* — BRAN STARKK, THE WOLF*
The paste was bitter.
It was white like cold porridge, with red veins running through it. Like blood in milk. Leaf held it to his lips.
"Eat," she said. Her amber eyes were kind. "To see, you must eat."
Bran ate.
He coughed. It tasted like weirwood sap and honey and dead things.
Then the cave went away.
He was falling — no, flying — through roots.
He saw Winterfell. Not ruined. Whole. Father in the godswood, younger, praying to the heart tree.
"Father," Bran tried to say, but his voice was wind in leaves.
Then he saw another Winterfell. Snowed in. Ramsay Bolton cutting Jeyne Poole. Theon crying in the kennels. That was now. 300 AC. Bran wanted to stop it but he had no hands here.
The roots pulled him deeper.
"Stay," a voice said. Old, cracked, from a throne of roots. Brynden Rivers. Bloodraven. His body was a tree now, roots through arms, mushrooms growing from cheeks. One red eye open.
"You eat and you see too much, boy. Control it."
"I want to go home," Bran said.
"You are home. Look."
Bloodraven touched his forehead with a cold root finger.
And Bran SAW.
He saw east, across the sea, beyond Slaver's Bay.
Six dragons in black smoke over Meereen. Three small — one black-red, one cream-gold, one green-bronze. They landed hard, on two back legs, wings as front legs, like bats.
And one —
Bran gasped.
One landed different.
*BOOM.*
Four feet. Two front claws like a lion's hands, two back legs like pillars, wings separate on its back, huge and folded. Black scales. Where it landed, stone broke in four places. It stood over dead men without breathing. It lifted two horses with front legs while standing on back legs.
And on its wide, flat back — where a man could stand, not cling — stood a silver boy with a red katana.
"WHAT IS THAT?" a man below screamed.
Bran knew the answer because the trees remembered.
"Pure," Bran whispered.
Leaf was beside him in vision, though her body was still in cave.
"Yes, little wolf. We remember. Before Doom, all dragons were like that. Four legs. Wings on back. Like cats of the sky. The Valyrians bred them smaller and smaller until wings became front legs. Two legs only. Degraded. This one — Voidscale — has returned. Mutated back. Pure."
Bran saw the boy — Aegon — slide down the pure dragon's front leg like a ladder. He saw Barristan kneel.
"Who is he?" Bran asked.
"Your cousin," Bloodraven said, and his red eye wept sap. "Rhaegar's son. Aegon Sixth. The one who should have died. He was saved. Raised in Storm's End."
Bran saw more — Aegon flying north, over the Wall, over the cave.
"Will he come here?"
"If you call him," Leaf said. "Pure dragon fire is black fire. Black fire burns even ice. Burns Others. Burns dead. Your brother Jon has become Childling. But he cannot stop winter alone. The pure one can."
Bran looked at his own legs — useless, thin. Then at Voidscale's four strong legs that could stand, walk, grab.
"I want to fly too," Bran said.
Bloodraven smiled, roots cracking.
"Then you will never walk again. But you will fly on pure wings. Show him the way."
Bran closed his eyes — both his real eyes and his third one — and in Meereen, thousands of miles away, Voidscale lifted his huge pure head, sniffed the wind from the north, and roared.
And in the cave, Summer the direwolf howled back.
Meera shook Bran awake.
"Bran! Bran! You were gone an hour! You were speaking — you said 'four legs, not two' —"
Bran opened his eyes. One was still brown. The other was now weirwood white with red pupil.
He smiled, drool on chin.
"I saw a pure dragon," he said.
CERSEI (KING'S Landing) *
The Red Keep smelled like sweat and smoke.
Cersei's hair was growing back, ugly and short. She touched it while watching the Faith Militant drill below. She still heard "Shame!" when she slept.
Robert Strong stood behind her, silent.
Qyburn entered. "News from the east, Your Grace."
"Speak."
A boy calling himself Aegon Targaryen has taken Meereen. He is not alone."
Cersei frowned. "The beggar king has a son?"
Not Viserys. Rhaegar's son, he claims. And he is with Daenerys Targaryen. The silver queen. They rule together now."
Qyburn leaned closer.
"Six dragons, they say. Daenerys has three — as we know them, two legs, wings as arms. But one of Aegon's three dragon's different. One is pure black. Four legs — two front, two back — wings separate on its back like old Valyria. You can stand on its back. No one outside Meereen knows its name."
"Four legs?" Cersei laughed. "Maesters say dragons have two."
The sailors swear it, Your Grace. Pure black. It stood on a galley and broke it. Black fire."
Cersei stared at the city.
So the Targaryen girl found herself a husband with a better dragon than hers. Let her."
She turned, eyes cold.
Let them both come. I have wildfire. I have Strong."