“The Dragon’s Last Mercy” Chapter 3 (The Road to Ember Root)

"Stop! The sacrifice is wrong!"

Heads turned.

A figure staggered into the circle. A woman wrapped in torn furs, blood streaking her face, a blade buried shallowly in her side.

She collapsed just short of the stone dais.

Jon ran to her, catching her as she collapsed.

She looked like a ghost. But she was no stranger.

"Ygra?" he breathed.

She gripped his cloak. "Not the girl," she rasped. "Not this fire. It's… false."

Then she went limp in his arms.

Later, in the Queen's Tower

Ygra's body lay in the high chamber, wrapped in silence and shadow. Her wound was deep, but not fatal. Maelya's healers worked quickly, and within the hour, she breathed evenly again.

Jon stayed by her side, watching every flicker of her eyelids. He hadn't seen her in years — not since the war against the Others, when she had vanished beyond the Frostfangs. Most believed she had died in the snows.

But she hadn't.

She had gone searching for something.

And now she had returned, torn and broken, speaking of a fire that was wrong.

Velrion waited in the shadows.

When Ygra woke, she smiled weakly.

"You look older," she said.

"You look half-dead," Jon replied, unable to stop the lump in his throat.

"Half is better than not," she whispered.

He leaned closer. "What did you mean, the fire is false?"

Ygra's voice barely carried. "It's not the true flame, Jon. It's a trick. A shadow of what came before. I followed the old bloodlines, the songs left behind. There's another flame buried deep beneath the Ashvault Mountains. The Ember Root."

Velrion stirred. "That name hasn't been spoken in centuries."

"I found it," Ygra said. "I felt its heat. It's still alive."

Jon frowned. "What kind of flame is it?"

"It doesn't burn flesh," she said. "It burns fear. Illusion. It shows you your truest self. And only if you accept it… will it light again."

Velrion's gaze narrowed. "No one has seen the Ember Root since the breaking of the First Flame."

Jon turned to Velrion. "Take me there."

The dragon tilted his head. "You would face the Ember Root? Alone?"

Jon's voice was steady. "If it means no one else has to burn."

Velrion let out a slow breath. "Then you must know this: the Ember Root tests not just will… but truth. It shows you your deepest fire and demands it."

Jon nodded. "I've walked through fire before."

Maelya stepped forward. "If this fails… you doom us all. You might not return," she said.

"I didn't return before," Jon replied. "I came back."

Before the Flight

Jon stood on the high tower, wind in his cloak. Velrion crouched beside him, tail coiled like smoke.

"She says you knew the Ember Root," Jon said.

"I knew of it," Velrion replied. "But dragons do not like to remember their beginnings. We were not always fire. Once, we were light."

Jon looked to the east, where the peaks rose sharp as knives.

"I need to see it. I need to know."

Velrion lowered his wing.

The sky over the Ashvault Mountains was darker than night.

It wasn't just the storm, though the clouds swirled like bruises and the wind howled like something alive. No stars pierced the high veil of cloud. No moon cast silver on the peaks. It was a deeper dark — one that clung to the bones.

Velrion cut through it like a blade of fire.

Jon crouched low on the dragon's back, hands clenched in golden scales, cloak whipping violently behind him. The cold stung his cheeks, but his eyes never left the mountain range ahead — jagged, black, and ancient as the first breath.

Below, the earth twisted into canyons and chasms. Valleys collapsed into themselves. The mountain they sought was not the tallest, but the oldest. It looked broken — as if something inside had once tried to escape.

"There," Velrion rumbled above the wind. "The scar in the stone."

Jon squinted, heart hammering.

A narrow rift split the mountain's face — not carved by time or weather, but shattered, as if by an old violence. Faint light flickered within, not like fire, but like memory: soft, uncertain, shifting.

Velrion landed on a ledge just outside the chasm.

Jon dismounted, boots crunching on black frost. The wind was gone here. The silence felt listening.

"You'll wait here?" Jon asked.

Velrion lowered his head. "The path narrows beyond what I can follow. This fire is not mine to face."

Jon swallowed. "What if I don't come back?"

The dragon blinked slowly. "Then the flame was not yours either."

He stepped into the dark.

The walls closed in quickly. The stone wasn't smooth — it pulsed faintly, veins of amber and shadow running just beneath its surface like blood through skin.

Jon moved slowly, torchless. The air was warm, but not with heat. With breath.

It felt alive.

And then, suddenly, the passage opened.

He stood at the edge of a vast hollow beneath the mountain — a cathedral of stone, roots of obsidian and ember coiling around a great pit in the earth. And from that pit came light. Not firelight, but something deeper — a glow that seemed to pulse with thought.

He stepped forward, drawn.

The Ember Root.

It didn't roar.

It hummed.

It showed him.

Visions

He was standing in the crypts of Winterfell again. His father's statue stared at him, and he was a boy, and he was not a boy.

He was at the Wall, letting Ygra fall from his arms again.

He was kneeling at Daenerys's side, the ash falling like snow.

He was alone.

Again. Always.

Then the flames rose — soft, not searing — and wrapped around his chest.

A voice that wasn't a voice spoke, not in words, but in knowing:

"To burn truly, you must not cling. To lead, you must not command. To live, you must die once more."

And Jon — who had died once already — understood.

The Ember Root did not ask for flesh.

It asked for surrender.

Not of body, but of control.

He fell to his knees and let go.

Let go of his guilt.

Let go of the crown.

Let go of the story others wrote for him.

And the light embraced him.

Three days had passed since Jon Snow vanished into the Ashvaults.

No raven had come.

No word from Velrion.

Only silence — and a flickering uncertainty that spread through Maelya's court like a slow, cold sickness.

Maelya

Queen Maelya stood at the highest window of her tower, looking eastward. The mountains were jagged shadows beneath a flat sky. She hadn't slept. The brazier beside her had long gone cold.

Jon's last words replayed in her thoughts: "I need to see it. I need to know."

She'd watched men chase certainty before — prophets, rebels, kings. It never ended cleanly. She had allowed him to go because she needed an answer. But now, with each passing hour, the court grew restless.

Her advisors muttered about rebellion.

The priests whispered of divine punishment.

And Maelya… began to wonder if she'd made a mistake.

In the silence of her chamber, she whispered to the dark:

"If you are the true flame, why did you send him away from me?"

But no answer came.

Only the wind.

Leira

Leira sat in the gardens beneath the frost-covered trees. The cold didn't touch her the way it used to. Ever since the failed ceremony, she felt… strange.

Not sick. Not burning.

Just different.

Something inside her hadn't extinguished — it had shifted.

People avoided her now. Some called her "the Unburnt Girl." Others stared like she was cursed.

Kaelen was the only one who didn't look at her that way.

He knelt beside her now, wrapping a second scarf around her shoulders. "You're still cold," he murmured.

She shrugged. "Maybe I'm not meant to be warm."

Kaelen frowned. "You shouldn't have offered yourself."

"I thought it would save us."

"And Jon Snow thought he could do better."

She looked at him sharply. "Do you hate him for leaving?"

"No," Kaelen said. "But I wonder if he left because he feared the truth. Or because he didn't want to watch you burn."

They fell into silence.

Kaelen

That night, Kaelen stood before the closed temple gates. The fire inside had been dimmed by order of the Queen. No more sacrifices. No more flames. Not until Jon returned.

But some of the priests disagreed.

And Kaelen had overheard them. Plans. Whispers.

If Jon didn't return soon, they would find another way to awaken the fire.

He drew his cloak tighter and turned from the gate — only to find a figure waiting in the shadows.

A woman in red.

Her face veiled. Her hands bare. Her eyes like coals beneath a dying sky.

"Kaelen of the Ashborn," she said. "You're loyal. And untested."

He didn't reach for his sword.

She continued, "Would you protect the girl from being burned again? Even if it meant defying your Queen?"

He stared at her.

Then nodded once.

The woman smiled faintly.

"Then the fire has not forgotten you."

Velrion's Descent

Velrion circled once above the frost-veiled cliffs, his wings laboring against the storm rising from the Ashvault's throat. Something had changed within the mountain. The wind no longer bit. It whispered.

Then, without a roar, the dragon tilted into a dive.

He landed not on the ledge where Jon had entered, but below, near the broken hollow where the old stone had split.

Jon stood waiting.

His cloak was gone, burned away or left behind. Ash clung to his skin, but his eyes — they were clear. Not shining with power or madness. Just clarity. As if a veil had lifted from the world.

Velrion exhaled. "You returned."

Jon nodded once. "It let me go. Or perhaps, I let it stay."

He carried nothing. No relic, no mark. Only a stillness.

But in that stillness, Velrion sensed something new. Not a flame, but its memory. Not a weapon, a warning.

"Did you see it?" Velrion asked.

Jon didn't answer. Instead, he placed his hand on the dragon's muzzle.

"I saw myself," he said softly. "And I was enough."

Then he mounted. "Take me home."

Next Chapter 4: Jon's Return.

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