Most of the eagle-shaped creatures of ice and snow hurled themselves straight at Tyraxes.
They struck the dragon's vast body in shrieking bursts of frost. Scale met frozen talon with a sound like shattering glass. Their bodies could not pierce Tyraxes's armor, yet the cold they carried was merciless, sinking through scale and into flesh. Had Tyraxes not already scorched great swaths of the battlefield with his Bloodmelt, his hide would have been webbed with frostbite and ice rot.
Others were wiser, or perhaps crueler.
A handful of the rarer ice creatures veered aside at the last instant, slipping past the dragon's wings. Their hollow, pale eyes fixed instead on Baelon, seated upon Tyraxes's back.
Baelon felt it before he truly saw them. A tightening in his chest. The prickling warning along his spine.
His fingers loosened from the armrest. His shoulders squared. In one smooth motion he rose, drawing his blade as frost-laden wind tore at his cloak. The nearest creature screamed as it dove, wings cutting the air like knives.
Baelon stepped forward and swung.
Steel met ice.
The sword shattered the instant it struck, splintering into a spray of frozen shards. The hilt jolted in his hand, numbing his fingers to the bone. He stared at the broken weapon for half a heartbeat, teeth clenched, breath frosting in front of his face.
Just as before. Just like the White Walkers.
The creature did not slow.
It slammed into him with crushing force. Cold exploded outward, devouring heat in an instant. The iron chains securing Baelon to the saddle shrieked as they froze solid, then snapped apart with a sharp crack.
The impact tore him from Tyraxes's back.
Weightlessness followed.
Baelon tumbled through the sky, arms flailing uselessly as the wind howled past his ears. The cold struck him fully now. It was not merely chill but annihilation. It clawed through his skin, through muscle and sinew, straight into the marrow of his bones.
His breath hitched. His lungs burned. His heart stuttered.
It felt as though his blood had turned to ice within his veins.
From afar, he must have looked no different from the dead. Frost crawled across his limbs, sealing his clothes to his skin, whitening his hair and lashes. Another frozen corpse, falling to join the wreckage below, like the men of Cregan Karstark's warship scattered across the sea.
A bitter laugh echoed inside his mind.
"So this is how it ends?" His lips barely moved, jaw stiff with cold. "A prince of the dragonlords, and I do not even have a proper Valyrian steel blade."
Shame flared, sharp and sudden, cutting through the numbness.
"That's… humiliating," he thought, even as darkness crept at the edges of his vision. "For a transmigrator, no less."
As he fell, Baelon forced his eyes open.
Tyraxes was still there, wreathed in flame and frost, roaring defiance into the storm. Dragonfire tore through the sky, incinerating ice creatures mid-flight. Smoke and steam curled around his massive form.
Baelon met the dragon's gaze.
For an instant, the world narrowed to those golden pupils.
He felt it all.
The surge of panic as Tyraxes realized Baelon was gone from his back. The fury that followed, wild and incandescent. The fear beneath it, deep and unspoken, like a wound laid bare.
Tyraxes roared, the sound raw and broken. His wings twisted violently as he turned, great body contorting in a desperate attempt to catch the falling prince. Flames spilled from his jaws in an uncontrolled torrent.
Rescue.
That was his only thought.
But the ice creatures did not relent. They struck again and again, raking his flanks, slamming into his chest. Frost crept along his muscles, stiffening sinew and joint alike. His movements slowed, each beat of his wings heavier than the last.
Too slow.
Baelon saw it in Tyraxes's eyes. The terrible realization.
Then the cold vanished.
It was gone so abruptly that Baelon gasped, chest heaving as sensation rushed back into him. Heat surged in its place, violent and uncontained, gathering deep within his breast.
His heart thundered.
Fire bloomed beneath his ribs, spreading through his veins like molten gold. His blood felt as though it were boiling, yet some unseen force held it in check, compressing it, forging it anew.
Pain followed, white-hot and merciless.
Baelon cried out, his back arching as his fists clenched. Frost shattered from his skin in fine, glittering fragments, spinning away into the wind.
"What… what is this?" he gasped, voice ragged, more breath than sound.
The heat answered him, roaring louder, brighter, as if something ancient had stirred at last.
At that very moment, the long-silent achievement system seized his consciousness and dragged it inward.
The battlefield vanished.
He stood once more within the vast inner void, where echoes lingered like ghosts. The familiar trophies of his past achievements hovered at the periphery, dim and distant.
At the center, something new awaited him.
A colossal trophy towered above all else, vast as a mountain, its surface carved with sigils that pulsed with seven-colored light. The radiance washed over him, warm and inexorable, as if recognizing him.
As if claiming him.
Baelon stared upward, breath unsteady, pain and awe warring in his chest.
[The Awakened Dragon King (Legendary)]
Born a Targaryen entwined with the Dragon Aspect, your bloodline has never stood apart from your companion's. From the instant you drew breath, your fate was never meant to be ordinary.
Embrace. Understand. Accept. Achieve.
Do you truly believe yourself to be only human?
Reward: Exclusive Dragon Blood MagicAshes of the Fallen
*
The moment Baelon laid his hand upon the trophy, something ancient answered.
A primal instinct surged up from the depths of his blood, sweeping aside thought and reason alike. His consciousness shuddered, seized by a force older than memory.
"So hot…" His breath came ragged, the words torn from him. His fingers curled as if grasping at air. "Gods, it's burning."
He did not know that while his mind lingered within the achievement space, the reward had already taken hold beyond it, already undone the mortal danger threatening his life.
Baelon had never truly been human.
Not in the way others understood the word.
From the beginning, everything between Baelon and Tyraxes had been shared.
Blood.Soul.
They were bound beyond rider and dragon, beyond master and mount. Each was the other's most absolute existence in this world.
That bond was why Baelon could feel Tyraxes's thoughts as easily as his own, even across vast distances. Why their wills moved together without effort, without command.
In truth, they were not two beings at all.
They were one.
The sharing of souls granted perfect communion of thought. The sharing of blood carried its own inheritance.
First, Tyraxes possessed an intelligence that surpassed nearly all living creatures, rivaling even the keenest of men.
Second, Baelon's body had, at times, betrayed its true nature.
When deep in contemplation or seized by powerful emotion, draconic might would bleed from him unbidden. His eyes would shift to molten gold, bright and merciless. His presence would thicken, pressing down on those around him like a physical weight, the unmistakable aura of an apex predator walking in mortal flesh.
Cregan Stark had felt it.So too had Cregan Karstark.
Both were more than capable of bearing witness to that truth.
Yet despite the blood they shared, Baelon had never learned how to command the power sleeping within him. His youth had bound it tight. The dragon blood inherited from Tyraxes lay dormant, restrained for his own survival. To force it awake too soon would have shattered his body beyond repair.
Until now.
The achievement system had given him a path.
His own dragon blood magic.
Within the void, Baelon stopped resisting. He let go. He surrendered to instinct and stirred the blood in his veins with deliberate, violent will.
In the sky above the battlefield, the ice creature that had struck him faltered.
Baelon's body began to burn.
Color rushed back into his skin, flushing it a vivid, unnatural crimson, as though living flame coursed just beneath the flesh. Heat exploded outward, so sudden and intense that the air itself recoiled. The ice creature's frozen body began to melt, its form warping and collapsing under the assault.
It shrieked, a sound thin with terror, wings beating frantically as it tried to flee.
Baelon caught it.
His fingers closed with crushing strength. The temperature spiked again, climbing beyond restraint.
Blood-red flames burst forth.
They poured from his skin like a living tide, coiling and lashing, devouring everything they touched. His remaining garments vanished in an instant, reduced to ash. The eagle-shaped ice creature did not even have time to scream again before it was consumed, its body unraveling into steam and nothingness.
Baelon struck the ground with a deafening impact.
BOOOOOOM!
Stone cracked. Snow and earth were thrown aside as a shallow crater formed beneath him. Heat rolled outward in waves, melting the surrounding snow into hissing water. Steam surged up in thick, choking clouds, warping the air until the world itself seemed to tremble.
High above, Tyraxes roared.
Ignoring his own wounds, the dragon dove through the remaining ice creatures, tearing them apart as he descended. His wings drove the steam aside as he landed near the crater, massive head snapping down, eyes blazing with fierce, searching light.
Slowly, the mist thinned.
A figure stood at the center.
It was humanoid in shape, yet unmistakably something else.
Blood-red scales covered its body, gleaming with a cold, lethal sheen. They matched Tyraxes's own exactly, vivid and saturated, as though forged from fresh-spilled blood. From its hands extended long, razor-edged claws that caught the light with every movement.
The face still carried echoes of Baelon's features, but the crown of savage dragon horns left no room for doubt.
This was no man.
This was dragon blood given form.
Dragon Blood Magic: Ashes of the Fallen.
A dragon, wearing the shape of a man.
---------
A/N: If you think you know what comes next… you don't. The answers are already waiting ahead.
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