I leaned against the rail, the salt spray already beginning to dampen the rough wool of my coat. I looked up at the merchant, whose face was a roadmap of broken veins and sun damage. "Any tips?" I asked. "About what I'm heading into?"
The merchant paused, glancing at me again as if weighing whether I was actually a prince or just some clever street urchin in a fancy coat. "Dragonstone is a terrible place, Your Highness," he said, his voice carrying the gravelly accent of the docks. "Right proper shithole, it is."
He gestured vaguely toward the east where the island lay hidden in the dark. "Fishermen are barely surviving, scraping barnacles off rocks just to have something to chew on. The castle? Ruined. Half the towers probably got cracks wide enough to fit a donkey through. The surrounding houses the little lords and lands they're basically living like peasants."
As he spoke, he reached up and unceremoniously pricked his nostrils with his fingers, then wiped them on his chaloupe. His vocabulary was rough, his manners non existent, but his assessment was brutally honest.
"Velaryon and the whole lot of 'em used to run the waters," he continued, oblivious to his own grossness. "But now? They've got their own problems. Nobody cares about that rock anymore. You'll find a few souls left, sure, but they're either too drunk on sour wine to notice you or too hungry to care."
I watched him, my expression flat. The picture was becoming clearer: a decaying fortress, a starving population, and a complete absence of royal oversight.
Perfect, I thought. A kingdom of ghosts.
"So I'll be in good company then," I replied quietly. "Me and a bunch of miserable people who've been forgotten by the Crown."
The salt spray had crusted on my skin like a second layer of clothing after three days on that merchant's boat. When the jagged, black silhouette of Dragonstone finally tore through the morning mist, I felt a genuine pang of disappointment.
The castle was magnificent a gothic monstrosity of volcanic stone carved into dragon shapes that seemed to writhe in the waves but the village at its base was a gut punch. The shacks were ramshackle things, clinging to the rocks like barnacles, and the people moved with the slow, defeated gait of those who had long ago given up on hope.
Climbing the winding path toward the main gates was a special kind of hell. My lungs burned, each breath tasting of sulfur and sea salt. Even with the extra rations from the merchant, my body felt like it was made of lead.
I need to eat more, I thought grimly. And sleep more. And maybe learn how to fight with more than just spite.
Still, a small part of me the part that was still the cocky kid who had managed to nick Aegon during training couldn't help but preen. I was seven, malnourished, and half dead from climbing a hill, yet I'd managed to wound the supposed 'Promised Prince' with nothing but a wooden sword and timing. "I might be a genius," I muttered to myself with a smug grin, though the words died in a cough.
The gates loomed ahead, massive and intimidating. A single guard stood there, his armor rusted at the joints, his face lined with exhaustion. He didn't even bother to straighten up when I approached.
"Leave, child," he growled, not even looking me in the eye. "No food here. Move along before you catch whatever plague is rotting this rock."
I stopped, taking a moment to compose myself. Time for the performance. I reached up and pulled back the hood of my oversized grey coat, revealing my face the raven hair, the sharp Valyrian cheekbones, and those unmistakable, piercing blue eyes.
"I am Prince Vaegon Targaryen," I said, forcing my voice to carry that particular cadence of authority I'd heard in the Red Keep. "I have come to take the seat of Prince of Dragonstone."
Silence.
The guard didn't flinch. He didn't kneel. He didn't even summon his captain. He just stared at me with dull, bloodshot eyes, as if I were a particularly annoying seagull that had landed on his post. His expression wasn't one of recognition; it was one of profound, weary confusion.
"Come on, open the door, man," I added, my confidence wavering as the seconds ticked by. "Don't make this difficult."
The guard finally blinked. He leaned forward slightly, squinting at me. "Prince Vaegon?" he repeated, his voice flat. "The boy they said died in the Red Keep? The one they stopped talking about years ago?"
He let out a long, rattling sigh and rubbed his face. "Kid, you're either the best liar in the Seven Kingdoms or you've got a death wish. Either way, I ain't opening these gates for a ghost."
I frowned, my dejection momentarily replaced by genuine confusion. "What do you mean years ago?" I asked, taking a half step forward. "It's been barely a few days since I got locked up in the Red Keep. And I just escaped." I gave a casual shrug, as if explaining something obvious.
The guard's expression didn't soften. If anything, he looked at me with something approaching pity. "Days?" he repeated, his voice carrying a bitter edge. "Lad, I don't know what kind of fever you've got in that head of yours, but the ravens stopped carrying news about you before you even lost your baby teeth."
He leaned against the stone wall, crossing his arms over his rusted breastplate. "Maybe they told you it was a few days. Maybe you slept through it. But out here, where news travels as slow as a dying mule, the word was that you were gone. Dead. Gone. No one's asked about Prince Vaegon in three years."
I froze. Three years?
I felt a cold spike of dread pierce through my stomach. I knew I had been neglected, and I knew Rhaegar had forgotten me, but this was different. This was systematic erasure. The King hadn't just locked me away; he had let the world believe I was dead so he wouldn't have to deal with the inconvenience of my existence. The 'days' I thought had passed in that servant's room... had I been in there longer? No, I remembered the training accident. The beating. The lock turning.
Or maybe the castle had just decided I was dead the moment the door closed.
"You're telling me," I said, my voice dropping to a low murmur, "that the Red Keep has been treating me as a corpse while I was still breathing in there?"
The guard shrugged, the movement making his armor creak. "Course they are. Why waste breath on a boy who ain't love by his parents ? Now, unless you've got a royal seal or a purse full of gold that ain't been stolen from a dead man, you're just another beggar at my gate."
I paced in tight circles in front of the guard, my mind racing to reassemble the pieces of this fractured timeline. So that was it. The systematic erasure. Since Visenya was born the 'true' third head I had become a walking ghost. The Red Keep hadn't just ignored me; they had erased my existence from the official record to avoid the messy paperwork of a failed prophecy.
I remembered fragments of the original Vaegon's life now. The humiliation of having to beg a master at arms just to hold a wooden sword. The way Aegon would corner me in the training yards, his laughter cruel and high, treating me like a living toy. He had tried to break me so many times, but I had managed to land that one strike the one that left the scar across his cheek. That must have been the catalyst. That must have been when they decided the 'accident' was convenient enough to become a permanent disappearance.
"Anyway," I said, stopping my pacing and forcing my voice to remain steady despite the cold dread pooling in my gut. "Can I see the castellan at least? It doesn't change your position, and I'm not asking you to break any laws. Just let me speak to the man in charge." I paused, studying his scarred, indifferent face. "Your name?"
The guard stared at me for another long moment before spitting to the side. "Ser Olyvar," he grunted. "And the castellan is Lord Kellan. But I'm telling you now, boy he's not a man who enjoys being disturbed by delusions. He's been alone too long, and he's got the temperament of a starved hound."
He didn't move from the gate, but he didn't drive me away either. His indifference was almost worse than hostility; it meant he truly didn't believe I mattered.
"If you want to see him, you'll have to walk up the main path yourself," Olyvar added, gesturing toward the imposing staircase that wound up toward the castle's entrance. "The servants' entrance is collapsed from the last storm, and the main hall is locked tight. You'll have to knock on the Great Door like anyone else."