When Jon first looked at the ancient man, his heightened senses cut straight through the calm, almost lifeless serenity on the surface.
Beneath that frail shell he felt something terrifying: a dormant, savage rage coiled deep in the old man’s soul.
If Aemon were even twenty years younger and still had a body strong enough to swing a sword, Jon knew with absolute certainty that the maester would shatter his Night’s Watch vows without hesitation.
He would ride south alone, become death itself, and butcher every enemy who had spilled Targaryen blood.
The fire was still there.
It had simply been buried under a century of iron discipline.
One spark and it would erupt, turning old enemies to ash and blood-soaked earth.
Clydas stepped forward respectfully.
“Maester Aemon, this is Jon Snow, Lord Eddard Stark’s bastard son. He asks your permission to use the library.”
At the name, the old man slowly turned his head.
His pale, cloudy lilac eyes—blind for years—locked onto Jon with eerie precision.
Jon felt a chill race down his spine.
Those sightless eyes held more than emptiness.
They carried the weight of decades of hard-won wisdom and a quiet, razor-sharp power that had never truly faded.
“Young Snow,” Aemon said, his voice rough with age.
He began moving toward the chair by the hearth, each step careful and slow.
“Do you hunger for knowledge?”
“Knowledge is the only weapon that never dulls,” Jon answered calmly.
He reached up and pushed back his hood, revealing his face.
“Without it we’re no better than beasts driven by instinct and rage.”
Clydas froze.
His eyes widened in shock as he stared at the boy.
The purple eyes, the proud lines of the face—even without the color, the resemblance to a younger Aemon was unmistakable.
This was no common northern bastard.
This was a prince wearing borrowed clothes.
Aemon paused mid-step.
“A wise answer for one so young.” He continued toward the chair, one hand tracing the familiar furniture.
“What wind blew you all the way to the edge of the world, boy?”
Jon moved quickly and took the old man’s arm with gentle strength, guiding him into the chair.
He pulled up a wooden stool and sat beside him.
The fire in the hearth pushed back the Wall’s killing cold.
“I came to see the great work my ancestors left behind,” Jon said.
“And to find someone who matters to me.”
“A… kinsman?” Aemon repeated the word softly.
A bitter, nostalgic smile touched his lips, as if the word itself were a relic he had long thought lost.
“Closer than that,” Jon said.
“Blood of my blood.”
Aemon’s frail body seemed ready to crumble under the weight of years, yet Jon could feel the fierce will still burning inside it.
“When I learned he still lived, I knew I had to come,” Jon continued, voice low and steady. This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
“I couldn’t let him carry that loneliness alone. Not when I’m still here.”
The words hit Aemon like a physical blow.
For a moment the old man’s composure cracked.
Ten years of buried fury—the rage he had felt when he learned his entire family had been slaughtered—rose again, hot and violent.
He crushed it down with the same iron control that had kept him alive this long.
Then Jon asked the question that changed everything.
“If you knew that one choice you were about to make would drown this continent in blood and fire,” he said quietly, eyes on the flames, “what would you do?”
In the fire Jon saw cities burning, heard the screams of thousands as dragonfire consumed them.
The vision was vivid, merciless.
He had seen it countless times in his dreams.
It no longer moved him.
Aemon studied the boy in silence.
“You carry a burden no child should bear, Jon Snow,” he said at last.
“If you want my counsel, here it is: kill the weak, hesitant boy inside you. Let a man be born from the blood that remains.”
Jon’s smile was cold and ancient.
“I already killed him,” he said.
“The moment I decided to take the Iron Throne.”
The room went deathly still.
Clydas stopped breathing.
He stared at Jon like a man watching his own execution being prepared.
Aemon’s hands began to shake.
Then his whole body.
He pushed himself up from the chair with sudden, desperate strength and reached blindly toward the boy.
Jon caught the old man’s trembling hands and guided them to his face.
Aemon’s fingers moved slowly, reverently, tracing every line of Jon’s jaw, cheekbones, and brow.
The shape was new, yet achingly familiar.
The blood called to blood across a century of separation.
“Aegon…” Aemon whispered, voice cracking.
“You look exactly like my brother Aegon.”
Tears spilled down the old man’s face.
He had believed himself long past weeping.
“You are Rhaegar’s son,” he breathed.
“Rhaegar and Lyanna Stark’s child.”
He remembered the letters.
Rhaegar had written to him in secret, hinting that his second wife carried a child.
The pieces fell into place with terrible clarity.
Aemon’s hands refused to let go.
He pulled Jon into a fierce, shaking embrace, clinging to him like a drowning man to driftwood.
The sobs that tore from his chest were raw and decades overdue.
Jon held him without hesitation.
In his previous life his own blood had abandoned him the moment they learned he was dying.
They had left him to rot in a hospital bed like unwanted trash.
“You’re not dreaming,” Jon said softly, patting the old man’s back.
“I’m real. I’m healthy. And I’m here, great-uncle.”
Over Aemon’s shoulder, Jon’s gaze found Clydas.
The warmth vanished from his eyes.
What remained was pure, cold warning.
Clydas swallowed hard.
He understood perfectly.
One word spoken outside this room and he would die screaming.
He pressed himself against the wall and tried to disappear.
After a long time Aemon pulled back, though he kept a tight grip on Jon’s arms.
His face was wet but his smile was almost childlike in its joy.
“Tell me everything, my boy,” he said.
“How did you grow up?”
Jon told him.
He spoke of Winterfell, of Robb and Arya, of the small kindnesses that had kept him alive.
He mentioned Catelyn’s cruelty only in passing, softening the worst of it so the old man’s heart would not break all over again.
Aemon listened with growing approval.
“You did well,” he said firmly.
“Never show weakness to a woman like that. She would have used it to destroy you. Eddard Stark at least kept her in check. That counts for something.”
Jon’s mouth curved in a dangerous little smile.
“I’ve dreamed more than once of feeding her to my dragon,” he said lightly.
“But I won’t. Not while her children still need a mother.”
Aemon blinked.
“Your dragon?”
“Korakshu,” Jon said, as casually as if he were naming a horse.
“My dragon.”
For several long seconds Aemon simply stared.
Then the old man’s face lit up with something Jon had never expected to see in a man of nearly a hundred years.
“Can I ride him?” Aemon asked, voice suddenly eager, almost boyish.
“Just once?”
Jon stared at him.
Then he threw his head back and laughed—deep, genuine laughter that filled the small tower.
“Gods,” he said when he could speak again, grinning at the ancient Targaryen before him.
“The dragonfire never went out in you at all, did it?”
He squeezed Aemon’s hands.
“Yes,” Jon promised.
“I’ll take you flying. You and I will soar above the clouds together. You have my word.”