Chapter Text
The world was still burning when Drogon took to the skies.
Daenerys’ lifeless body lay between his claws, pale as snow tinged with ash, while the city behind them dissolved into an indistinct mass of smoke and flames. He did not roar. There was no strength for rage—only pain. A pain as ancient as the fire running through his veins.
The black wings tore through the sky with violence, and the wind carried away the last ashes of the Queen. Drogon climbed higher and higher, until the air thinned, until the cold bit his scales, until the world below became a vague memory.
He flew east.
Away from the north that had killed her.
Away from betrayal.
Away from everything that remained of Westeros.
The journey lasted days that felt like centuries.
Drogon did not hunt, did not rest. His breaths grew heavier, and sometimes his wings trembled, but he never let Daenerys fall. He shielded her body with his tail, with his chest, as if he feared even the wind might steal her from him.
Beneath them stretched unknown realms: vast frozen plains, deserts that gleamed like gold, forests so dense they seemed like green seas. Storms lashed at his wings, yet he persisted. He was the last dragon. He did not know surrender.
At night, Daenerys sometimes stirred, lost in fever. Drogon growled low, a deep, guttural sound, trying to protect her from invisible enemies. She murmured names the dragon could not understand.
“—Vis…” her voice whispered. “—No…”
On one particularly dark night, when the moon had vanished behind black clouds, Daenerys’ breathing grew faint, so light that Drogon could barely feel it. A silent roar ran through the dragon’s body. He tilted into the flight, accelerating, desperate, determined.
Through the dawn mist, the coast finally appeared.
The Jade Coast revealed itself like a living mirage, shimmering under the rising sun. Dark green cliffs plunged into the deep blue sea, and the beaches were made of pale gravel, sparkling like wet crystal. The breeze carried the scent of Yi Ti’s wildflowers, sweet and spicy at the same time.
Drogon felt instinct guide him—a call ancient, perhaps Valyrian, perhaps simply animal. The coast seemed remote, untouched, protected by misty mountains.
Here, perhaps, she could live.
Or die.
With one last desperate flap of his wings, Drogon descended. The impact of his claws on the beach carved deep grooves into the sand and stone. He placed Daenerys on the ground with a delicacy impossible for such a destructive creature.
He bent over her.
He sniffed her face.
He nudged her shoulder with his snout.
He waited.
Nothing.
The dragon let out a long, low sound—a lament that drifted across the sea. Then he lifted his head, gazed at the horizon, and something in him understood that the path he could take with her had ended here.
He bent down one last time, brushing the tip of his snout against the white hair of his mother.
He breathed fire over the woman who had loved him so much, and then… he flew.
His black wings cut through the sky, disappearing within seconds beyond the jade mountains, leaving Daenerys Targaryen abandoned at the edge of the oldest world.
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The warm afternoon breeze gently rippled the tea fields along the hillside as Matriarch Meilin paused at the top of the stone path. She had gone to gather lotus roots by the stream, but something—a whisper of the wind, a divine premonition, the shadow of destiny—made her look toward the sea.
And there, at the curve of the green-gravel beach, something did not belong to the mortal world.
The sand was burned.
Cracked.
Blackened.
Melted in places.
Meilin stepped forward slowly, the bells on her silk belt tinkling softly. Her dark blue robe, embroidered with golden dragons and silver clouds, trailed behind her like a river. The wide, flowing sleeves swung with each step. The jade hairpin in her hair caught the sunlight, scattering tiny emerald glimmers.
Then she saw her.
A woman with snow-white hair lay on the sand, partially covered by small fragments of stone that still smoldered. Her skin, though scarred by fire, was miraculously intact. Her slightly parted lips released a weak, almost imperceptible breath.
But she was breathing.
Meilin knelt beside the stranger, touching her neck with light, practiced fingers.
“She lives…” she murmured, more to the gods than to herself.
At that moment, a distant sound echoed through the hills: a powerful, wild roar that made the ground vibrate beneath her feet. Meilin lifted her head just in time to see a black shadow—huge, terrible, magnificent—disappear into the sky, vanishing behind the mist that cloaked the jade mountains.
A dragon.
The old gods had sent this woman. Or perhaps… returned her.
Meilin turned her gaze back to Daenerys, who lay still. As she leaned down to lift her, the matriarch noticed the stranger moving her lips in a fevered whisper. The voice was faint, broken:
“…Vis… no… please…”
Meilin frowned. The name meant nothing to her—but it carried pain, sorrow, and a longing so deep it seemed to echo in the very winds.
With effort, she lifted the young woman’s light body into her arms.
“Whoever you are, child,” Meilin whispered, drawing the robe around her, “you will not die here.”
The matriarch’s house sat halfway up the hillside, hidden among tall bamboos that whispered like ancient spirits. The walls were dark polished wood, with columns painted deep red and a curved jade-tiled roof. Paper lanterns hung under the beams, each hand-painted with symbols of protection and fortune.
As she entered with one of the servants carrying Daenerys, the scent of jasmine tea and lotus incense enveloped them like an embrace.
Meilin asked that the young woman be laid on a low wooden bed with white silk sheets. The light streaming through the circular windows illuminated her pale face, revealing an ethereal and wounded beauty.
The matriarch sat beside her.
“Whatever your story, little phoenix…” she murmured, placing a damp cloth on the stranger’s forehead, “you will be reborn here.”