Chapter 17: The Smoke Rises

The winds shifted by morning.

They weren't stronger. Just colder. A quiet tension in the air. Nothing visible, but the kind of shift you feel in your spine before the sky turns.

Rhazal flew lower than usual, wings cutting neatly through the fog above the cliffs. Drakaina kept to the high wall, her body still but watchful. Vaedron barely moved at all, just flicked his tail once across the spire's ledge before settling again.

The fortress remained calm — but I didn't. Not completely.

Something had changed.

The rider arrived just after noon.

A bloodrider with cracked lips and a dusty face. He didn't dismount, just barked out the news in Low Valyrian.

The Khalasar had run into raiders during a river crossing. There was a brief fight — nothing unusual — but Drogo had been cut. Deep, just beneath the ribs. He'd killed the man who landed the blow, but the wound had turned.

Now he was fevered. Slipping in and out. Refusing help. Refusing to stop.

Daenerys stood by the archway as she listened, expression unreadable. When the rider left, she didn't speak right away.

"He'll die from it," she said flatly, after a moment.

I gave a quiet nod.

"Yes."

We returned to the high tower without a word.

There was no pacing this time. No tears. No concern.

Daenerys merely leaned against the stone edge of the balcony, eyes narrowed at the western ridge.

"I suppose they'll come here after," she said.

"His khalasar?"

She nodded. "They'll want to follow someone. And they'll follow dragons."

"They will," I said. "They'll follow us."

Her gaze didn't move from the hills. "Good."

That night, I sat beneath Vaedron's perch.

He didn't look at me, but I could feel him watching — the way stillness watches. A slow intelligence coiled in silence.

I thought about the bloodrider's words. The heat in his voice. The desperation beneath it.

Not for Drogo — for what came after him.

Leadership didn't leave a void. It drew a line.

And now, we would be the ones on the other side of it.

The days passed slowly.

Messengers came and went. No one spoke aloud of what was already understood.

Drogo was finished.

There was no miracle, no battle rage left to pull him through it. Whatever strength he had once commanded had collapsed inward. His khalasar had begun turning its eyes outward — toward us.

Daenerys, for her part, changed nothing in her routine. She kept to herself. She trained her gaze on the dragons. She asked no questions and offered no prayers.

When Melyria quietly mentioned the coming death, Dany only shrugged.

"He was strong," she said. "And now he's not. That's all."

The chamber below stayed hot.

The three eggs remained unmoved — glowing faintly with trapped heat, never rising, never cooling.

I visited them at dusk. Kneeling alone, one hand resting beside the deep red shell.

The air was thick, close, heavy — but calm.

On the fifth day, the news came: Khal Drogo no longer spoke, no longer sat, no longer responded.

It wouldn't be long.

The bloodriders would ride again soon — not to war, but to follow power.

To follow dragons.

That night, Daenerys joined me at the tower's edge.

She didn't lie against me or lean into comfort. She just stood there, arms folded, hair pulled back by the wind.

"Will it be soon?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Good."

We stood together as the campfires below sparked to life — one khalasar slowly absorbing another. No fighting. No questions.

The fire did not roar.

It simply spread.

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