick armor plates, scarred from a hundred battles during the reign of the Old King.
Aeryn approached the dragon.
Most men approached dragons with fear. Targaryens approached with arrogance.
Aeryn approached with a checklist.
He checked the saddle girths—heavy chains wrapped in leather. He checked the connection point for his brace. He checked the saddlebags containing his maps and the black cylinder for Casper.
"Are you full?" Aeryn asked the dragon.
Vermithor let out a low rumble that vibrated in Aeryn's teeth. Grumble.
"Good. Because we have a long flight."
Aeryn climbed the wing. It was like climbing a cliff face. He hauled himself into the saddle, locking his mechanical arm into the magnetic brace he had designed to help him steer.
He looked down at his army.
"Aegis!" Aeryn's voice was amplified by the acoustics of the valley.
"My Lord!" The Commander stepped forward.
"March to Gulltown. Board the fleet. Secure the perimeter of the Blackwater Bay. If the Gold Cloaks try to stop you, show them the contract. If they persist..."
Aeryn paused.
"...show them the needle."
"It will be done!"
Aeryn turned his attention to the dragon. He felt the heat radiating through the saddle. This was power. This was the nuclear option.
But Aeryn knew that the real weapon wasn't the dragon. It was the mind that aimed it.
And right now, that mind was struggling with a fogbank.
I know I am missing something, Aeryn thought, looking at his hands. I know that day has a secret I haven't decoded.
He gripped the reins.
"Sōvēs, Vermithor!" (Fly, Vermithor!)
The dragon roared. He didn't run; he launched.
The mighty hind legs drove down, cracking the bedrock. The massive leathery wings snapped open, catching the updraft.
With a single beat, they were airborne.
The G-force pressed Aeryn into the saddle. The wind tore at his face. The world dropped away—the castle, the army, the tomb.
They rose higher, piercing the clouds.
Up here, the sun was blinding. The sky was a perfect, endless blue.
Aeryn looked South. Toward the capital. Toward the family that had broken him and the father that had forgotten him.
He touched the key to the Vault hidden under his tunic.
He was bringing civilization to the savages. He was bringing logic to the madhouse.
But deep down, beneath the layers of math and bronze, the boy terrified of the fire was still screaming in the mist.
"We will find him," Aeryn promised the wind. "We will find the face in the fog. And then we will erase it."
The shadow of the Bronze Fury swept over the Vale, racing toward the sea, a dark arrow aimed at the heart of Westeros.
The Regency was over. The Game had begun.