Limpick sat in front of the brazier all night. He didn't pray. He didn't chant. He didn't put his hands in the fire. He just sat there, watching the flames. Orange-red tongues licked the edges of the iron bowl, jumping up, dying down, jumping again. When the charcoal burned out he added more. When it burned out he added more. He wasn't tired. He wasn't hungry. He wasn't cold. He just felt empty. Not the hollow place in his chest—that one was still there, edges softer now, less sharp, but still there. This was a different emptiness. Shallower. Thinner. Like a layer of dust over everything, so nothing looked quite real.
Daenerys came in once. She stood in the doorway holding a bowl of porridge, steam still rising. She looked at his back—straight, unmoving, like stone. She stood there a moment, set the bowl on the table by the door, and left without a word.
Viserys came in once. He knelt in front of the brazier, recited a passage, stood up, glanced at Limpick, and left. No words.
When dawn came, Terys arrived. He stopped in front of Limpick and looked down. His light-brown eyes caught the morning light like two pieces of amber—clear, with light moving inside. He reached out and placed a hand on Limpick's head, the same way Melisandre had done on Dragonstone. The hand was warm. Heavy. Like a warm stone pressing down.
"What did you see?" Terys asked.
Limpick raised his head. His eyes were dry, no tears, but red, as if they'd been staring into smoke for hours. "A dragon," he said. "Small. Hatched only days ago. It was hungry. Ate someone's fish. They found it. Killed it."
Terys's hand stayed on his head a moment longer, then lifted. He sat down beside Limpick, facing the brazier. The fire had burned low—only a few coals still glowing red. He picked up the tongs, stirred the coals, added fresh wood. Flames rose again, orange-red, painting both their faces.
"Do you know that dragon?" Terys asked.
Limpick was quiet for a long time. Long enough for the new wood to turn to charcoal, the charcoal to ash. He nodded. "I know it."
Terys didn't ask where or how. He sat there watching the fire, saying nothing. He didn't ask because he knew some things don't need questions. Thirty years in the red temple had taught him that. Some things you don't speak. Say them and they break—like bubbles, like smoke, like those quick flashes you see in the flames. Leave them unsaid and they stay, blurry but real. Speak them and they're gone.
Limpick stood. His knees cracked. His legs were numb. He caught himself on the altar. The stone felt cool under his hand, but he could feel the warmth underneath—the temple built on living earth, earth on stone, stone on deeper stone. He didn't know what lay farther down. But he knew it was still there. Always there. Just because he couldn't see it didn't mean it had left.
"I'm going back to the fish pond," he said.
Terys looked at him. "To do what?"
"The dragon's blood is still there. In the mud. In the ground. Where we buried it. Blood carries things—memories. Not a soul. Not life. Just… where it went, what it saw, where it came from. Blood remembers." On Dragonstone, Melisandre had taught him: blood holds life, life holds memory, memory holds power. Drop a man's blood in the fire and you can see him—where he is, what he's doing, what he's thinking. He'd never tried it with dragon blood. But he knew it would work. Dragon blood was stronger. Thicker. Hotter. Dragon memories didn't vanish when the body died. They stayed in the mud, in the ground, in the place you buried it—waiting for someone to read them.
Terys studied him, light-brown eyes narrowing slightly. He opened his mouth, then closed it. Nodded once. "Go," he said. "Be back before dark."
Limpick walked out of the hall, crossed the courtyard, and left the temple. He didn't call for Davon. Didn't call the guards. Just walked south alone—through the square, past the big tree, through the city gate, onto the muddy road. The road was the same road. The mud was the same mud. It clung to his boots, thick and heavy. He didn't stop to scrape it off. Just kept walking, one heavy step after another. The sun had risen in the east, new and gold, shining on the stubble fields, almost blinding. A few people worked the fields, bent over, planting something. They looked up when he passed, then went back to work. No one spoke.
By the time he reached the fish pond the sun was high. The pond had been filled in. Not because he'd told Davon to—Davon had done it himself. The earthen dam was leveled. The holes in the bottom were filled. The marks on the bank were gone. Two trees by the river had been cut down and thrown across the fresh-turned earth, weighting it down. From a distance it looked like any other patch of field—nothing like a pond anymore. But Limpick knew the difference. He stood at the edge and stared at the ground. The soil was loose, soft, black, mixed with pebbles, dead leaves, and thin gray-white threads like frayed string. He crouched, dug with his fingers. The dirt was damp, cool, black. He pulled out one of the threads, held it up. A fragment of scale—gray-white, almost translucent, edges curled like shed snake skin. He closed it in his fist, opened it. The fragment crumbled to powder and blew away on the wind.
He reached deeper into the mud. His fingers touched something soft, cool, slick. He pulled it out—a severed tentacle. The one Davon had cut off. It had fallen into the mud and no one had buried it. The skin had turned black, scales mostly gone, the flesh underneath gray-white and soft, rotting. At the cut end was blood—gray-white, dried hard, like a shell. Limpick laid the tentacle on the ground and stared at the dried blood. He scraped it with a fingernail. The shell cracked, powder falling into the dirt, mixing until it disappeared. He pushed his fingers into the cut. Still-wet blood inside—sticky, cool, gray-white, like thin porridge. He pulled his hand back. His fingers were coated in it, shining in the sunlight.
He stood, pulled a cloth from inside his robe—not ordinary cloth. The kind Melisandre had given him on Dragonstone, soaked in lamp oil, easy to burn. He spread it on the ground, wiped the blood from his fingers onto it. Not much blood, but enough. He rolled the cloth, tucked it inside his robe, and started back. After a few steps he stopped and looked over his shoulder at the filled-in pond. Sunlight turned the fresh-turned earth gold, just like the fields around it. But he knew what lay underneath. A dragon. Small. Hatched only days ago. Hungry. Ate someone's fish. Killed. Buried. Tentacles rotting. Scales crumbling. Blood drying. No one knew it had been here. No one knew it was dead. No one knew its name. He hadn't named it. He'd named Yuan. Named Ember. Named Plume. Not this one. Because he hadn't expected to find it. Because he'd thought it was still in the egg, deep under the sea, under Yuan, at the root of the dragonglass vein, waiting in the warm dark. But it had hatched. It had died. It had rotted. And he didn't even know its name.
He turned and kept walking.
By the time he reached the Red Temple the sky was turning dark. He walked into the hall. The brazier burned bright, orange light filling the space. Daenerys was reading. Viserys knelt beside her. They glanced up when he entered, then went back to their prayers. Limpick walked to the altar, pulled the blood-soaked cloth from his robe, unfolded it, and laid it flat. The blood had dried into a blurry gray-white shape—like a crushed flower. He crouched, took a burning branch from the brazier, one end glowing red, flames dancing on the tip. He held the branch above the cloth and paused.
"What are you doing?" Daenerys's voice came from behind him, soft, almost like she was asking herself.
Limpick didn't answer. He brought the burning branch down. Flames touched the blood. The gray-white shell caught, hissing like oil in a pan. White smoke rose—thick, choking, smelling of burned feathers.