Chapter 59: The Rune Index.

The door to Aemon's chambers creaked open, letting in a slant of late-morning sunlight that spilled across the cluttered floor—and in walked a prince buried in thought and a Kingsguard buried in boxes.

Ser Barristan followed with a grunt, arms full of rune-inscribed objects salvaged from the royal vaults. A rusted helm, a curved dagger, a bronze circlet, and what looked suspiciously like an ornamental bronze plate—all etched with spirals, angles, and glyphs older than the Targaryen name itself.

Aemon pushed aside a stack of maps with one arm and cleared just enough space on the polished oak table to make a landing strip.

"Set them down there," he said, waving vaguely. "Just avoid the ink, the charcoal dust, and—Seven help us—whatever that is."

Ser Barristan set the relics down with a grunt and glanced at the assortment. "Why do you need this many old trinkets? Are you planning to start a rune collection or something?"

Aemon didn't even look up. "I got a book from Maester Geradys. First Men runes. I'm going to study them and figure out what they mean. Maybe even see if there's still magic in them."

Barristan blinked. "Magic."

A beat of silence.

Aemon nodded cheerfully. "Yup. Ancient, mysterious, possibly explosive magic. Should be fun."

Barristan raised a brow but said nothing. He shook his head and stepped back as Aemon dove into the next wave of chaos.

"Where in all seven bloody hells did I put that book?"

Aemon muttered, yanking open drawers, lifting folded maps, and brushing aside a precarious stack of weathered parchment that collapsed with a sound like dying applause.

"Book?" Barristan asked, glancing around the room with thinly veiled horror. "You'll need to be more specific. There's a hundred in here—half of them are shedding."

Aemon huffed, stepping over a crooked bust of Nymeria and avoiding a charcoal-smudged sketch of a dragon mid-flight. "It's leather-bound. Spiral etched on the front. Old. It smells like wet parchment and abandonment. Geradys gave it to me before I left Dragonstone. It's just full of runes. Probably copied from cave walls or tree trunks or gods-know-what."

Barristan scanned the chamber. "It's a miracle you can find your bed in here."

"I know where everything is," Aemon said. "Roughly. Kind of. I think."

Barristan arched a brow. "That's a bold claim from a man who lost a book."

"It's not lost," Aemon snapped, tossing a parchment aside. "It's… probably under something."

The room was a mess masquerading as a kingdom—or maybe the other way around.

Parchments were draped over chairs like cloaks. Dozens of scrolls lay open on the floor, half-read and trailing notes in spidery ink. Brass tools glinted between inkpots. A harp leaned against the corner beside a dented shield. The bed was a battlefield of linens, quills, a faded coat, and a ukulele.

Paintbrushes were everywhere. So were charcoal pencils. Some broken, some melted. Dragon sketches littered the walls, most unfinished, all stunning—long-necked beasts spiraling above a painted King's Landing skyline, wings outstretched over Blackwater Bay.

And still, Aemon moved through it all with a strange precision—like a storm navigating its eye.

"Have you ever thought about tidying?" Barristan asked, nudging a stack of books with his boot. "Or hiring a maid?"

Aemon replied. "Do you want that maid to kill me after seeing this?"

"Clearly," Barristan said, then bent and, within seconds, pulled a thick book from beneath a leaning stack of scrolls and cracked atlases. "You mean this one?"

Aemon froze.

He turned slowly, blinked twice, and rushed over like a starving man spotting a lemon cake.

"Yes! That's the one!" he cried, practically snatching it from Barristan's hands. He clutched the book like it might sprout legs and flee. "You are an absolute legend."

Then, cradled it like it was spun from glass and secrets. "Gods, I thought it was gone. I nearly had a stroke."

"Which would surprise no one," Barristan said dryly, brushing parchment off his boot. "This room is an act of war."

"It's a creative environment," Aemon countered, flipping through the pages. "Geniuses thrive in chaos."

Barristan looked around. "Is that why there's an eating plate in your drawer and a bloody dagger on your pillow?"

"Multitasking," Aemon said without missing a beat.

The knight sighed again and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I'll fetch something for you to eat. You look like you haven't slept in days. Or bathed."

"I bathed yesterday," Aemon said. "…I think."

"I'll get you something to eat before you accidentally eat any books here. What do you want?"

"Bring cakes," Aemon added, eyes still on the runes. "And some fruit. And hot milk with lots of honey. Like, drown-it level honey. I want it sweet enough to kill a man."

"You are a strange child."

Aemon didn't even blink. "I'm evolving."

Barristan shook his head like he had aged ten years in the last two minutes, grumbled, "I didn't take vows for this madness," and opened the door.

"And if you see Harlan or the stable boy," Aemon called after him, "tell them to give Balerion extra apples. And some of those blackberries he likes—ripe ones, not the sour ones."

Barristan paused in the doorway, glancing back with one brow raised.

"Oh, and make sure they tell him it's from me," Aemon added, flipping open the rune book. "And that I'm doing something groundbreaking. He gets moody when he feels left out."

"He's a horse, Aemon."

"Exactly," Aemon said, deadpan.

Ser Barristan exhaled through his nose, that long-suffering sigh only a knight with too many princes and few answers could muster. "You're both mad."

He closed the door gently behind him.

Aemon slumped deeper into his chair, rubbing the sleep from his eyes like a man trying to scrub off regret.

"If someone doesn't invent caffeine soon, I swear to the gods, I'm going to burn this entire chamber down," he muttered. "Coffee. That's what the realm needs. Not gold or whores—just a cup of something that tastes like roasted sin and keeps your eyes from bleeding."

.

.

.

He leaned back, exhaled hard, then let his gaze fall to the table.

There it was—the rune-covered book from Maester Geradys, now resting beside a neat spread of ancient objects. Rusted helm, a curved dagger, a bronze circlet, and a bronze armor plate —all bearing those strange etched marks, curling and sharp like a language with bones.

Something flickered behind his eyes. The mess didn't matter now. The hunger. The lack of sleep. The spiraling tower of parchment by the window. None of it.

His fingers tightened on the edge of the table.

"Alright, S.E.R.A.," he said, voice dropping low with intent. "Let's get to work."

A crooked grin tugged at his mouth as he leaned over the runes. "Time to uncover this son of a bitch."

He rolled his shoulders, cracked his knuckles, and cleared the battlefield. Scrolls were shoved aside. Charcoal pencils were relocated with minimal casualties. A small inkpot nearly died an early death off the edge, but Aemon caught it mid-fall, sighed, and muttered, "You're not dying before I do."

Then came the ritual.

Clean parchment, sharp quills, and fresh ink. Everything was laid out with quiet precision, each tool placed like a soldier reporting for duty.

"Before I start carving letters like a crazed maniac," he muttered, uncapping the ink, "S.E.R.A., what do we have from the scans?"

[All pages scanned. Symbol analysis complete. The contents of Maester Geradys' book are confirmed to be transcriptions of rune-etched artifacts—recorded from weapons, tools, walls, and carved stones.]

"So it's not original?" Aemon asked, brow raised. "Just a copied mess? I knew it."

[Correct. The First Men did not write books. Their histories were carved into nature—tree trunks, bones, and stone. These runes are linguistic impressions, not magical incantations or spells. According to notes embedded in the final folio, Maester Geradys discovered the manuscript buried in the Citadel's hidden vaults beneath layers of dust and forgotten ledgers. The ink dates to roughly 100 to 500 years ago, not from the Age of the First Men. However, the runes themselves match authentic pre-Old Tongue structures.]

Aemon exhaled. "So this thing's a rune index. A bastard version of a dictionary."

[Structural analysis confirms the runes form an alphabet—twenty-four glyphs, each representing a sound or root consonant. A primitive writing system. Possibly an early Old Tongue script—heavily consonant-based. Comparable to Celtic, Gaelic, or Norse patterns from your prior world.]

He paused for a beat. "Of course it is," he muttered. "Can't have a fantasy realm without Vikings somewhere in the family tree."

He opened the rune-covered book from Geradys, cracking the spine like a vault. The pages were yellowed, the ink faded, but the glyphs inside were unmistakable—spirals, hooks, jagged strokes, curling lines. Some repeated chants. Others stood alone like warnings.

Aemon sat forward, elbow on the table, and began to sketch.

He copied the runes from the artifacts onto parchment one by one. The curved dagger came first, its markings etched along the spine like a whisper of violence. Then the rusted helm, the bronze circlet, the worn plate.

The only sound was the scratch of quill on parchment and the occasional muttered curse when ink splattered sideways.

[Rune sequences logged. Pattern recognition initiated. Cross-referencing glyph clusters with Old Tongue fragments from the Geradys text.]

"You seeing overlaps?"

[Affirmative. Repeated symbols occur in both the book and on the objects. Not religious. Not decorative. Linguistic.]

He leaned in closer. His fingers brushed ink aside as his eyes darted from page to bronze to parchment.

There.

The same claw-shaped rune etched into the bronze circlet showed up three times in the book's margins—and again along the inner rim of the rusted helm. A tall spiral engraved into the dagger hilt matched one scribbled like an afterthought on the corner of a page. The horned crescent at the base of the plate appeared again beneath a drawing in the book.

"It's not art," Aemon whispered. "It's… letters."

[Confirmed. A structural match indicates a consonant-root alphabet, likely with vowel modifiers. You are looking at the bones of a language.]

He stared for a beat longer, brows knitting. "Wait—so they're letters? Like an alphabet?"

[Functionally, yes. But not in a one-to-one sense. These are not letters as you know them—they are phonemes. Each rune corresponds to a sound, not a single letter.]

"Phonemes…" Aemon repeated slowly. "So, it's sound-based. Not spelling-based."

[Correct. This is phonetic mapping. You must break down a word by how it sounds—S, TH, AH, K—and then assign the corresponding rune to each sound. Think of it as translating sound into shape. Meaning flows from pronunciation.]

Aemon sat back, blinking. "Gods… no wonder no one's cracked it. The whole thing's built on how it's said, not what it looks like."

[Exactly. Combine that with frequency analysis—frequent glyphs likely representing frequent sounds—and you begin forming patterns. For instance, if a rune appears repeatedly in different objects and texts, it likely speaks for a frequent sound like A, E, S, T, or R.]

Aemon's expression shifted—half awe, half grin. "So we're not matching letter-for-letter. We're decoding a spoken language carved into steel. That's insane."

[Correct. The runes form a primitive phonetic alphabet. Translation requires contextual deduction, frequency tracking, and syntactic alignment.]

Aemon tapped the edge of the dagger with his quill, eyes narrowed. "Alright, S.E.R.A.—how do we match these bones to sounds?"

S.E.R.A.'s voice responded, crisp and clinical.

[Begin with frequency. High-use glyphs likely represent frequent phonemes—A, E, S, T, R. Analyze repetition and placement.]

"Like how Pycelle uses 'the' thirty times before saying anything worth hearing," Aemon muttered, scanning the spirals on the bronze circlet.

[Exactly. The position is next. Symbols at the start or end of sequences suggest initials or terminals. Shape complexity may correlate with sound prominence. Simpler glyphs are often foundational.]

Aemon leaned closer. "This trident-shaped one? Shows up at the start of nearly every line. It could be a 'T' or an 'S.' And this hook-shaped rune in the middle… it anchors everything. Maybe a vowel."

[Confirming hypothesis. Glyph ᛁ appears most frequently between consonant clusters—likely functioning as a vowel, possibly I or E.]

"Good catch," Aemon muttered, circling it twice. "That's the one that kept showing up between 'r' and 'k'. Makes sense."

[Additional note: Glyph ᚱ appears adjacent to both ᚢ and ᛁ in 63% of sequences. Probable phonetic groupings: 'ri', 'ur', or 'ru'. Suggest testing phonetic clusters across mirrored glyph combinations.]

Aemon paused, eyes flicking between two plates. "So it's a flexible cluster. Could be a name. Or a root. Like… 'Rurik.' Or 'Runes.' Bloody hell, that fits."

[Glyph ᛋ observed with the highest frequency. Common position: end of sequence. Hypothesis: terminal letter. Candidate: S.]

"You're starting to sound like a very smug maester," Aemon grinned.

[I will take that as validation.]

"Twelve glyphs repeat across all objects and the Geradys text," Aemon echoed aloud. "Matching these against common letter frequencies in Common yields a preliminary cipher..."

[Triangulation complete.]

He yanked over a fresh parchment and dipped his quill, sketching rapidly—glyphs in one column, their possible letter matches in another. Each pairing was tested against frequency, placement, and pattern. Some lined up cleanly. Others were stubborn, messy, and inconsistent. But slowly, steadily—it clicked.

Hours passed like a fever dream—parchments multiplied, the ink ran low, and candle wax dripped forgotten trails down his desk.

When he finally paused to blink, the slant of sunlight had shifted across the floor—almost noon now, maybe past. He had not moved in hours. His fingers were stained, his knuckles ink-splattered, but the fire in his eyes never dimmed.

[Runes with variable positioning may represent vowels. Those exclusive to names suggest titles or possessive markers. Compound glyphs appear—compressed meanings. Comparable to Norse bind-runes.]

Aemon's eyes lit up. "It's shorthand. Gods, it's a bloody shorthand language. No wonder no one cracked it."

Then it happened.

One phrase etched on the bronze plate matched a line in the Geradys' book—same order, same symbols.

A language.

He sat up straight, ink-stained fingers trembling.

"That's it," he breathed, the words escaping like steam off boiling water. "We cracked it."

He dipped the quill again and began transcribing the entire alphabet.

First Men Rune Alphabet (Deciphered):

ᚠ — F 

ᚢ — U 

ᚦ — TH 

ᚨ — A 

ᚱ — R 

ᚲ — K 

ᚷ — G

ᚹ — W 

ᚺ — H 

ᚾ — N 

ᛁ — I 

ᛃ — Y 

ᛇ — EI 

ᛈ — P 

ᛉ — Z 

ᛋ — S 

ᛏ — T 

ᛒ — B

ᛖ — E 

ᛗ — M

ᛚ — L 

ᛜ — NG 

ᛞ — D 

ᛟ — O 

The Old Tongue was the language of the First Men—spoken, never written down in books. It was passed down through oral tradition and is now considered nearly extinct. Aside from a few wildlings and giants beyond the Wall, no one in Westeros speaks it anymore.

Maesters at the Citadel have studied it for thousands of years, attempting to reconstruct the language from fragments—occasional words, symbols, or chants. But they never managed more than scattered guesses.

No complete writing system had ever been found.

Most believed the First Men never had one.

And now?

It was sitting on his godsdamn desk.

He stared at the parchment. One breath. Then another. Then—

"YES!"

Aemon shoved back from the table so hard the chair screeched across the floor. He was on his feet in a heartbeat, ink on his fingers, ink on his face, wildness in his eyes as he summoned lightning through his fingertips.

"We cracked it," he whispered—then louder. "We fucking cracked it!"

He laughed, a sharp, disbelieving bark that turned into something unhinged and full-bellied. He grabbed the edge of the desk like it might float away, then turned and punched the air.

"YES!" he roared. "Suck on that, you robe-wearing, ink-sniffing, scroll-hoarding fossils! I cracked a dead language while you were still drooling into your beards!"

He spun in place, arms flung wide like he was preaching to the entire Citadel. "That's right, Pycelle—eat this shit! Who's your maester now, huh?!"

He jabbed a finger at the parchment, as it owed him money. "Language of the First Men? Solved. By me. In a day. With some crusty relics, old-ass parchment, and an overworked, freeloading AI leeching my blood sugar. Boom. Bow down, old man—I run the archives now."

S.E.R.A.'s voice chimed in, distinct and clinical.

[Neural readings elevated. Pulse at 112 bpm. Cortisol spiking. The subject is exhibiting symptoms of… extreme triumph and aggressiveness.]

Aemon pointed at nothing, chest heaving, voice breathless.

"Geradys, you old bastard… I hope you're watching this."

He grabbed the rune-covered parchment and held it up like a king's crown, waving it around the room like a mad prophet. "Six thousand years of silence—and I broke it open in my damn bedroom surrounded by paintbrushes and half-eaten apples!"

He waved the parchment like a sword, like a standard raised over a battlefield.

He slumped back into the chair, breathless and grinning like a lunatic. His whole body buzzed with adrenaline, his mind a whirlwind of ink, fire, and triumph.

"Gods, I've missed this kind of madness."

[Would you like to test a phrase translation?] S.E.R.A. asked.

Aemon slammed the parchment down, leaned in close, and grinned like he was about to rob the gods blind.

"Hell yes. Hit me."

[Processing rune sequence from dagger hilt…]

A string of symbols shimmered in his vision:

ᚺᚨᛚᛖᛋᛁᚾᚲᚱ

S.E.R.A. spoke calmly in his mind.

[Phonetic rendering: H-A-L-E-S-I-N-K-R. Interpreted as: 'Hal es inkr.' Possible Old Tongue equivalent to 'Steel bears truth,' or 'Strong is the will.']

Aemon frowned, his quill hovering mid-air. He traced the First Man runes on the parchment again, lips moving as he quietly mouthed each sound, one syllable at a time.

"'Hal'… that's got to be strength. Or maybe steel. 'Es'—probably 'is,' same base as Essos. 'Inkr'…" He tapped the page. "Ink, truth, blood? Could mean all of them."

He snorted under his breath. "Gods, it's like translating Norse riddles with a hangover."

S.E.R.A. responded, crisp as ever:

[The structure reflects Old Norse and Gaelic syntax—compound concepts, layered meaning. Not direct phrasing. Symbolism over precision. Multiple interpretations expected.]

Aemon shook his head, half-laughing as he scribbled in the margins.

The language of the First Men—long dead—was breathing again on his desk.

And he was the one giving it voice.

But a question lingered in his mind—quiet, sharp, and unshakable.

If the words lived again… what else might?

These runes were not just etched for beauty. They were carved into weapons, woven into crowns, and burned into ancient stones. Had they meant only names and oaths?

Or were they more?

Were these shapes once alive with power?

He glanced at the dagger—its edge dulled, but the glyphs etched deep like scars that never faded.

What if these weren't just letters?

What if they were keys?

He tapped the parchment once, hard. "We need to find out."

And this time, he didn't just mean the language.

He meant the truth.

Of what still slept beneath it.