New chapter is live.
Settle in, take your time, and let’s see what waits in the dark 🖤 ✦ The feast dragged on deep into the night.
By the time the musicians prepared for another round of dancing, Aelor’s eyelids had grown heavy.
The hall was too bright, the wine too strong, the voices too tangled.
He had been passed from one greeting to another until every smile felt carved into his face.
When Rhaenyra finally leaned down and asked if he wished to return to his rooms, Aelor nodded before she finished the question.
He left before the dancing began.
Sleep came quickly.
Peace did not.
Aelor stood on a small island in the middle of an endless sea.
The island was hardly large enough for him to walk in a circle.
A single crooked palm tree grew from its center, bent beneath a wind he could not feel.
Fog pressed close on every side, thick and white and suffocating.
Beyond it, the sea muttered in the dark.
Then the water rose.
It climbed over the sand, cold around his bare feet.
Aelor backed away until his shoulders struck the palm tree.
The tide kept coming.
In the distance, something vast moved beneath the waves.
A shadow passed through the fog.
A roar split the sky.
Aelor scrambled up the palm tree, hands tearing against the bark.
The water swallowed the roots.
Then the trunk.
Then his legs.
The thing above him circled once, and in the flash of lightning he saw wings large enough to blot out the world.
“No!” Aelor woke sitting upright in his bed, breath ragged, nightshirt soaked with sweat.
For a moment he could still feel water closing over his chest.
A knock came from outside.
“Your Grace?” Ser Erryk’s voice was alert at once.
“Are you hurt?” Aelor wiped his face with both hands.
“No,” he called back, forcing the tremor out of his voice.
“No water.
No sea.
I am in my room.” A pause.
“A nightmare, then?” “A nightmare.” “Call if you need me.” “I will.” Footsteps settled back outside the door.
Aelor curled beneath the blankets and stared into the dark.
If this was the price of being a Dreamer, he was not certain the gift deserved its name.
The thought had barely formed when the world behind his eyes cooled.
[Explorer System] Exploration Complete Collect the lost relic.
[Exploration Task] Target: Mysterious Valyrian Steel Bracelet Exploration Progress: 100% From start to finish, the exploration had taken roughly eight hours.
Aelor froze.
The bracelet.
He pushed himself out of bed, lit a candle with shaking fingers, and pulled the Valyrian steel bracelet from the small chest beside his pillow.
The silver surface looked no different than before, but the System continued.
Aelor glanced at the door before touching it.
He could hear Erryk’s quiet movement outside, the knight returning to his post after the nightmare.
If the Kingsguard entered now and found a prince whispering to a bracelet in the middle of the night, there would be questions.
Questions led to maesters.
Maesters led to needles, notes, and too many calm men pretending curiosity was concern.
Aelor kept his voice low.
Relic collected.
Scanning…
Scan complete.
Excellent Relic identified: Fire-Mage’s Arcane Implement.
Aelor stared at the words.
“A fire-mage’s what?” Relic activated.
[Reward] Spatial Bracelet Grade: Excellent (Blue) Effect: Contains three cubic meters of internal space.
Cannot store living creatures.
Assessment: A magical artifact from ancient Valyria.
Its spatial properties make it priceless, a treasure noble dragonlords once fought to claim.
The bracelet changed in his hand.
Hairline cracks appeared across the dull surface.
Flakes of age and grime loosened, falling away like old scales.
Beneath them, the metal shone a deep silver-gray, smooth as water and veined with patterns too delicate for any common smith.
Aelor forgot to breathe.
Ancient Valyria had not merely forged blades.
It had carved magic into steel.
Valyrian steel already carried sorcery in its making.
If the old fire-mages had used it as the foundation for runes of space, then a bracelet like this would have been beyond rare.
A treasure fit for one of the great dragonlord families of the Freehold.
The Targaryens had never been counted among the mightiest of the Forty Families.
There was no record in the family histories of such an artifact passing through their hands.
Yet here it was.
On his bed.
Given to him by Daemon, who likely had no idea what he had found.
Aelor’s first clear thought was simple.
He could not let anyone know.
Not Viserys, who loved him but loved the safety of the realm too.
Not Rhaenyra, who might keep the secret and then look at every shadow with fear for him.
Not Daemon, who had given the bracelet away and might decide he wanted to understand why a trinket suddenly mattered.
A relic was an advantage.
An advantage revealed too early became another chain.
He fetched a small fruit knife from the table, hesitated only a moment, then cut the tip of his finger.
Blood welled bright red.
He pressed it to the bracelet.
The metal drank the blood.
A thin warmth spread across his wrist as the bracelet slipped from his palm and circled his arm by itself.
It tightened, shrinking until it fit as if it had been forged for him.
Aelor raised his hand.
“Store.” The fruit knife vanished.
His heart lurched.
“Return.” The knife appeared in his palm.
He tried again with a cup, a cushion, a candlestick, then a small stack of books.
Each object disappeared and returned at his command.
Living creatures could not enter.
Everything else obeyed.
He tested distance next.
The bracelet did not require the metal itself to touch the object, only that his will settle clearly on what he meant to store.
The first attempts were clumsy.
A cup vanished when he meant to take a spoon.
A cushion returned upside down and nearly knocked over the candle.
Aelor learned quickly.
Thought, intent, object.
The bracelet responded like a trained hand waiting inside his own.
Only after half an hour did Aelor dare to look inside the space itself.
His mind touched the bracelet, and an invisible chamber opened before his senses.
Gold lay piled inside it.
Not a fortune large enough to buy a kingdom, but enough to make a prince very comfortable without asking the royal treasury for coin.
Beside it rested several stacks of ancient books wrapped in age-darkened cloth.
A badge marked with two intertwined dragons lay near them.
There were also folded garments of unfamiliar cut and several strange objects whose purpose Aelor could not yet guess.
He reached for one of the books, and it appeared in his hands.
The cover was old, the script unmistakably Valyrian.
The sight struck him harder than the gold.
Coin could buy servants, favors, quiet, and information.
Books could give him something rarer.
They could give him the knowledge that had vanished with Valyria, knowledge the Citadel would either misunderstand, conceal, or dismiss as dead superstition.
Aelor held the book as carefully as if it were an egg.
He looked at the bracelet on his wrist and smiled despite the nightmare still clinging to him.
Daemon’s gift had not only been useful.
It had opened a door.
✦ ✦ ✦ Want to keep going?
I hope this chapter gave you another reason to stay with the story.
There’s still plenty ahead, and things are only starting to unfold.