𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐇 𝐎𝐅 𝐒𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐒, the house of the dragon.

chapter five, the pyre of ash.

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐇 𝐎𝐅 𝐒𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐒
- THE PYRE OF ASH -

Stillborn daughter dead.

Brother dead.

And mother dead.

Visenya stood before the rest of her family and the mixture of House Velaryon, Hightower, Arryn and House Baratheon.

The ends of her long, black dress flew around her ankles and with the punishing breeze. Her slightly disheveled hair did not move much, despite how rough the wind felt against her cheek. Her body was the same in comparison, however. Unmoving, completely still and frozen.

If only it was possible－the waves of Blackwater Bay seemed to hit against each other with even more ear-cracking thuds. In some sort of way, Visenya thought it to be a reflection of her thoughts and emotions.

They were all over the place and swerved through the darkest pits of her mind with abandon.

She wondered if this was fate?

Her mother finally dying in childbirth after trying tirelessly for so many years, to give her father the son he desired.

That shouldn't have been Aemma Arryn's end.

But it was.

Death by childbirth had always been a possibility for the young Arryn, there was no denying or escaping that. She had the dark royal blood of Old Valyria, and she happened to marry a Prince who eventually became the King.

Early death in a bed was inevitable, and that reminder pained Visenya even more.

Slowly, the Princess' eyes moved from her mother and brother, to the small cloaked figure of her daughter.

In her moment of agony and vulnerability, Visenya named her daughter after her mother. Aemma. Which was only ironic - seeing as she watched her mother die before giving birth to a dead child herself. Visenya thought it to be disrespectful, but naming her daughter after her mother felt like an honor.

A shaken breath escaped Visenya as the memories of the day prior reached her all at once. She remembered informing her mother about the vision she saw. The one where a woman sat in the corner of Aemma's chambers with a child gently held in her arms while she rocked to the silence.

That vision had grown to be true like she promised. It just wasn't her mother.

The woman who rocked the child was not Aemma.

It was Visenya who held Rhaegar in her arms while he found it difficult to breathe. She had never felt so helpless before.

And like her mother, she was forced to watch her infant brother slowly drift to the dark abyss. While he withered in pain and tried to find relief in the arms of his elder sister who cried and suffocated alongside him. The only difference between the both of them was that Visenya unfortunately survived.

She lived. Not her mother. Her brother, or her daughter.

Only her.

Almost everyone who stood gathered behind her in a small crowd of silent and observing on-lookers, practically spent their small time staring up at her dark dragon. Abaraxas.