The Red Keep was quiet.
Too quiet.
Even the torches seemed afraid to crackle.
Bran Stark sat alone in the high chamber that had once belonged to kings who laughed and drank and screamed. Now it belonged to a boy who did none of those things—because the boy was mostly gone.
Outside, King's Landing slept beneath a winter sky that never truly felt warm anymore. The city had been rebuilt, stone by stone, like a wound stitched shut.
But wounds remembered.
Bran's eyes were open, yet he was not looking at the room.
He was sinking.
Down past the tower. Past the streets. Past the bones of the city. Past the graves that had no names.
Down into darkness where roots twisted like veins.
He felt the weirwood network the way a spider felt its web.
Threads everywhere.
Lives everywhere.
Thoughts, fears, prayers—trembling softly.
And at the center of it all…
something watched.
Something old.
Something patient.
Bran's mouth opened, but the voice that came out was not a boy's.
"Again," it whispered.
The world shattered.
He was flying through time.
He saw Winterfell, white with snow, but the snow was falling upward. He saw the Wall, not broken, not whole—gone entirely, as if it had never existed. He saw the Narrow Sea boiling like a pot.
Then he saw fire.
Not the normal fire of torches and hearths.
This fire was wrong.
It was pale.
Violet-white, like lightning trapped inside flame.
It burned without smoke.
It burned the air itself.
Bran—no, the Raven—leaned closer, hungry.
The vision pulled him east.
Past Volantis. Past ruined roads and dead temples. Past the smoking shadow of Old Valyria.
There, on a coast of black stone, a forgotten colony sat like a corpse half-buried in ash.
And in that ash…
a heartbeat.
Not human.
Not animal.
Something ancient, waking.
Bran saw a young man standing in fire.
The boy's face was blurred by heat, but his outline was clear. Thin. Weak. No crown. No armor.
Only a rough cloak, burning away in strips.
A crowd surrounded him, their mouths open in terror.
Someone screamed, "Witch!"
Someone else shouted, "Cursed blood!"
But the boy did not scream.
He did not beg.
He simply looked forward with tired eyes, as if he had already lost everything once before.
The flames rose higher.
The ropes burned.
Yet his skin did not blister.
The fire bent around him, as if it knew him.
As if it belonged to him.
Beside him, something black cracked open.
A shell splitting.
A sound like stone breaking.
And then—
a small shape crawled out.
Black as obsidian.
Veins of violet light pulsing under its scales.
It lifted its head.
And the world held its breath.
A dragon.
A real dragon.
Not a story.
Not a memory.
Not a painting on a ruined wall.
A living truth.
The hatchling climbed onto the boy's shoulder and opened its mouth.
No roar came out.
Only a thin hiss—
but it carried meaning deeper than language.
The weirwoods across Westeros shuddered.
Leaves trembled.
Roots tightened.
Bran's body jerked in his chair.
His fingers clawed the armrests.
His lips moved, shaping words he did not choose.
"The last dragon," the Raven whispered through him, soft and pleased.
Then the vision twisted again.
The dragon's violet fire became a river, flowing across maps.
Westeros burning.
Not like King's Landing.
Worse.
All of it.
The North. The Reach. The Riverlands.
Even the sea seemed to catch flame.
And at the center of that fire stood the same boy—older now, taller, crowned in ash and grief.
Behind him, two shadows rose into the sky.
One shadow violet.
One shadow black and red.
Two dragons.
Two flames.
Two futures.
Bran's eyes widened.
For the first time in years, something like fear flickered across his face.
But it was quickly swallowed.
Because fear did not belong in the Raven.
The Raven only calculated.
The Raven only chose.
The Raven only controlled.
A cold smile formed on Bran's lips.
"Good," the Raven whispered. "Let the world believe it is fate."
Bran tried to speak.
Tried to scream.
Tried to push back.
His throat tightened.
His tongue felt чужой—foreign, not his.
He felt himself sinking deeper, like a man drowning beneath ice, watching the surface light fade.
And above him, wearing his skin like a crown…
the Raven looked out through his eyes.
The torches flared.
The chamber chilled.
Somewhere far away, in a godswood that should not have moved, a weirwood's face seemed to shift into something almost like a grin.
Bran's hand lifted on its own.
His fingers pointed toward the east.
Toward fire.
Toward the boy who didn't know his name yet.
"Find him," the Raven whispered.
And in the roots below the world, the order went out like a pulse.
Quiet.
Invisible.
Deadly.
Bran's head drooped forward as if he had fallen asleep.
But he did not sleep.
Not anymore.
Because kings slept.
Boys slept.
Bran Stark was neither.
The last thing he felt—before the darkness swallowed him again—was a single thought that did not come from the Raven.
A small, human thought.
A plea.
Jon…
Then even that vanished.
And the Red Keep returned to silence, as if nothing had happened at all.
But far across the sea, beneath ash and broken stone, something old cracked open—
and the world began to change.