Chapter 5
The sea hammered Dragonstone's cliffs like war drums. In his chamber, Rhaegar lay awake, listening. The keep was asleep, or seemed so, but his blood would not rest. It burned with the thought that had haunted him for nights.
They whispered of the black terror in the caverns untamed, unbroken, eater of his own kind. Daemon had warned him once, half in jest, half not, that to step before that beast was to court death itself. But Daemon slept now, drunk on wine and victory tales. And Rhaegar was not a boy who would stay caged.
He rose, fastened his cloak, and pushed open the door. The corridor was still. His bare feet carried him down stair after stair, torchlight thinning, the air growing colder, saltier. At the outer gates he hesitated only once, glancing back toward the chambers above where his uncle lay. If Daemon knew… he pressed on anyway.
The path into the mountain gaped like a wound. His torch hissed against the damp, the flame shrinking whenever the sea-wind found a crack. The smell struck first charred flesh, smoke trapped for centuries. Then came the sound: a breath so deep it shook the stone.
The cavern widened, and there he was.
Cannibal sprawled across a mound of bones, scales black as volcanic glass, ridged with veins of sickly green. His eyes were shut. But even sleeping, he seemed awake, as if the mountain itself bent to his will.
Rhaegar stepped forward. His throat was sand, his knees water. Still, he whispered, "serve."in valyrian The dragon's eye opened. Pale, luminous, cruel. A hiss thundered out, hot as a forge blast. With deliberate scorn, Cannibal turned away, wings scraping against bone.
Heat of shame flared through him, sharper than the dragon's breath. He had risked everything,and for what? To be dismissed, forgotten, a shadow in another's story?
No. He would not turn back.
He dropped the torch. Darkness swallowed him whole save for the glow of that single eye. He clenched his fists, heart hammering. "You will not reject me," he thought, forcing each word like a blade through his fear.And then the world shifted.
A weight slammed into his skull. He staggered, clutching his head as visions poured in. Not his own. Cannibal's.
He was no longer in the cavern but in a vast shadowed plain. The air trembled with heat, the sky burned red. And there towering above, wings vast enough to drown the sun stood Balerion. The Black Dread.Rhaegar's breath caught. He knew that form, every child of his house did. The skull of the beast still sat in the Red Keep, larger than halls. Yet this was no skull. This was life, fire, and thunder. Each step of the giant dragon cracked the earth.
Cannibal pressed the image into him like a brand, daring him to flinch. His mind shook, his chest burned, every instinct screamed to fall, to kneel before that power.But he did not,He stood.
He was not Balerion's prey. He was Rhaegar Targaryen, and he would not bow.
The vision wavered. The silhouette of the Black Dread dissolved into smoke, leaving only darkness and the echo of wings.
And then came the voice.
Clear, sharp, impossibly close. Not sound, but thought seared into bone.
"Ābra zȳhon, vala. Yn uēpa gevie."
(You have a heart, boy. But an older soul.)
The words froze him. Valyrian, unmistakable, yet no lips had spoken them. They filled his chest with fire, his veins with ice.
He stumbled, gasping. Was he mad? Dreaming? But Cannibal's gaze still pinned him, steady and knowing.The weight eased. The cavern returned: bones underfoot, smoke in his nose, the vast dragon watching.Rhaegar bowed his head, half in respect, half in surrender. His legs were weak, his breath ragged, but he had not broken. And Cannibal had spoken.
When he turned and left the cavern, the silence was heavier than any roar. The sea air outside struck his face like a slap, cool and real, yet he carried the heat of the vision within him.He had not claimed Cannibal. Not fully. But neither had he been cast aside. Something older, stranger, bound them now.
And only he had heard those words.
You have a heart, boy. But an older soul.