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SLW Chapter 96 : Cold Throne
🕑 Added 2025-07-03 20:59:10 +0000 UTCBEYOND THE WALL – HAUNTED FOREST
The wind here carried no warmth. Only death and ice.
Snowfall danced through the twisted limbs of the ancient forest, each flake falling like a pale ember from the sky. The black trees stood hunched and brittle, silent sentinels to a world forgotten by time and consumed by Ice. Shadows stretched long, and even the moon dared not shine fully upon the land beyond the Wall.
Aeron Grim walked alone, his black cloak trailing over the snow-blanketed earth, boots crunching beneath him. Frost kissed his shoulders and hair, but the violet glow of his eyes remained unyielding two silent stars amidst the gloom.
His voice broke the stillness.
“I sent the wyverns days ago,” he muttered, his words a low breath lost to the wind. “They found nothing… except for wights. Scattered like leaves. Traps maybe. Or bait.. I don’t know anymore.”
He knelt, fingers brushing against a faint trail in the snow a partial footprint, half-melted, dragged by weight.
“He’s avoiding me,” Aeron said, almost with a grin. “Smart.. If he is the Apostle of the Great Other… then he’s not like the others. Not a fool charging in with false wrath. To carry out whatever his god commanded.”
He stood, his breath fogging in the air, and turned his gaze eastward deeper into the wild.
“No… this one hides. Watches. Plans. And I don’t know how strong he is...”
He scanned the ground again, tracking the broken branches and subtle drag of corpses moved long ago. His tone sharpened.
“But I don’t want to find him blindly like this now. He’ll come, soon enough. I need to find the Three-Eyed Raven first, he’ll be my guide.”
There was weight behind the name. a Purpose.
Aeron raised one hand and snapped his fingers once.
The ground trembled. Then silence. Then snow exploded outward in a burst as something massive burst forth from his own shadow.
Garm the Direwolf.
The beast emerged from darkness , ten feet tall at the shoulder, black as night itself, fur rippling with black tendrils of smoke where shadows clung to him. Its eyes burned an eerie violet but loyal, wild, and bound to Aeron’s commands.
The great direwolf dipped its head low. Aeron placed a gloved hand upon its brow.
“We will find that old man, sniff out anything that feels weird, ravens in particular.”
He mounted in a single motion.
With one guttural breath, Garm surged forward.
The haunted forest blurred into streaks of black and white as they raced into the abyss of the North snow splitting beneath the wolf’s paws, trees vanishing behind them in flashes of motion. Speed beyond mortal beasts. Something half-nightmare.
Aeron’s cloak billowed behind him. His violet eyes narrowed against the cold wind, unmoved.
“Run fast, Garm,” he muttered through the gale. “Because I really don’t enjoy spending time here in the north..”
Behind them, only silence remained.
****
KING’S LANDING – SKY ABOVE THE RED KEEP
The sky roared.
At first, it was a tremble in the clouds, a ripple across the blue canopy. Then a shadow. Then three.
People in the streets of King’s Landing stopped mid-step. A child looked upward, pointing with wide eyes.
Three dragons soared above the city.
Drogon, massive and black as coal, led the flight, his wings casting a colossal shadow that swept across the streets like a storm tide. Behind him, Rhaegal and Viserion, green and gold, their bodies cutting through the air with terrifying grace. Their wings beat in the wind, each one shaking the cobbled stones beneath the Red Keep.
Gasps turned to screams.
Citizens dropped to their knees. Others fled blindly through the markets, crashing into carts and guards. Some shouted prayers to the Seven. Some cursed the skies.
“The Dragon Queen!” someone yelled in awe.
“The end of days!” another cried.
High above, riding Drogon’s back like a vision from myth, Daenerys Targaryen looked down over her city, the one conquered by a single man, with shadows and deception.
Her silver hair streamed in the wind, her eyes locked on the spires of the Red Keep. She dreamt of this moment while in exile, all those years of pain. Now, she returned as fire made flesh.
Below her, the Targaryen fleet sailed into Blackwater Bay, sails rippling with crimson and black, bearing the three-headed dragon of her house. Dozens of warships, sleek and menacing, cut through the waters. But there was no siege. There was no war. The bells had rung days ago.
Aeron Grim had already won it.
—
ON THE DECK – THE LEAD SHIP
Tyrion Lannister leaned against the railing, watching the city approach, its great domes and walls gleaming under dragon-shadow. The Red Keep loomed ever closer, quiet. Intact. No fire. No blood. Just surrender.
Varys stood beside him, hands clasped, eyes serene but thoughtful.
“Normally,” Varys said, watching the dragons spiral above the towers, “a fleet like this would be enough to conquer a kingdom.”
Tyrion smirked, one brow rising.
“If it wasn’t already conquered,” he said. “We saved time. Gold. Lives. Or rather...Aeron did.”
“We had to split our forces,” Varys replied, “send another fleet to the North, per his advice.”
“Aeron’s advice tends to carry... weight, and something that I don’t really enjoy..” Tyrion muttered.
Varys turned to him. “You doubt the danger beyond the Wall?”
“Not in the slightest,” Tyrion answered, voice grim. But with a laugh“After what I’ve seen him do, after what he’s become.. Oh I believe him.”
He exhaled, eyes narrowing on the darkened peak of the Red Keep, the same castle he’d once called home.
“But,” he added.
Varys’ eyes flicked toward him. “But?”
Tyrion drummed his fingers along the railing.
“I’ve been to the Wall,” he said quietly. “Drank with the brothers. Heard their stories. The cold. The silence. Things moving in the woods, unseen.”
He looked to the north now, beyond the city’s edge, where land turned to snow.
“Let’s say it’s all true and maybe even more so. According to all logic, Aeron could level the North and everything beyond it. No fortress, no army could stop him. He commands shadows, monsters… a Bloody nightmare of a Dragon, he is death itself.”
Varys studied him a moment. “So what troubles you?”
Tyrion’s eyes turned back to the dragons.
“It’s not me,” he whispered. “It’s him.”
A pause.
“If someone like Aeron Grim is worried… if a man who crushed armies and monsters alike is wary of something lurking beyond that Wall...” Tyrion’s voice fell low. “Then gods save us all.”
Varys said nothing. There were no words needed.
Above them, Drogon bellowed, a sound ancient and raw, shaking the hearts of every man, woman, and child in King’s Landing. The three dragons spiraled over the city, their shadows dancing across the Red Keep.
The people watched in silence now. With fear and awe.
The Dragon Queen had arrived.
****
THE THRONE ROOM -
The great doors of the throne room creaked open. For the first time since the fall of House Targaryen, the Mother of Dragons stepped into the very hall that had once witnessed her family’s fall. Light from the stained glass windows painted the cracked marble floors in hues of gold and crimson. The Iron Throne, jagged and eternal, stood at the end of the hall like a monument to fire, blood, and betrayal.
Daenerys Targaryen walked slowly, her boots echoing softly. She wore black and red, her silver hair catching the light and her violet eyes were fixed on the throne.
But she was not alone.
Grey Worm stood tall beside one of the pillars, Raya, the silent warden of Aeron’s shadows, beside him. Around them, a half-circle of Unsullied lined the walls, their heads bowed the moment Daenerys entered.
“My queen,” Grey Worm said, his voice steady, the edge of discipline and reverence in equal measure. “We were awaiting your arrival.”
But Daenerys did not respond at once.
Her eyes were fixed no, enthralled by the throne.
The thing she had once only seen in drawings. In visions. In tales told to her across the Narrow Sea. The very symbol of her family’s legacy, of power, of conquest… and madness.
Twisted swords forged by Balerion’s fire. A throne meant to be uncomfortable, so that no ruler would ever sit easily. Her ancestors had known that.
“So many fought and died for that chair,” she said softly, walking closer, her voice barely a whisper. “So many bled… so many burned.”
Her gloved hand brushed the cold metal armrest. A dozen hilts poked skyward like jagged teeth. Her reflection appeared in the dull steel. For a heartbeat, she swore she saw another face in its sheen.
Daenerys said her attention had not left the Iron Throne. “I used to dream of this,” she whispered. “Of marching into this hall. Of sitting where my ancestors once ruled. Of hearing the cheers of the people. But now…”
She closed her eyes for a moment. Breathed.
“Now that it’s in front of me like this, I don’t know what to think of this place anymore.”
