A song of Fire and Blood

Chapter 1: The Starborn Son

The Year of False Spring, 280 AC.

The great tourney of Harrenhal was in full bloom, a spectacle of splendor and ambition beneath the looming, ruined towers of the greatest castle ever built in Westeros. Lords and ladies gathered, banners danced in the wind, and the finest knights of the Seven Kingdoms clashed in the lists. Yet beyond the golden fields and whispered intrigues of the nobility, something far greater was unfolding.

Beneath the ancient stone of Harrenhal, in a chamber hidden from the eyes of men, a woman lay dying.

She was red, red as fire, red as the comet that burned in the heavens like a blade of flame. Melisandre of Asshai, the hidden queen, the Red Woman, had given birth to a son.

A child of prophecy. A child of fire and blood.

The air in the chamber was thick with the scent of blood and burning incense. Shadowy figures—midwives sworn to silence, their faces hidden beneath red veils—moved in tense, practiced motions, but there was no saving her now. Melisandre's breaths came in ragged gasps, her once-ethereal beauty waning with every heartbeat. She had known this would be her fate. It had been written in the flames long before she ever laid with the king.

The man at her bedside trembled, his fingers twitching as if he struggled to contain himself. Aerys II Targaryen, the Mad King, stared down at his newborn son with wide violet eyes, his silver-gold beard damp with sweat. The babe did not cry. His tiny chest rose and fell in perfect stillness, his hair like spun gold, and his eyes—gods, his eyes—red as glowing embers.

Aerys let out a shuddering breath, his voice thick with reverence and madness.

"Aerion," he whispered. "Aerion Starborn. My dragon. My fire reborn."

Melisandre's lips parted, her voice barely a whisper as she clutched his sleeve. "He is the chosen," she rasped, her breath leaving her body with the last of her strength. "The light… and the shadow… both shall kneel before him."

Her grip slackened. Her head tilted back.

And just like that, the Red Queen was dead.

The midwives did not weep. They dared not speak. They had heard the whispers, the stories of what had been seen in the flames. A son born in fire, under the gaze of a burning star. A mother slain the moment life left her womb.

It was said that the old gods and new waged war that night, and in the end, it was fire that had triumphed.

Far from the ruined castle, beyond the whispering weirwoods of the Isle of Faces, the Faith of the Seven stirred uneasily.

In the halls of the Great Sept of Baelor, the High Septon stood before a gathering of his most devout followers, his lips pressed into a grim line. The whispers had reached even here. The Mad King, long a tyrant, had done something unforgivable.

Aerys had taken a red priestess as his wife.

The High Septon's voice echoed across the chamber, sharp and unyielding. "Aerys of House Targaryen has turned his back on the Seven. He kneels before the false god of fire. He bathes in the whispers of foreign sorcerers."

A murmur spread through the room like a rising tide. The nobility had tolerated Aerys' madness for years, endured his paranoia and cruelty because he was still an anointed king, still a ruler chosen by the gods. But this?

This was blasphemy.

The High Septon turned to the gathered septons, septas, and godsworn nobles. "The realm must be warned. A king who forsakes the Seven will bring only darkness upon us."

And so, as the comet blazed across the sky, the Faith began to turn its back on Aerys.

The moment Aerion Starborn entered the world, the sky burned.

A shard of fire, like a tear ripped from the heavens, streaked across the night. It fell not upon Harrenhal, nor upon the Crownlands, but upon the Isle of Faces, the ancient and sacred land of the old gods.

When the meteor struck, the weirwoods screamed.

The sacred trees, whose leaves had always been ghostly white, now dripped with the color of fresh blood. The green men, unseen and forgotten by time, knelt before the flame, their prayers swallowed by the roar of the heavens.

The old gods had felt the boy's birth. They had seen what was coming.

And they were afraid.

Far away, in the shadowed corners of the Red Keep, a man sat in silence, his hands steepled beneath the folds of his silken robes. Varys, the spymaster, the whisperer of secrets, had known of Melisandre's presence for years.

Yet even he had not foreseen this.

The Red Queen was dead, but her fire had not been extinguished.

Aerys was already mad. Already unpredictable. Already dangerous. But now? Now, he was something else entirely. He would see this child as a holy weapon, a living prophecy, and that made him all the more deadly.

The Lords of Westeros would see it too.

Tywin Lannister had already distanced himself, his departure from King's Landing a silent statement of his growing disgust for the king he once served. The Faith would not stand for this blasphemy. The Martells, the Arryns, the Starks—all those who still clung to the old ways—they would not abide a child of R'hllor sitting on the Iron Throne.

Varys let out a slow, measured breath.

Westeros would burn.

Perhaps not today. Perhaps not tomorrow.

But the fire had already been lit.

And fire, once kindled, is not so easily tamed.

Back in the ruined halls of Harrenhal, Aerys held his son close. His hands trembled, but not from fear. From rapture.

"Do you hear it, my son?" the Mad King whispered, eyes alight with fevered joy. "The gods sing for you. They tremble before you."

Aerion Starborn stared, his red eyes reflecting the light of the torches.

He did not cry.

Aerys turned to the silent midwives, his voice rising in madness. "Tell them. Tell all of them. My heir is born! Aegon was weak! Rhaegar is soft! But my Aerion is FIRE!

He threw back his head and laughed, the sound echoing through the ruined halls.

The Seven had abandoned him.

The lords would abandon him.

But he did not care.

For he had seen the truth in the flames.

The dragon had returned.

And one day, all of Westeros would burn in his name.