Chapter 21: A Name from Flame

The wind streamed over his scales as he soared through the skies of Old Valyria, warm and dry from the cracked, scorched earth far below.

The ruins stretched endlessly beneath him vast bones of cities once alive, now silent and shattered. Towers leaned like broken teeth, palaces half-swallowed by time, streets overtaken by nature and fire alike. It was haunting and beautiful, a kingdom of ghosts where only flame still lived.

He flew high, not to travel, but to think. The height cleared his mind and his thoughts for the first time in a long while turned not outward but inward.

He had changed. More than just in body. His wings were stronger now, his frame heavier and longer, but that wasn't the change that stirred deep inside him. No what troubled him, what pressed against his chest like heat needing release, was that he could no longer see himself as he once had. That old life, when he had been a boy named Jake, was fading.

The memories were still there faint echoes. He remembered laughter, comfort, screens glowing in dark rooms. But those things no longer anchored him. They drifted now like feathers on the wind. Each day spent flying over these cursed lands, each breath of flame that poured from his chest, pulled him further away from that name. That identity.

Jake.

It didn't fit anymore. Not here. Not now.

He wasn't afraid of forgetting it. That life had its place in him. But he knew it was time to let it go. He had been born again in fire, not as a boy, but as something older. Wilder. A creature of this world of Valyria, of dragons, of ash and skies and fury. And to carry a name that belonged to another world felt wrong now, like a chain around his throat.

He circled lower, wings outstretched, coasting over a wide basin filled with black sand and buried ruins. He spotted the scorched outline of an ancient arena and slowed, drifting in silence as the ghosts of the past whispered around him. No voices, no real sound but the sense of something watching, something remembering, never left this place.

He landed near the edge of the arena, sending a ripple of ash into the air. The cracked stone beneath his claws pulsed with warmth, buried heat as if the land itself still burned from what had once been. He stepped forward, his movements quiet, contemplative.

He was not just a dragon. He was something else, something caught between two fires.

He needed a name.

Not the one he was born with. Not one given by humans. A name that meant something here. In this world of fire and ruin.

And slowly, the answer came not from memory, but from instinct.

Vezdaryon.

He didn't know where it came from. Perhaps something buried in the land whispered it to him, or perhaps the fire in his chest had spoken for the first time. The name carried weight. In the ancient tongue of Valyria, it meant "Son of Flames and Destruction."

It was right. It was real. It felt like him.

Vezdaryon.

He repeated it in his mind and it echoed like thunder rolling across his mind.

There was fire in the name. Power. It was a name that had meaning in this world a name that spoke of rebirth, of rising from ash, of finding purpose not in what was lost but in what still could be.

He stood in the silence of the ruined arena, the bones of old dragons buried beneath his feet, and exhaled a deep breath. Smoke curled from his nostrils, thin and warm, trailing into the still air. The last trace of Jake drifted away with it.

He was Vezdaryon now.

He spread his wings and leapt into the sky, rising quickly, cutting through the clouds. Below him, the bones of dragons and men stretched in every direction, silent witnesses to his rebirth.

He did not roar, not yet. There was no need. The world would come to know his name in time not because he demanded it, but because he would earn it.

High above the lands of his kind's ruin, the dragon who had once been a boy flew faster than ever before. Not searching for the past. Not bound by sorrow.

He flew forward, into the firelight of his new name.

——

Yeah I chose Vezdaryon, it sounded to cool and I like it.

Hope you enjoyed the chapter!