Ripples of pale light bloomed across the center of the silver glass.
The light spread in widening circles toward the carved silver roses and brambles along the frame, flashing with the cold brilliance of distant stars before settling into a deep, crimson knot at the center.
Rhaegar did not blink, his violet eyes fixed upon the shifting glass.
Beside him, Visenya stood silent, her gaze locked on the pool of scarlet.
Raegon spread the blood across the metal with his thumb, chanting in the deep cadence of High Valyrian: “By blood paid, by sight repaid, let the gates within the glass swing wide.”
A classic blood-scrying formula, Rhaegar noted inwardly.
A sacrifice of vital fluid to open a window through space and time.
The silver surface trembled again.
“Glory to the first traveler across the dark, supreme master of all spirits, father of the starlit abyss, eternal vessel upon the river of time, guide of the tides of fate.
Permit your child to borrow your sight.
Grant me a vision of the craft sailing out of the Smoking Sea toward Gogossos.”
Rhaegar’s brow furrowed.
The names carried no resonance with any entity worshiped in the Free Cities or the Seven Kingdoms.
Whom was the boy calling upon?
Visenya caught the scholar’s confusion.
Though she harbored her own wariness regarding the origins of Raegon’s arts, seeing the young Velaryon share that concern brought a quiet sense of reassurance.
Whether he sought truth or merely cared for the boy’s welfare, his loyalty was genuine.
Raegon’s golden eye flared with inner light.
Images began to coalesce within the glass.
Deep beneath boiling salt water, unnatural currents churned.
Vast pillars of black smoke erupted from the waves, rising toward a sky choked with perpetual volcanic ash.
A battered galley broke through the dark vapors like a phantom, gliding across the thick brine without hoisted sails or rowing oars, moving as though propelled by a will of its own.
The vision shifted.
The hull appeared even more ruined, yet it moved with an uncanny, predatory grace.
Burnt wreckage of foreign warships drifted around it, sinking beneath the waves, while the ghost ship pressed forward in absolute stillness.
No crew walked the decks.
Raegon’s jaw tightened.
In the next image, the ship came alive.
It was hunting.
A longship bearing the golden kraken of the Iron Islands was dragged into the splintered maw of the lower hull, while a second vessel fled desperately across the choppy water.
Broken timbers along the gunwales had sharpened into rows of jagged teeth; the rigging swayed like fleshy tendrils covered in blinking eyes.
Every oak plank pulsed like raw muscle, weeping dark fluid into the foam.
The corruption of the deep abyss, Raegon realized with a chill.
The vessel had crossed the path of the celestial remnant that fell during the cataclysm.
Yet the infection was incomplete.
Had the true core of the Rot-Mother rested within that wood, the entire Summer Sea would have decayed into a stagnant marsh of death years ago.
It was merely a touched relic.
Raegor’s solar flame could purge it from existence.
The glass shifted again, showing the living ship gliding into the shadowed harbors of Gogossos.
Raegon suppressed a curse.
Gogossos was already a festering pit of dark sorcery, diseased flesh, and boundless misery.
If that corrupted vessel merged with the flesh-pits beneath the Isle of Tears, the rot would take root across the entire southern continent.
A withered corpse sat upon an iron chair, skeletal fingers locked around the crossguard of a sheathed blade.
The dried frame was clad in blackened plate.
The cabin was devoid of life, yet the air seemed thick with suffocating shadows.
Across the timber table lay a massive greatsword of rippled, smoky steel.
The mirror rippled once more.
The vision broke.
Raegon released a ragged breath, reciting the closing line: “I have seen; the price is paid.”
The imagery collapsed into polished silver.
In an instant, a wave of suffocating dread seized Raegon’s chest, squeezing the air from his lungs.
Curse this backlash.
Raegon snapped his eyes shut, his hands shaking.
Visenya stepped forward immediately, taking the silver mirror from his trembling fingers and locking it inside the ebony box.
“Open your eyes,” she said softly.
Raegon drew deep, shuddering breaths, letting the salt air clear the phantom terror from his chest.
Rhaegar stared at the closed box, working through the fragments of what he had witnessed.
“It was an old Freehold design,” Rhaegar murmured, piecing his knowledge together.
“That style of war galley was common between seventy and a hundred and thirty years ago, utilized by both the Freehold fleets and wealthy merchant princes.”
He paused, tapping his knuckles against his chin.
“Yet the stern bore the lines of the gilded galleys favored by the lords of the Westerlands.
If the glass spoke true, and that vessel feeds upon the wrecks it encounters…
there is only one explanation.”
He looked at Raegon with sharp focus.
“It is the missing expedition from the years of the Doom.
The vessel swallowed the flagship of King Tommen the Second of Casterly Rock.
That greatsword within the cabin was Brightroar, the lost Valyrian steel blade of House Lannister.”
“And the longships it hunted?” Visenya asked.
“House Greyjoy,” Rhaegar replied without hesitation.
“Ironborn reavers of the western sea.
In recent years, King Harren has turned his back on the Drowned religion to build his fortress in the Riverlands, driving the lords of the islands to raid far south into the Summer Sea out of spite.”
Visenya turned to her younger brother.
“What is your intent, Raegon?”
“What did the council decide?” Raegon asked, looking up.
“Aegon takes the field,” Visenya said.
“You ride with him.
It will serve as your first true test in the sky.”
Raegon pushed himself up from the table, a wide grin breaking across his pale face.
“Then we burn the fleet in the straits, and I fly south to Gogossos.
Will you come with me, Visenya?”
“And what of my place?” Rhaegar asked, raising a hand.
“You stay on the island for now,” Raegon said, before catching himself.
Neither he nor Visenya had traveled the coastal waterways of Sothoryos; having an educated scholar who had studied the maps of the south would prove invaluable.
“Wait for my return.
I will bring you south with us.”
While the riders prepared their mounts on Dragonstone, the waters of the Narrow Sea churned beneath the hulls of a thousand ships.
Off the coast of Tyrosh.
Aboard the Tiger of Selhorys, the three-hundred-oared flagship of the Volantene blockade, the vice-admiral slammed a dispatch parchment into his captain’s chest.
“Where were your lookout skiffs?
Fifty heavy transports!
Fifty ships carrying four hundred men apiece, slipping through the shoals without a single horn blown!”
“It was no fault of mine, Admiral,” the captain stammered, backing away from the fury in his superior’s eyes.
“My post is upon the quarterdeck of this galley, not the signal towers of the Stepstones.”
“Whose failure was it, then?
Bring me the man responsible!”
“Admiral, please,” the captain said quickly, retrieving a chilled flagon of vintage from his private chest and filling a silver cup.
“The corsairs we hired must have turned their cloaks.
The fault lies with the auxiliary commanders left to guard the channels, not with the fleet.”
The vice-admiral took a sharp sip of the vintage, grimacing as the rough Dornish red crossed his tongue.
“Sour swill.
It tastes like ditch water compared to the sweet vintages of the Black Wall.”
“Forgive the rough fare, my lord,” the captain said smoothly, gesturing toward the bottom of the wine chest.
“Once we make port at Ryk-Lacron, the finest cellars of Essos will be at your disposal.”
The admiral looked into the open crate, catching the heavy gleam of true gold bullion hidden beneath the flagons.
The fury left his face entirely.
“I will demand an accounting from the council upon our return,” the admiral muttered, waving his hand toward the door.
“For now, see that the Maiden of the Moon and the Widow’s Embrace take positions in the outer channel.
We must show the Triarchs that our blockade remains unbroken.”
“At once, Admiral,” the captain bowed, slipping past the velvet curtain.
Far across the rolling gray swell, a different fleet parted the salt spray.
Upon the leading sails, a crowned black stag reared against a field of gold.
Surrounding the great stag were the gathered banners of the storm: the purple lightning of Dondarrion, the white and black swans of Swann, the sea turtle of Estermont, the nightingales of Caron, the crows of Morrigen, and the twin griffins of Connington.
“Your Grace, the landing beaches are in sight,” Lord Tarth called out, stepping up to the forecastle beside a colossal, broad-shouldered elder.
“Good!”
King Argilac Durrandon threw his head back, his booming laugh carrying across the water.
His thick mane of graying black hair whipped in the gale as he slammed a heavy, gauntleted fist against the timber rail.
Around him, seven thousand armored knights of the storm raised their lances, answering their king with a deafening war cry that rolled over the waves like summer thunder.
“Lads!” the Storm King bellowed, baring his teeth in a wild grin.
“Let these perfumed merchants of the east feel the weight of Westerosi iron!”
Argilac drew his broadsword, pointing the steel toward the distant shores of Essos.
“Let the daughters of Valyria taste a true storm!”
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