Jon Snow was tired—tired in a way no rest could mend.
It was a soul-deep weariness, the kind that crept into his marrow and made every breath feel borrowed. Not the tiredness of sleepless nights or endless battles—he had known those, too—but something quieter, heavier. It was the ache of loss that would not fade. The weight of memory. The crushing silence of a life that no longer made sense.
Ever since he'd killed Daenerys, something inside him had broken. Not with a cry, nor a shattering scream—but with a soft, final snap. Like the last ember of a dying fire. Like the last petal falling from a frost-kissed flower.
He had lost everything. His love. His future. His name. He had lived through death, only to die in the shadows of the living. A ghost wrapped in furs, a relic of a war no one sang about anymore. He had bled for a realm that no longer remembered him.
He wasn't just a wolf of the North. No... he had never been just that.
There was dragonfire in his veins—ancient, untamed. A legacy born of conquerors and madness, of fire and blood. And yet, he had never embraced it. Had turned away from it, time and again. He chose the cold over the flame. The Wall over the Throne. Duty over desire.
It had cost him dearly.
It had cost him her.
And so he wandered. North of the Wall. Far from thrones and politics and the whispers of his name. He walked where the winds howled and the trees whispered, alone with his regrets. A broken man, buried in snow.
Now, he stood beneath the ancient weirwood tree in the haunted forest. Its red eyes watched him silently, its white bark streaked like bone and blood.
"So this is it," he whispered.
The wind stirred the crimson leaves above, and his black cloak fluttered like torn wings. The snow fell soft and steady, muffling the world in silence. Even the birds had fallen quiet. As if the forest itself were listening.
Jon looked up at the weirwood, eyes hollow, and spoke as if to an old friend. "I tried. I did everything they asked. Gave everything I had."
The old gods did not answer.
He could still hear Maester Aemon's voice, echoing across the years: "Love is the death of duty."
"I suppose you were right," Jon murmured, frost clinging to his beard. "But gods help me... I should've chosen her. Even if it ended in fire. Even if it destroyed everything. At least then, I'd still feel something."
But the gods had not helped. They had only watched.
They watched as the last Targaryen vanished into obscurity. As he buried his direwolf in the frozen earth, his hands shaking from cold and grief. Ghost had died quietly, old and tired, his muzzle grey with age. Jon had dug the grave himself beneath the boughs of the weirwood. His fingers bled, but he welcomed the pain—it reminded him he was still alive.
Or close to it.
Now, there was nothing left. No war. No brothers. No cause. Only snow, and silence, and the ever-hungry cold.
He knelt beside the tree and let out a breath. "I'll be there soon, boy," he whispered to the ghost of a memory. He imagined Ghost curled beside him again, warm and watchful.
Jon closed his eyes.
"So this is it," he said once more. "Not stabbed. Not burned. Just... forgotten. Alone. Tired."
He paused, voice barely a whisper now.
"I just wish... I wasn't the last."
And then he surrendered. Not in despair, but in acceptance. Like a warrior laying down his sword. Like a king abdicating a crown he never wanted.
But the gods were not finished.
A voice cut through the silence—deep, resonant, older than the weirwood roots and colder than the Wall.
"Your song is not over."
It rolled through the forest like thunder, like dragon wings splitting the sky.
"Get up. And this time—be a dragon."
Light erupted from the tree—searing, white-hot, and blinding. Jon's breath caught in his throat as warmth, pure and ancient, flooded his limbs. He felt fire in his veins. Felt time unravel. Felt the echo of something long lost roar to life within him.
"Fire and blood," the voice whispered. "You must be a dragon."
---
His body jerked. He gasped.
He wasn't cold anymore.
Heat pressed against his skin. Sunlight, blistering and golden, bore down on him. The scent of salt filled his nose. He coughed and sat up, sand clinging to his back and hair. The world around him was warm, strange, alive.
"Hey! You alright, young man?" a voice called.
Jon turned his head, squinting into the sun. A grizzled old man stood a few yards away, holding a fishing rod and a bucket of mussels. The sea glittered behind him, vast and sunlit.
Jon's throat burned. "Where... where am I?" he rasped.
The man frowned, crouching beside him. "Dragonstone," he said slowly. "You're on Dragonstone, lad. Gods know how you got here. You look like you've seen the end of the world."
Jon almost laughed—but it caught in his chest like broken glass. He had seen the end of the world.
Then a shadow passed overhead.
A massive, winged shadow.
Jon's eyes widened as he scrambled to his feet, pointing skyward. "A dragon... It's a dragon!"
The old man looked up, unfazed. "Ah. That'd be Vermithor. He flies over this side now and then. Doesn't bother anyone—just hunts the sea cliffs. You must be new around here."
Jon's heart thundered in his chest. Vermithor. The Bronze Fury.
That name hadn't been spoken in his time for nearly two centuries.
He wasn't in his own time anymore. Somehow—by gods or fate or fire—he had been pulled from death and dropped into history.
And not just any history.
The Dance. The Targaryen civil war. A time when dragons still ruled the skies—and tore each other from them.
Jon stared at the horizon, where the dragon wheeled against the clouds, bronze scales catching the sunlight.
His blood stirred.
A part of him, long buried, long denied, surged to the surface.
The wolf in him mourned.
But the dragon—the dragon was waking.