Aenar Targaryen
"After we lost the battle at the Neck," Aenar said, his voice still thick with grief, "the survivors tried to march back to King's Landing. What was left of our armies, the refugees from the North, Riverlands and The Vale, anyone who could still walk. We thought if we could reach the city, we could hold out behind its walls. Regroup. Maybe find a way to survive."
He paused, and his next words came out hollow.
"But it was too late."
Daemon leaned forward slightly. "What do you mean? Was the Army of the Dead already there?"
"They were... in a way."
He looked up at the weirwood's red face, the carved eyes seeming to weep blood in the moonlight.
"The moment the Great Other stepped foot south of the Neck," Aenar continued, "he raised his arms. I didn't see it happen, but later, survivors told me about it. And then the dead rose."
His voice dropped to barely above a whisper.
"All those who died recently in Westeros from the cold. The thousands who froze in their beds, in the streets, in their homes. All those who starved when the food ran out. Those who died from sickness, from accidents, from the chaos and panic. Thousands upon thousands of new dead, all rising at once."
"The city's own dead became the army waiting for us when we finally retreated there."
Daemon's face had gone pale. "Gods."
"There are no gods," Aenar said bitterly. "Or if there are, they weren't listening."
The memory pulled at him, dragging him back to that moment of horror.
Aenar clung to Rhaegal's spines as the dragon climbed higher into the freezing air. Below, King's Landing spread out like a white-blanketed corpse. Snow covered everything—the rooftops, the streets, the Red Keep itself. From this height, it should have looked peaceful. Beautiful, even.
But there was movement everywhere.
At first, Aenar thought it was just the living going about their desperate business, trying to survive another day of winter. But then he heard the screams. Thousands of them, rising from the city like a chorus of the damned.
"Get closer," he commanded Rhaegal, and the dragon obeyed, spiraling down toward the city walls.
What he saw made his blood turn to ice.
The dead were attacking the living. In every street, every alley, every plaza—corpses that should have been frozen solid were moving, stumbling, reaching with grasping hands. They weren't the skeletal wights from the North. These were fresh dead. People who had died just days ago, still wearing their winter clothes, still recognizable as the merchants and craftsmen and beggars who had lived in King's Landing.
The city was tearing itself apart from within.
Aenar watched in frozen horror as a wave of dead poured out of Flea Bottom, overwhelming the living who'd gathered near one of the gates. Watched as families who'd survived the cold were pulled down by neighbors they'd mourned just days before. Watched as the very people he'd tried to save became the weapons of their own destruction.
"Daenerys!" he shouted into the wind. "Where are you?!"
A roar answered him, and Drogon appeared through the snow-filled sky, Daenerys bent low over the black dragon's neck. Her face was ashen, her eyes wide with the same horror Aenar felt.
"We have to help them!" she screamed over the wind.
"I know!" Aenar shouted back. "The Dragon Gate! Most of the living are concentrated there! We destroy it, they can flee!"
Daenerys nodded, understanding immediately. The Dragon Gate was the eastern entrance to the city, and from their vantage point, Aenar could see it was where the greatest number of living people had gathered, pressed against the gates, trying to get out. But the gates were still closed, still locked, trapping them inside with the dead.
Back in the present, Aenar's voice sounded like a corpse trying to speak. "We used our dragons to destroy the Dragon Gate. Drogon and Rhaegal hit it together, dragonfire so hot it melted the iron and stone like candle wax. The gates exploded outward in a shower of molten metal and burning debris."
"From our position in the sky, we could see everything. The moment the gates came down, people began flooding out like water spilling from a crack in a glass."
"Thousands of them. Maybe tens of thousands. Anyone who could still move, who wasn't already dead or caught by the dead. They fled east toward the Blackwater Rush, toward the Kingswood, anywhere that wasn't the cursed city that had become their tomb."
He closed his eyes against the memory.
"We'd saved them. For the moment, we'd saved them. I remember feeling this surge of hope, thinking maybe we could still do this. Maybe we could evacuate the city, get people to safety, make a stand somewhere else."
"But it wasn't over. The dead were still pursuing them. Still coming. And behind them, behind the wave of risen corpses that had been their friends and family—"
Aenar's voice caught.
"Behind them, the Army of the Dead from the North was arriving. The Great Other had won at the Neck, and now he was bringing his full force to finish what he'd started."
"We'd bought the refugees time. Maybe a few hours. Maybe less. But the dead were coming, and there was nowhere left to run."
Daemon was silent for a long moment. Then, quietly: "What did you do?"
Aenar opened his eyes, and they were filled with a terrible, haunted knowledge.
"We tried to buy them more time. Tried to give them a chance to get away. We did the only thing we could do."
His voice dropped to a whisper.
"We burned our own city. We burned King's Landing to ash."
Aenar pulled Rhaegal into a steep dive, the dragon's wings tucking close as they plummeted toward the streets below. The wind screamed past his ears, and the city rushed up to meet them—a maze of white-covered rooftops and narrow alleys crawling with the dead.
"There!" he shouted, pointing at a wide avenue where hundreds of corpses shambled toward a cluster of living people pressed against a building. "Burn them!"
Rhaegal's roar split the air, and fire erupted from the dragon's jaws. Red and gold flames washed over the street, turning snow to steam and dead to ash in an instant. The heat was so intense that stone cracked beneath it, and the corpses simply ceased to exist, consumed utterly.
But there were so many more.
Aenar pulled Rhaegal up and around, looking at the city. Everywhere he looked, the dead were hunting the living. He could hear Drogon roaring nearby, see the black dragon's fire lighting up another street.
"We need to create barriers!" Daenerys's voice carried on the wind as Drogon swept past. "Cut them off from the refugees!"
Aenar understood immediately. They couldn't kill all the dead—there were too many—but they could slow them down. Give the fleeing people more time.
"Rhaegal, dracarys!" he commanded, and the dragon responded with a long, sustained blast of fire that carved a burning line across the Street of Steel. The flames clung to the cobblestones, fed by melting fat from corpses and oil from abandoned shops. A wall of fire rose up, separating the dead from the living.
Daenerys was doing the same on the other side of the city. Drogon's black form wheeled and dove, laying down trails of fire that formed a burning perimeter. Together, they were creating a firebreak, a blazing barrier the dead couldn't easily cross.
For a moment, it seemed to be working.
The refugees streamed through the Dragon Gate in a constant flow, running east toward whatever safety they might find. Behind them, the dead pressed against the walls of fire, reaching through the flames with burning hands, but unable to advance, many of them died within seconds.
Aenar and Daenerys flew in coordinated patterns, reinforcing the fire walls, extending them, creating a corridor of flame that funneled the living toward escape while keeping the dead at bay.
More streets burned. The Street of Silk erupted in flames as Rhaegal bathed it in fire. The Street of Flour turned into an inferno when Drogon ignited the grain stores. Whole districts began to burn, the fire spreading from building to building.
But for every street they burned, the dead filled two more.
They poured out of alleys and homes and cellars like water from a broken dam. Thousands upon thousands of them, an endless tide of risen corpses.
"There's too many!" Daenerys screamed, and Aenar could hear the desperation in her voice. "We can't—"
The world turned green.
It happened in an instant. One moment, Aenar was directing Rhaegal toward another cluster of dead. The next, a massive explosion erupted from beneath the Street of Steel, a column of emerald fire shooting hundreds of feet into the air.
Wildfire.
The Mad King's legacy. The caches of alchemical fire that Aerys had hidden throughout the city in his final mad days, planning to burn them all rather than let Robert Baratheon take his throne. Aenar had known they were there—had meant to have them removed, someday, when there was time.
There had never been time.
And now the dragonfire had ignited them.
Rhaegal shrieked and veered away as another explosion detonated, this one near Flea Bottom. Green flame erupted from sewers and cellars, spreading a green sickness.
A chain reaction began.
The heat from the first explosions ignited more caches. Green fire bloomed across the city like a disease, each explosion triggering another. The Street of Sisters went up in a massive fireball. The plaza before the Great Sept erupted in emerald flame.
Buildings exploded. Stone walls shattered from the heat. Towers collapsed like toothpicks. Wildfire spread through the streets like water flowing downhill, following the city's natural contours, seeking every cache the Mad King had hidden.
"Get higher!" Aenar screamed at Daenerys, pulling Rhaegal into a steep climb. "Get out of the smoke!"
But Daenerys was already climbing, Drogon's wings beating frantically to gain altitude. Below them, King's Landing was turning into a Green Hell.
Green and red flames mixed together, creating an inferno of impossible colors. The wildfire burned green and bright, while the dragonfire and normal flames added orange and red to the hellish palette. The entire city seemed to be melting, stone flowing like wax, iron beams twisting and collapsing.
The Great Sept of Baelor exploded in a blast so massive that Aenar felt the shockwave even hundreds of feet in the air. The towers disintegrated, and the sept collapsed inward, green flame shooting through every window and door before the whole structure simply ceased to exist.
Thousands must have been sheltering inside. Now they were simply gone.
The wildfire was spreading faster than anything natural. It raced through the underground tunnels and sewers, following the paths the Mad King's pyromancers had laid decades ago. Whole districts vanished in walls of green flame. The barracks of the Gold Cloaks exploded. The markets along the waterfront erupted into fire.
And then the inferno reached the Red Keep itself.
Aenar watched as green flame erupted from Maegor's Holdfast. The ancient fortress where he'd been crowned, where he'd held his councils, where he'd made love to Daenerys and Rhaenys—it burst into flame like kindling. The dragonbone throne room, the royal apartments, the Tower of the Hand—all consumed in emerald fire.
The Red Keep had stood for three hundred years, built by Aegon the Conqueror to last forever. It died in minutes.
Stone towers collapsed one after another, crashing down in avalanches of burning rubble. The Iron Throne itself must have melted in the heat, those thousand swords becoming a puddle of molten metal. Everything the Targaryens had built, everything they had ruled from—gone.
The heat was so intense that Aenar and Daenerys had to climb higher and higher. Even at five hundred feet up, the air shimmered with heat. Rhaegal and Drogon struggled against the thermals rising from the dying city, wings beating hard to maintain altitude.
Below, King's Landing had become an ocean of flame. Green and red and orange all mixed together, a maelstrom of fire that consumed everything it touched. The screams of the dying—both living and dead—rose up. A song for the Dead.
The dead burned. The living burned. The city itself burned.
Aenar couldn't look away. He sat frozen on Rhaegal's back, watching his capital, his seat of power, the greatest city in Westeros, die before his eyes.
Beside him, Daenerys was weeping openly, tears streaming down her face and instantly evaporating in the heat. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out. What could anyone say in the face of such destruction?
They had done this. Not intentionally, not maliciously, but their dragonfire had ignited the Mad King's trap. They had been trying to save people, trying to buy time for the refugees to escape, and instead they had destroyed the city completely.
The fire burned for hours. Long after Aenar and Daenerys were forced to land Rhaegal and Drogon far outside the city, exhausted and choking on smoke. Long after the last of the refugees had fled into the Kingswood. The flames continued to consume what remained.
By the time the sun set—though it was impossible to tell through the smoke that blackened the sky—King's Landing was gone. Just a field of smoldering ash and twisted metal, with here and there the skeleton of a tower or wall still standing like a gravestone.
Three hundred years of history. The seat of House Targaryen in Westeros. The greatest city west of the Narrow Sea. All turned to ash in a single day.
The present crashed back over Aenar like a wave of ice water. He found himself in the Godswood again, Daemon watching him with an expression of horror and pity.
"On that day," Aenar said, his voice completely hollow, "King's Landing, the seat of House Targaryen in Westeros, was destroyed and turned to ash."
Daemon was quiet for a long moment, processing. Then his voice cut through the silence.
"The Mad King finally got his wish then."
Aenar blinked, thrown by the comment.
"From what you told me, Aerys wanted to burn the city rather than let Robert take it," Daemon continued. "Wanted to turn everyone to ash with his wildfire."
He leaned forward slightly, his eyes glinting in the darkness.
"Maegor the Cruel built tunnels and secret passages to escape his enemies. But Aerys? Aerys built a funeral pyre and called it a kingdom. The man was mad, but he understood one thing—fire doesn't discriminate between the living and the dead. It consumes everything."
"Three hundred years the city stood. Aegon built it. Maegor fortified it with blood and terror. Jaehaerys made it prosper. And in your other life, you and your queens burned it to the ground in a single day trying to save it." He shook his head. "There's a kind of terrible poetry in that. The dragons who built the city became the ones to destroy it."
"It wasn't poetry," Aenar said bitterly. "It was failure."
"It was survival," Daemon corrected, his voice hard. "You did what had to be done. The Mad King wanted to burn the city for his pride. You burned it to save lives. There's a difference."
"Is there?" Aenar asked hollowly. "The result was the same. The city died. Thousands died. And all we bought was a few hours of time."
Daemon's expression grew darker.
"The result is never the same when the intent is different. Aerys wanted to murder his own people out of spite. You tried to protect them and the Mad King's trap caught you instead." His voice took on an edge. "Though I'll grant you this—at least Aerys's wildfire finally served a purpose. It killed the dead along with the living. Probably the only useful thing that mad bastard ever accomplished."
"And Maegor thought he was cruel for killing his wives and burning his enemies. But you faced something Maegor never dreamed of—an army that couldn't be threatened, couldn't be intimidated, couldn't be stopped by cruelty or terror or dragonfire alone. Maegor the Cruel would have pissed himself if he'd faced what you faced."
Aenar almost laughed, but it came out as a choked sound.
"Maegor had Balerion," Daemon continued. "The Black Dread, the largest dragon that ever lived. And all he did with that power was terrorize the Seven Kingdoms and build a fortress full of death traps. You had three dragons and tried to save the world. Even in failure, you were more of a dragon than Maegor ever was."
Aenar did not know why, but he felt better hearing that, hearing from his father that just because of what he did, that did not make him the Mad King, but the story was not over.
Daemon's voice was gentle. "What happened then? After King's Landing burned?"
"The dead reached Harrenhal."
"Those with boats had fled long ago, some had managed to break through the ice," he continued. "Sailed for Essos, for the Summer Isles, for anywhere that wasn't Westeros. The smart ones, the rich ones, they'd left the moment they understood what was coming. But thousands upon thousands still remained. Scattered refugees hiding in the Kingswood. Armies in retreat, broken and exhausted. People trapped in castles and holdfasts, praying their walls would keep the dead out."
He closed his eyes.
"We'd gathered what remained of our forces near Harrenhal. That cursed place seemed fitting somehow—a monument to dragonfire and death, waiting for more of the same. We had maybe twenty thousand soldiers left. Maybe. Most were wounded, all were exhausted, and none of them had any hope left in their eyes."
"Daenerys and I, we were planning our retreat. We were going to Dragonstone, rest for a day, then sail for Essos with whatever survivors we could gather. The plan was simple: Westeros was lost. Save who we could and flee east."
Daemon leaned forward slightly. "But you didn't flee."
"No." The word came out like a confession. "I didn't flee."
Aenar's hands clenched into fists.
"The Great Other appeared at Harrenhal that night. I saw him from the air, standing in the ruins of the castle's courtyard. And he was riding a dragon."
His voice grew thick with grief and rage.
"Meraxes. Rhaenys's beautiful Meraxes, with her red scales and black wings. The dragon that had burned a path across the Westerlands, that had died with her rider in the ruins of that tower. The Great Other had raised her. Turned her into a monster of ice."
Daemon's eyes widened, but from his expression, he knew what happened next.
"Her scales had turned pale blue, like frozen flesh. Her eyes glowed that terrible icy blue that all the dead had. And when she opened her mouth, instead of fire, she breathed cold."
Daemon's face showed his horror. "He desecrated her dragon."
"He desecrated everything she was," Aenar said bitterly. "Rhaenys loved that dragon more than anything except maybe us. Meraxes was her pride, her joy, her companion. And the Great Other turned her into a weapon against the living. Against us."
He fell silent for a full minute. Daemon waited patiently.
Finally, Aenar spoke again, and his voice was breaking.
"Daenerys told me we needed to leave. She grabbed my arm, looked me in the eyes, and said 'We can't fight this. We need to go. Now.' She was right. She was absolutely right. We should have flown to Dragonstone that instant, gathered whoever could still walk, and sailed for Essos."
"But when I saw the Great Other riding Rhaenys's dragon, when I saw him sitting there on her back like he owned her, like she was just another corpse for him to use—"
His voice dropped to barely above a whisper.
"I couldn't leave. I couldn't run. All I could think about was killing him. Destroying the thing that had taken Rhaenys, that had taken Arya, that had taken everything I loved and turned it into weapons against me."
"So I attacked."
Aenar looked at his father with eyes full of anguish.
"Because of my choice, because I let rage control me instead of reason, Dany and Drogon died."
The battle over the Gods Eye was like nothing Aenar had experienced in either of his lives.
He drove Rhaegal at the Great Other with all the fury in his heart, and the green-bronze dragon responded to his rider's rage. Rhaegal's fire erupted in a torrent, red and gold flames washing over the ice dragon and its terrible rider.
But Meraxes—the thing that had been Meraxes—didn't burn. The flames rolled off her ice-encrusted scales like water off stone. She shrieked, a sound that was nothing like the proud dragon's roar Aenar remembered, and breathed back.
It froze the very air between them, turning moisture into ice crystals that glittered in the moonlight. Rhaegal screamed and veered away, ice forming on his wings.
"Aenar, get back!" Daenerys's voice cut through the chaos. Drogon swept in from the side, black wings spread wide, and bathed the ice dragon in fire. The largest of the three dragons, Drogon's flames were hotter, more intense, and for a moment, the ice on Meraxes's scales began to crack.
But the Great Other raised one hand, and the air turned impossibly cold.
They fought above the Gods Eye, that great lake near Harrenhal where kings had died before. The water below reflected the battle like a dark mirror.
Aenar and Daenerys worked together as they had so many times before. Rhaegal would dive, force the ice dragon to respond, and Drogon would strike from another angle. They were faster, more agile, fighting with the desperation of the living rather than the cold inevitability of the dead.
Aenar never saw it coming, hours later, he wished he was the one, he would have exchanged it for anything.
The sound the dragon made was worse than any scream Aenar had ever heard. Drogon's right erupted in red and flames, the dragon opened its mouth in pain.
But it wasn't enough.
"DROGON!" Daenerys's scream cut through everything. She was pulling on the reins, trying to guide her crippled dragon toward land, toward anything solid.
Aenar watched helplessly as Drogon fell. The black dragon spiraled down, Daenerys clinging to his back, her silver hair streaming behind her like a banner. She never let go of her dragon. Never abandoned him, even as the water rushed up to meet them.
They hit the Gods Eye with a tremendous splash. For a moment, Aenar saw Daenerys's head above water, saw her gasping for air, and hope surged through him. Maybe she could swim to shore. Maybe—
Then Drogon's weight pulled them both under.
The dragon was too heavy, too wounded. He sank like a stone, and Daenerys was still strapped to his back.
"Down!" Aenar commanded. "Down to the water! We have to find her!"
But Rhaegal didn't obey.
The dragon's head swung toward Dragonstone instead, toward the east, and his wings began beating in that direction.
"No! Not that way!" Aenar pulled on the reins, tried to force Rhaegal to turn back. "Daenerys is in the water! We have to search for her! We have to save her!"
Rhaegal ignored him. He was heading away from the Gods Eye toward the distant island fortress.
"Rhaegal, please!" Aenar's voice broke. "Please, she might still be alive! We can't leave her! We can't—"
The dragon didn't listen. Didn't turn back. Didn't stop.
Aenar pulled harder on the reins, screaming commands in High Valyrian, begging, pleading. But Rhaegal's mind was made up. The dragon knew something Aenar didn't want to accept.
Daenerys was gone. Drogon was gone. And staying would only mean Aenar and Rhaegal would join them in death.
So Rhaegal flew east, toward Dragonstone.
Aenar's voice in the present was hollow. "I screamed at him for hours as we flew. Cursed him. Begged him. Promised him anything if he'd just turn back, just let me search the water. But Rhaegal wouldn't listen."
"The dragon knew she was already dead. Knew there was nothing left to save. He was trying to keep me alive, even though I didn't want to be."
"So he carried me to Dragonstone. Carried me away from Daenerys's body at the bottom of the Gods Eye. Away from the Great Other. Away from everything."
A tear rolled down Aenar's cheek.
"I never even got to bury her. Never got to say goodbye. She just... disappeared into dark water, and I flew away like a coward."
Rhaegal's claws scraped against stone as the dragon landed heavily in Dragonstone's courtyard. The impact jarred through Aenar's bones, nearly throwing him from the saddle. The ancient Targaryen fortress loomed around them, empty and abandoned. Even here on the island, snow was falling, coating the black stone in white.
Aenar dismounted quickly, stumbling as his feet hit the ground. His legs had gone numb from the long flight, but he barely noticed. Rage and grief propelled him forward as he turned on his dragon.
"Why didn't you listen?!" he screamed at Rhaegal, his voice echoing off the empty walls. "Why didn't you save her?! We have to go back! Daenerys might still be alive!"
Rhaegal didn't respond with a roar or a defensive hiss. The dragon simply laid his great head on the ground, exhausted. Spent.
"Don't you understand?!" Aenar continued, his voice breaking. "She could be clinging to debris! She could have made it to shore! We have to search the lake! We have to—"
Then he looked down.
Blood. Dark red blood pooling on the courtyard stones, spreading from beneath Rhaegal's massive body. So much blood that it was already running between the cracks in the flagstones, steaming in the cold air.
Aenar's anger drained away instantly, replaced by ice-cold fear.
"No," he whispered, rushing to Rhaegal's side. "No, no, no."
He found the wound in the dragon's stomach. A massive gash, easily three feet long, where an ice spear had punched through the scales. The same kind of spear that had killed Drogon. It must have struck during the battle with Meraxes, when the two dragons were tangled together in the air.
Aenar hadn't noticed. Hadn't seen it in the chaos and rage and desperate need to save Daenerys.
"Not you too," Aenar choked out, pressing his hands uselessly against the wound. Blood hot and thick flowed over his fingers. "Please, not you too."
He looked around wildly.
"I'll get help! I'll find a maester, or—or maybe there's something in the castle, some medicine, something—"
But they both knew there was no help coming. No maesters, no healing magic, nothing. Dragonstone was abandoned. Everyone who could flee had already fled. They were alone.
Rhaegal made a soft sound, almost gentle, and laid his head fully on the ground. One great eye fixed on Aenar.
Aenar crawled to the dragon's head on his knees, heedless of the blood soaking into his clothes. He pressed his forehead against Rhaegal's scales, feeling the heat that still radiated from the dragon's body.
"Please don't leave me," he begged, his voice breaking completely. "I don't want to be alone. Please, Rhaegal, please stay with me."
Tears streamed down his face, hot against his skin.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry. I should have seen you were hurt. Should have made you land at The Reach. Should have—should have done so many things differently."
Memories flooded through him. Meeting this dragon in Meereen, in the darkness of the pyramid where Rhaegal and Viserion had been chained. How everyone had doubted him, called him a pretender, said he couldn't possibly be Rhaegar's son.
But Rhaegal had known. Had gone still and silent when Jon approached, had lowered his great head in acceptance. Had let Jon touch him, bond with him, claim him.
That moment had proved Jon was truly a Targaryen. Had given him his identity, his purpose, his strength.
"You were the first one who believed in me," Aenar said, his voice thick with tears. "When Daenerys wanted me executed, when everyone thought I was lying about who I was—you knew. You accepted me. You made me who I became."
Rhaegal's breathing was growing shallower. The great chest rising and falling more slowly with each breath.
"You saved me so many times," Aenar continued, desperate to keep talking, as if his words could somehow keep the dragon alive. "At the Twins. At Winterfell. In every battle we fought together. You never hesitated. Never doubted. You were always there."
He pressed harder against Rhaegal's scales, trying to memorize the feel of them, the warmth, the texture.
"I don't know how to do this without you," he whispered. "Don't know how to keep going. Everyone's gone. Rhaenys, Arya, Daenerys, Drogon—all gone. You're all I have left. You're the only family I have left in this world."
The hours passed, though Aenar had no sense of time. The light changed from the gray of afternoon to the deeper gray of evening. The snow continued to fall, coating both dragon and rider in white.
Aenar never left Rhaegal's side. He talked to his dragon, telling him stories. About Winterfell, about his childhood with his siblings. About Meereen, about the battles they'd won, the skies they'd flown together. He thanked Rhaegal for everything—for accepting him, for fighting beside him, for saving him one last time.
"You were a good dragon," he said, his voice hoarse from talking and crying. "The best dragon. I'm honored that you chose me. Honored to have been your rider."
Rhaegal's eye was still fixed on him, but the light in it was fading. The dragon's breathing came in shallow gasps now, each one weaker than the last.
"It's all right," Aenar whispered, though his heart was breaking. "You can rest now. You've done enough. You've been so brave, so strong. You can let go."
He felt the moment it happened. Rhaegal's great chest rose one final time, held for a long moment, then fell. And didn't rise again.
The light went out of that bronze-green eye. The warmth began to fade from the scales beneath Aenar's forehead.
Rhaegal was gone.
Aenar let out a roar of anguish and rage that echoed across the empty island. He screamed at the sky, at the gods if they existed, at fate and death and the cruelty of a world that kept taking everything from him.
He stayed there with Rhaegal's corpse as the snow continued to fall. Stayed even as the dragon's body began to cool. Stayed as darkness fell fully and the stars came out above, cold and distant and uncaring.
"I won't leave you," he whispered, his voice raw. "Never. Everyone else might leave, everyone else might die, but I won't abandon you. I swear it."
Then he heard a sound. Heavy wing beats cutting through the air.
Aenar stood slowly, his body stiff from hours of kneeling in the cold. He looked up and saw a massive shape descending from the night sky.
Cannibal.
The wild dragon of Dragonstone landed in the courtyard with a crash that shook the stones. He was enormous, larger even than Drogon had been, his scales black as midnight. His eyes glowed green like witchfire, fixing on Rhaegal's corpse with unmistakable hunger.
Aenar knew immediately why Cannibal was here. The wild dragon was legendary for eating dead dragons, consuming their corpses before they could rot. He'd come for Rhaegal.
"Back off!" Aenar shouted, his voice cracking but fierce. He moved to stand between Cannibal and Rhaegal's body, spreading his arms as if his small human frame could possibly block the massive dragon. "Don't you dare get closer!"
Cannibal growled, a sound that rumbled deep in his chest like thunder. His head lowered, and those green eyes fixed on Aenar with something that might have been curiosity. Or hunger.
"He's not food!" Aenar screamed. "He was my friend! My brother! You can't have him!"
He knew he was being suicidal. Knew that Cannibal could kill him with a single blast of fire or snap of jaws. The wild dragon had never been ridden, never been tamed.
But Aenar didn't care anymore. Everyone he loved was dead. Rhaenys, Arya, Daenerys, Drogon, and now Rhaegal. What did it matter if he died too? At least he'd die protecting Rhaegal's body. At least he'd die for something.
Cannibal roared, and the sound was deafening. It shook the courtyard, sent loose stones tumbling from the walls, echoed across the island like the voice of death itself.
But Aenar stood his ground. Didn't move. Didn't flinch. Just stared up at the wild dragon with tears streaming down his face and defiance blazing in his eyes.
Cannibal roared again, and this time Aenar could see the fire building in his throat. Green flames, hotter than normal dragonfire, gathering like the sun itself condensing into that massive maw.
The dragon's jaws opened wider. The green fire grew brighter, illuminating the entire courtyard in an eerie light.
Aenar closed his eyes. Accepting death. Maybe even welcoming it.
He waited for the fire.
Waited for the heat that would turn him to ash.
Waited for the end.
And in that moment, Aenar Targaryen met heaven...