VI.

Rhaegar I

"The Prince of Dragonstone was bookish to a fault. He was reading so early that men said Queen Rhaella must have swallowed some books and a candle whilst he was in her womb. Rhaegar took no interest in the play of other children. The teachers were awed by his wits, but his father's knights would jest sourly that Baelor the Blessed had been born again. Until one day Prince Rhaegar found something in his scrolls that changed him. No one knows what it might have been, only that the boy suddenly appeared early one morning in the yard as the knights were donning their steel. He walked up to Ser Willem Darry, the master-at-arms, and said, 'I will require sword and armor. It seems I must be a warrior.' "

ASoS-Daenaerys I

When the hammer swung in an arc over his cousin's head, he knew it was the end, and time stopped. The sun shone, reflecting off the waters of the Trident, just as it did on the weapon wielded by Robert Baratheon.

He knew that he would die here today, that his family would not rule again for years to come. But the dragons would rise again, three heads bringing fire and blood once more.

The crown prince was cursing his obsession, the gift his blood had given him. Although the magic of it had practically faded over the centuries, just as the magic of the world had been slowly diminishing since the Doom of Valyria. His obsession with prophecy arose from the flashes he had in his dreams, where he saw, the things that he believed were yet to come. Scenes that were never very clear, often hazy enough to be almost indistinguishable. He had been a fool, to believe he was the Prince that was Promised. That was only compounded by the very nature of his birth ... The tragedy.

'What tragedy have I really experienced, a wealthy nobleman who would have once been king, with the world at my fingertips?' Rhaegar thought sadly and serenely in his last moments of life. Isolation, despair, misunderstanding in the face of what in his dreams he saw as an imminent threat of overwhelming force and impossible odds, were the conditions that led him to believe in a prophecy.

'This has been my tragedy' in one of Rhaegar's last thoughts clearly before the end came.

At least Rhaegar knew that his son would be the man to bear this burden. He had seen it vividly. A figure dressed in black and scarlet, with a sword in his hands with a glow that seemed to have a life of its own. Around him, the snow collided with a torrent of fire, forming a kind of tornado of ice and fire that rose towards the infinity of the sky, which was crossed by three gigantic dragons and flocks of enormous black crows.

Rhaegar wished he could have seen his son's grown face, but sadly he didn't. Of his son, he had only seen his back, where a long, silky cloak rested, black with an enormous sigil of the house Targaryen in blood red at its center, fluttering in the wind. Just like his long silver hair, lighter even than Rhaegar's. On Rhaegar's son's head rested a thin band of Valyrian steel set with square red rubies. The crown of the Conqueror.

Beside Rhaegar's son side were two women, one a relative and the other not. To the right was his Rhaenys, because that jet black mane with silver highlights was all too familiar. She stood tall, proud and defiant in the misty winds of snow and ice. On the other side, though unfamiliar, the woman was clearly of his blood. Taller than Rhaegar's daughter with long silver and blonde braids, slim in constitution but with a determination of steel in her gesture and attitude. Behind them, was Lyanna with another girl who remarkably resembled her and what looked like a pack of wolves, with a huge blue-gray wolf with yellow eyes like the sun, at the head of all.

Turning his eyes and thoughts back to what was before his eyes Rhaegar stared into the enraged face of his future murderer, Robert Baratheon. In those moments the personification of the words of his house. 'Without a doubt, His is the Fury'.

Robert's hammer snapped its arc through the air to crash terribly against his chest. It had split his ribs, piercing Rhaegar's lungs, causing his life to escape with the last breaths of air and a name on his lips.

"Lyanna ..."

After that he fell sideways, feeling how the water entered his body, finally stopping breathing, his eyes closed to see only darkness ... When it dissipated, in the gloom of where the hells he was, the only thing that Rhaegar could glimpse were flashes of light that could not quite identify its source, reflected against a wall of ancient ashlars that was in front of him, smoke, melted snow and dust in suspension around him. He felt like being oppressed by a searing ball of pressure compressing

every fiber of his body.

'Are these the Seven Hells that the Septons proclaim so much about? If so, I regret not having been more pious.' Rhaegar thought fleetingly, before finishing adjusting to his surroundings.

He tried to accommodate his vision to the mixture of darkness and ghostly light that covered the gloomy 'room, cubicle?' in what had Rhaegar 'had woken up?' He was in a side-lying position quite similar as how he fell into the waters of the Trident, amid debris and rubble of what appeared to be masonry and construction mortar.

As Rhaegar tried to move, he could see that he somehow was still wearing all his armor. Although these was intact, just as it had been before the battle of the Trident.

Trying to get up, Rhaegar leaned his arms to get up and shake off the rubble of him, but a sound soon made him realize that he was not the only person there. Behind him he heard a deep gulp of breath and his eyes couldn't quite believe what was seeing when he turned his head to see the source of it.

"Lya....?"

Rhaegar said in a weak voice, as if afraid that if he said it louder, the image before him would disappear. Half lying down, trying to rise forward, wearing the same white and blue satin dress adorned with a silver cloth that she used when they married on the Isle of Faces.

Lya's gaze steaming like Valyrian steel showed confusion and total misplacement at the situation.

Lya's physical appearance was such and as he remembered her with seven and ten days of the name when Rhaegar left her in the Tower of Joy in Dorne, to then try to defeat the Rebels and later join with the defeated and their loyal followers to overthrow Rhaegar's father through a Council of the Seven Kingdoms.

'Obviously and as usual, it seems that nothing has gone as I expected.' Rhaegar began to think with more and more melancholy.

He finished getting up quickly, pulling off him and whom Rhaegar believed to be his wife a kind of granite slab that had been broken into several pieces. After that, he brought his hand to the cheek of the love of his life, but without making contact with her white skin for fear that if he touched Lya, she would disappear.

"Lyanna, is it you?"

Rhaegar asked this time more decisively, formulating his question with a mixture of hope that the answer would be negative and fear that what was left of his soul would be broken, if it was affirmative. His gaze conveyed supplication, as well as despair at the possible answer.

"Rhae ...? It's you? This is a dream? Are we in the afterlife?" Lyanna answered after swallowing hard, with a small and fearful voice. With a nod of the head, Rhaegar confirmed that she was in front of him, and that she was dead, like him.

Before he could offer any words of comfort, Lya's bodily demeanor tightened like a harp string, rising with a speed uncharacteristic of someone who should be dead.

"SLAP" rang out Lyanna's slap across his cheek.

"YOU PROMISE YOU WOULD RETURN! YOU SWORE ON YOUR WHOLE FAMILY, ON

OUR SON THAT YOU WOULD RETURN! YOU LEFT ME ENCLOSED IN A FUCKING TOWER OF DORNE TO PROTECT THE FRUIT OF YOUR STUPID PROPHECY, WHILE ALL THE PEOPLE WHO LOVED AND APPRECIATED US DIED FOR A WAR THAT WE STARTED!" Lyanna yelled, her voice, although muffled by the walls of the dilapidated place they were in, leaving no doubt of her state and feelings towards him at that moment.

"Lya... I... I... I never thought that everything would end as it did, because I don't know this. But from your reaction and presence here, I don't think you survived me too long... Could I know how you got through here, because without a doubt this must be the afterlife?" Rhaegar's voice tried to convey all the guilt and regret he felt.

He was not going to apologize for something that he knew could not be forgiven. He was confident that once the situation of both of them was assimilated, they could at least see the positive side. That even in the afterlife they were together. With his eyes Rhaegar tried to convey to Lya all the devotion he felt for her and that if necessary, he would die a thousand times more for her.

Unfortunately for Rhaegar, the question he had just asked his wife made her stiffen even more, resembling the string of a bow before shooting an arrow.

Everything indicated that Rhaegar was not going to like the next thing he was going to hear from his late wife. She began to interlock her hands in a frantic way, looking at him again and again, as if looking for something in his dark eyes, but she could not find it, or what she found is not what she expected.

Unable to do anything to prevent it, Lyanna began to cry uncontrollably. Therefore, he decided to close the small distance between them and hug her with all his strength, trying to reassure her, that whatever had happened, it was going to be okay. He had seen his son fight the Darkness. Although of course, in his vision there was also Lyanna and she now was in front of him. Dead, like him.

Still Rhaegar looked at her in the sweetest way he could as she began to calm down slightly and returned a gaze with some warmth.

"After your death in the Trident ... sob... sob... sob ... I just wanted to die, I wanted to go wherever you were... sniff... The idea that my brother was supporting the people who had killed his brother-in-law and who wanted to end Ned's nephew's made me sick to my stomach..." and Lya couldn't continue, so Rhaegar wrapped his left arm around her, while directing his right hand to her chin to lift it and urge her to continue the story.

Whatever happened, they couldn't do anything anymore. So when he noticed his wife looking at him, he smiled one of the smiles that only she was able to get from him. A smile that reached his eyes. He just wanted to reassure his wife that there was nothing wrong with what had happened in the past, that wherever they were, everything would be fine now that they were together. It seemed to have an effect as Lyanna relaxed a bit and held back her crying, leaving Lya in a slight sob and a look in her eyes, that although lost, seemed to be seeing every moment of what she was going to tell.

"I saw no reason to continue, until one day Arthur swore to me that he would do whatever it took to keep me and our son safe. If he, Oswell, and Gerold were to become the boy's parents and raise him, they would. If we had to hide and some of them pretend to be my family, they would. And if we did have to flee to Essos, to raise him in safety and then return..." Without letting finish what his wife was saying, Rhaegar interrupted her.

"Why would Arthur Oswell and Gerold just protect our son and you? What about Elia, what about Rhaenys, what about Ash's and your brother Brandon son? What of my mother and my brother?"

Rhaegar's voice trembled with nervousness at the answer his wife might offer him.

Lya's face of sadness, grief, and poorly concealed anger did not help to calm Rhaegar's nerves.

"Rhaegar ... I don't know how to tell you ... but from what I know, they are all dead or exiled." Lya said, while he felt his legs turn to mud and they were unable to hold his weight? Where the gods wanted him and Lyanna to be, he suddenly felt as if he had died again.

Rhaegar's little Rhaenys dead. The only joy of his life until Lyanna appeared dead.

Although their marriage was the product of political duty and his father's obsession because Rhaegar's wife must had Valyrian blood, Elia was his friend and confidant. Having annulled the marriage between the two many months before the Tourney of Harrenhal, Elia agreed to keep up the charade so as not to arouse possible suspicion in Varys and Rhaegar's father's anger.

Little Arthur Dayne the son of Rhaegar's best friend and his brother-in-law, the by-product of a night of lust in the blissful tourney ruined by the seven-time cursed master of whispers. The baby was not guilty or related to what was happening in the kingdoms or of anything, except to be the cover for Ash maidenhead and for Rhaegar's supposed marriage to Elia before Rhaegar's father.

Although Rhaegar had somehow recovered Lyanna after death, he preferred to return to the darkness into which he was plunged after his death. In there, there was no pain, no suffering. There was nothing.

And for now it seemed that nothing was better than what was facing who once was called the Last Dragon.

'The Dragon of Doom they should have called me.'

"Who survived? Do you know what happened... to those who didn't?" Rhaegar's voice was tired, shaky and sad.

His many times revered metallic and warm voice did not appear to come out of any of his vocal cords. The roles had been reversed, and now it was Lya who was bending over him, trying to physically comfort him by gently and lovingly resting a hand on his shoulder. Although Rhaegar was unable to feel the warmth of the contact through the armor, the mere gesture of Lyanna trying to make him feel better was already a relief to his soul.

"Rhaegar... are you sure you want to know? We are dead, what difference does the past matter. They would only be more ghosts to carry on your consciousness and soul in this other life." Lya pronounced doubtfully and with some regret for having brought up the subject.

But Rhaegar needed to know what had become of his family and who were responsible. Even if it were from the afterlife, he would do something to deliver justice and revenge on those who offended house Targaryen.

"Lya... in order to take it on, I need to know. For now it seems that we are in the afterlife only you and me ... for the rest of eternity ... and sooner or later the circumstances of your death and that of my family would have come out. Better to take the blow from the beginning, than the fear of what could have happened consumes me." He said resignedly and with pleading eyes to his wife. His grimace was one of pain and sorrow.

"The news that reached us in the Tower was that your mother and brother went into exile to Dragonstone with the royal fleet and the support of the ultra-loyalist houses of the crown lands... the rest were killed during the sacking of the Red Keep and Kings Landing." Rhaegar's wife

uttered the last thing almost in a whisper. But enough for Rhaegar to come out of the stupor he was in.

"WHO IS THE RESPONSIBLE?!!! HOW CAME TO HAPPEN?" he screamed with practically no control over his tone, or over his body, which had become tense and rigid, fury emanating from every one of his pores.

Only Lyanna's hand, gently resting on the armor on his shoulder, was able to calm the firestorm and emotions that swept through Rhaegar's body, keeping him in the position he was in. His wife's face expressed more and more sorrow.

'This is how my face must have looked when I told her about the madness that my father did with Lya's father and brother.' Rhaegar thought as he looked at the expression of infinite sadness that was being printed on his wife's face.

"I don't know exactly how, but I know what Arthur told me. Apparently someone from within the city opened the gates to the army of Tywin Lannister, who after your defeat at the Trident set out against the clock towards Kings Landing to, and I quote Arthur 'Through ruthless action, gain loyalty and a place among the victors of your cousin Robert's Rebellion.' Ser Jaime in non- established circumstances apparently murdered your father from behind and then died defending little Rhaenys from a certain Amory Lorch when in the westerlands knight's despair at his inability to defeat the Lannister, the knight of the westerlands overturned a carafe of wildfire in your stays at the Red Keep, killing all three in an instant. While this was happening, a certain Ser Gragor Clagane, or Clegain ... I don't know well, 'The Mountain that rides,' called him Arthur..." Lyanna's voice was interrupted and again breaking, looking for a way to tell Rhaegar what had happened with his nephew his friend and former wife.

Rhaegar, who was still trying to process what he had heard, did not know if he wanted to finish knowing what had happened. 'If, after the horrors Lya is telling me, the death of little Arthur and Elia is difficult for her to tell, it must have been something dreadful.' So he decided to interrupt her. He grabbed Lyanna's right hand that still rested on his chest, and treasured it with his two hands, bringing it to his face, trying to find a sweet and warm contact that would relieve him of the nightmare that the afterlife was being.

Somewhat calmer, but still a mass of red-hot fury, Rhaegar resolved the question of who his wife was referring to, with a tone of disgust, contempt and violence that he did not know he was capable of possessing.

"Ser Gregor Clegane, I knighted him myself at Tywin's request ... My father was mad, but within that madness he always really knew who our worst enemy was." Rhaegar spat the sentence with a bitter aftertaste.

"That being, because he cannot be called a man, smashed our nephew's skull against a wall and...." Unable to finish speaking, Lyanna knelt in front of him and broke into a heartbroken cry again. Her cheeks were stained by the tears and the suspended dust of the cabin where he and his wife had appeared.

"It's okay Lya, you don't have to go on. We can talk about this at another time..." he tried to reassure Lyanna, in view of how traumatic it was for her to retell what happened after his death at the hands of Robert.

"No," Lya interrupted firmly and decisively, wiping her tears with the back of her hand.

"The past is in the past, I already cried for them in life and you deserve to know their fate just as I

do. Besides, it's not all bad news." she told Rhaegar, trying to crack a half smile.

Rhaegar was aware that Lya was avoiding referring to the end of Elia, but he would not press the issue. If something was true with Lyanna it was that she was not a person made to do something that she did not believe in or was not comfortable with. And it was clear that the end of the woman she sometimes claimed to have displaced was not something she wanted to refer to.

"You mean our son?" Rhaegar said in a warm voice he didn't imagine he could have.

The smile that suddenly lit up Lyanna's face was all the confirmation he needed to know that it was so.

"Aegon Targaryen, the sixth of his name, in homage to the Conqueror as we decide before you departed from the Tower. That's how I lost my life... when I gave birth to our son..." Lya said at first excited and cheerily, ending in a low and sad tone.

"You don't know how sorry I am Lya. In the end we each die on our particular battlefields. At least I know that between Arthur and Gerold they will have educated and raised him better than my father to me, being totally loyal to him. And Oswell will surely have taught him what he called the things of life that no one but him seemed to understand what it meant ..."

"Rhaegar ... my brother ..." interrupted abruptly, and with a face of infinite sadness his wife.

"What brother ? Benjen?" Rhaegar asked doubtfully and fearfully.

"No ... Ned ... I don't know how, but when I had just given birth and I started to bleed to death, he appeared through the door of our room in the Tower ... with Dawn in hand." Lyanna intoned with mixed emotions in her voice.

Rhaegar would swear he was dying for the third time since darkness and nothingness had disappeared, awakening where the hells he was. Arthur Dayne was Rhaegar's brother in everything but blood. Arthur had knighted him. He had taught Rhaegar how to wield a sword. He had been his loyal friend and supporter throughout all of Rhaegar's life. And he was dead. Killed at the hands of the brother of the woman whom Arthur was sworn to protect.

Rhaegar now could only think in one thing.

"What happened to Aegon, what happened to our son Lyanna? Don't tell me that your brother..."

Without Rhaegar being able to finish the sentence, Lyanna's brow furrowed and she began to tell him the last moments of her life while crying again. Something that without him realizing it, Rhaegar had been doing silently since he learned of his daughter's death. Now noticing as tears began to gather on his chin.

"When I saw him appear, I thought it was a dream. As it happened to me when I saw you now. But he was real, he was there and he was the only person I could trust at the moment. I made him swear that he would protect our son, as well as his inheritance and position. And despite all his failures, Ned has honor. He would not fail his promise..."

"Are you saying that literally our son's life was promised?" Rhaegar said in a tone that reminded him of the tone his father might have in his abscesses of paranoia. And he began to laugh uncontrollably.

Lyanna was looking at Rhaegar without understanding anything of the situation, her eyes demanding an explanation in face of her husband's sudden insanity.

Trying to breathe and cursing inwardly, Rhaegar gulped and began to explain the reason for his apparent insanity.

"Gorghan of Old Ghis once wrote that a prophecy is like a treacherous woman. She takes your member in her mouth, and you moan with pleasure as she does it and you think, how sweet, how good, how good this is ... and then her teeth snap together and your moans turn into screams. That is the nature of the prophecy, Gorghan said. The prophecy will rip your dick out at all times ... I believed Aegon would be the Prince that was Promised for the red comet that appeared in the sky during the night we conceived him ... But it was not like that. Our son is the Prince that was Promised, because our actions, in one way or another, led to our death and therefore our son's life was promised. "

"Rhaegar, what difference does the damn prophecy make now? At least we can rest easy knowing that he will be alive, being brought up to take the throne for my brother..." Before Lyanna could finish what she was saying, the floor of the stay they were in began to vibrate.

Now with his eyes and 'his body?' more accustomed to whatever the plane they had find themselves in, Rhaegar took a better look at where they were. It was like a kind of rectangular cave and had what looked like an opening in front of the position that Lyanna and him were in, which was blocked by a pair of half-destroyed and burned wooden beams next to a mountain of rubble. Between which penetrated the ghostly light offered by the gloom with which they were able to see beyond their own hands.

The vibration caused the debris that were blocking the entrance begin to give way, producing an opening that allowed the light source to be seen. A huge column of fire that seemed to rise into the infinity. Lyanna seemed to read his mind, for she stood up just like him, both heading towards the opening and seeing what was on the other side of the mountain of rubble, wood and ashlar that had been blocking the entrance to the room where they woke up in this other life.

On the other side, the image that he and Lyanna found before their eyes, left them totally puzzled and somewhat scared.

This was certainly a hell. The gruesome scene of destruction before them could not be described otherwise. Upon reaching the cleft between the cave ceiling and the mountain of rubble, they saw what looked like some kind of crater. In the center of it, emerging from what seemed to be the earth itself, an infinite column of dark fire, almost black, rose up into the black sky. Which seemed to be only illuminated by the ghostly glow that the column was emitting, and by the flickering of what appeared to be a huge red comet hanging from the sky, just where the mysterious column was rising. Around the flame, the crater where Rhaegar and Lyanna were leaning formed. The slopes of which were shaped by what Rhaegar would swear to once must have been cyclopean ashlar walls, now pulverized to nothing but a formless mass of gravel, dirt, stones, melted snow, and burned wood. The entire surface of the crater seemed to be red hot, the snow evaporating as it hit the ground. The heat that the vertical column of fire gave off was something that did not belong to the world, making him feel as if his armor was going to melt on him.

'If not in the afterlife, where can such phenomena occur?' Rhaegar thought, as he tried to assimilate where they were. His wife had gotten as close to him as possible, showing an expression of astonishment and fear.

"Where do you think we are Rhae? Do you remember that any of your books, or religions that you knew spoke of something like that? I had never heard, nor even imagined such a place could exist..." Lyanna expressed, as she brought her arm to her face, trying to protect her face from the heat.

Before he could answer his wife, the vibration that had suddenly appeared ceased with the same immediacy as at the moment of its appearance. Only the crackling of the fire was heard, until suddenly, what seemed like a breath of air that seemed to come directly from the entrails of the dark flames sounded. A puff of air that absorbed all the fire that rose to the sky, entering what appeared to be

'A lad, a man? Impossible.'

Rhaegar was beginning to believe that this was all a macabre joke from the gods. A punishment for Rhaegar's actions that plunged the Seven Kingdoms into war. Lyanna was just as perplexed as he, her mouth was open and her eyes bulging.

"Are you... are you... are you seeing the same thing as me? Tell me there really there isn't a boy at the base of where that column of fire that almost incinerated me was. I don't know how you have been able to resist it almost undeterred. If I did not cover my eyes with my arm, I sworn I would have been without them for sure." Rhaegar's wife expressed with great disbelief looking at his eyes.

Noticing how the temperature was immediately dropping and the stones and gravel were getting cold, Rhaegar decided to increase the cleft and go down to the center of the crater and see if his eyes weren't fooling them both.

"I'm going down and check that we are not crazy, apart from dead." he said with some sarcasm and melancholy as Rhaegar cleared the gap to make it passable.

"If you go down there, I'll go down too. We are dead, what can happen to us worse than that?" and thus Lya also began to collaborate in the task of removing the rubble.

When they made it wide enough to lie down, they began to slide to the other side of the hole, Lyanna first and then he. When they were both on the other side, Rhaegar stood on the unstable surface and helped his wife to her feet, holding out his hand.

With both of them on their feet, they began to descend about six feet into the rubble and dusty slope, getting a better view of the crater now that they were directly in it. Whatever had happened there before the column of flames was it must have been terrifying. Because where there was definitely a young man with a kind of metal band around his bald head, it seemed to be the center of something that transformed the place on a concave surface that would be about 10 meters in radius and between 5 or 8 meters deep. The flickering comet, like the column of fire, had disappeared.

Lyanna had approached the young man who was stiffly kneeling on the ground and with his head directed towards the sky, looking towards the same place where before the comet was.

The young man seemed to have been totally immune to flames and fire, as except for the lad's head and body hair that had been charred he was or appeared to be totally unscathed. His eyes were totally white, and his skin looked like porcelain. His facial features were definitely Valyrian, and if anything was missing to ensure his ancestry, his crown, breastplate armor, and chain mail all made of Valyrian steel, confirmed it.

On the breastplate was the rampant dragon of House Targaryen, which seemed to be threateningly rising outward. Each of the dragon's heads carried a precious stone. The first wore a sapphire of a purity Rhaegar's had never seen before, in the center a huge blood-red ruby and finally an amethyst that seemed to have its own light. Between the armor and the chain mail he had a surcoat of treated black leather, the same color and material as the tight leather breeches which resembled the scales

of a dragon and where only red flashes appeared on the neck. The Valyrian steel of the breastplate, back, and chain mail was a smoky color, which appeared, according to the flashes of some of the embers, to shine or to be absolutely black. At his waist was the hilt of a sword that could not be other than Blackfyre.

The more Rhaegar observed the features of the hairless boy kneeling stiffly and unnaturally on the ground, the more it was confirmed that this must be a member of house Targaryen and he seemed not to breathe.

'Successor? Predecessor?' he wondered, although it was something he couldn't answer even if life depended on him, or death in this case. A fear ran through Rhaegar's head that this could be his son reaching wherever forsaken gods place where he and Lyanna were and therefore would have died.

'But if he's my son, where did he get the conqueror's crown and his armor? How does he have Blackfyre strapped on his waist? Why his eyes are rolling and white? And especially by the old and new gods, how has he appeared in the midst of a vertical torrent of fire and emerged unscathed?'

If Rhaegar's son had lived beyond what Lyanna saw he could not have acquired such relics of the house Targaryen with Robert ruling and in the custody of the naive and stupid Eddard Stark. Something Rhaegar had not wanted to tell Lyanna when he brought up the subject.

No, this must be some ancestor of Rhaegar, who was in the afterlife.

However before he could verbalize any thoughts, Lyanna pounced on the stranger and hugged him like Rhaegar had never seen Lya hug someone, accompanied by a quiet cry.

"Rhaegar ... he's our son, he's Aegon. I would recognize your face anywhere and this boy is the exact mix between you and me ... and me ... I ... I think I saw him just before I died, standing in front of my bed, with the same clothes and armor, but with a long mane of raven black hair and black eyes with silvery purple streaks, just like those of our Aegon."

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!" Before Rhaegar could answer anything, the young man who according to Lya was his first male son and that he had never known, breathed deeply again, absorbing the air with his lungs, at the same time that the unnatural rigidity that he possessed left him, giving rise to a more relaxed position in his body.

Lyanna winced back at the boy's sudden reaction, who closed his eyes to open them again to reveal two black wells with streaked purple veins and some chips of silver. There were moments that it was like looking into Rhaegar's eyes at the reflection on the surface of a clear lake.

Without a doubt, Rhaegar was now convinced that this must be his son.

By focusing his vision, the young man who Rhaegar believed was his son seemed to recognize the

faces before him, because 'His son?' eyes widened and a kind of guttural sound left his throat. "Bisa iksis daor paktot... Pōnta should sagon morghe. nyke ūndan zirȳ morghūljagon... Nyke

should sagon morghe [1] "

The lad voice was the same as Rhaegar's but with a strong northern accent in his high Valyrian.

Maybe Rhaegar was wrong and Eddard Stark fought for his nephew as he did during his false brother's rebellion to overthrow him.

The young man who Rhaegar thought was his son, without a doubt he knew who the two of them

were, was agitated and totally confused, showing less understanding than he and Lyanna about what was going on. Lya tried to ask him something, but he beat her by interrogating 'their son ?'

"How should we be dead? How come you saw us die? How should you be dead? Are we not dead already? What are you saying?" Rhaegar said in a common tongue, with a tone that tried to be warm and firm, but with some doubt and trembling in it.

Seeing that he had been understood, the boy's confusion gave way to tremors that seemed to threaten to dismantle his body. The image undoubtedly moved something inside Lyanna, because without thinking she knelt to be next to the young man, who immediately hugged her and began to sob uncontrollably

"Muña muña. Kostan daor pāsagon ziry. Sīkuda jēdi Senya iksis qrimbrōstan yn kirimvose syt maghagon nyke arlī ñuha muña [2]" pronounced who undoubtedly was their son, with a voice that conveyed infinite pain and sorrow, with a certain bitter aftertaste when he referred to this Senya .

Because of the surprised face with which Lyanna looked at him at what he was speaking because she did not understand High Valyrian, their son detached himself from his mother's shoulder, but without ceasing to embrace her. The he looked at Lya with an infinite tenderness mixed with a certain disbelief.

"Mother ... I am your son, although I think you already know ... you saw me when you died ... I'm sure of that" 'Aegon?' said with a thin voice, barely audible.

Before Lyanna could answer anything, her son turned his head to where he was and with a look that conveyed coldness and a certain judgment, he addressed Rhaegar.

"What I'm saying is that both you, my mother and I should be dead, but we are not, Rhaegar Targaryen." Aegon said with a tone that left no doubts of the certainty he had in what he said and with a certain bitter aftertaste to the pronounce his name.

"But we aren't!?" Lyanna asked with disbelief and surprise in her voice, the same thing Rhaegar was about to ask.

"If I think I understand something of my last twenty-two years, it is that somehow, a blood magic ritual from the past, caused my death in the crypts of Winterfell in front of your tomb and my subsequent return, because if I can assure one thing is that I returned to the same place and in the same posture, where through my own hand and with the Valyrian steel dagger of the House of Targaryen, I died." Rhaegar's son said calmly and pausing as he tried to articulate each word, in a way that will give some coherence and meaning to the madness that his son was trying to explain.

"WHAT!!!? ARE YOU SAYING THAT THESE RUINS ARE THE CRYPTS AND REMAINS OF THE FIRST KEEP? AND THAT YOUR UNCLE EDDARD WHO SWORN TO PROTECT YOUR LIFE IN MY DEATH BED, LETS YOURSELF FINISH YOUR LIFE? WHAT CRAZY THINGS ARE YOU TELLING, AEGON?" Lya yelled at their son, who suddenly felt ashamed looking down at the ground and separating himself from the maternal embrace, to then get up and put himself in an upright position.

Rhaegar's wife imitated their son and also joined him, leaving Rhaegar and she in front of their son.

"What do you mean twenty-two years? You're just a lad." Rhaegar asked, taking advantage of the moment of silence to try to bring logic to the matter.

"That's because after I died, I spent the next twenty-two years of my life death or whatever I

experienced ... in the soul of the Conqueror ... and regarding the crater where we are ... I have no idea what happened from my death until now. Except that the red comet that was flying in the sky is no longer there." Aegon answered looking up from the ground to the sky and then towards them. The last thing pronouncing it as if he himself were incapable of understanding it.

"Aegon, the comet was in the sky until the pillar of fire in which you were girded disappeared to the get into your body, after which you were left a few minutes rigid, eyes completely blank until you take a deep breath and screamed." Rhaegar tried to contextualize the situation for his son. But the mention of the column of fire caused Aegon's mouth to open and his eyes to shine as if he were beginning to understand his situation better

"The Conqueror as in Aegon Targaryen the Conqueror? the Dragon?" Lyanna asked with a face of utter disbelief at the words that came out of their son's mouth.

Aegon began to run his hand over his head, as if searching for the hair he did not have, while he looked between his father and mother. It seemed that he was trying to make sense of what he himself was going to say.

"Yes, the same and only ... Somehow, I cohabited within him from the day of his fifth and tenth day of the name until the day of his seventh and thirtieth day of his name ... which are also my days of name, because both he and me, were born the same day. The thirteenth of the fifth moon. And judging by your aspects and mine, except for the band, armor and sword of the Dragon, we are on the same day of my name day that it all began. You had been dead for fifteen years. Fifteen years in where my uncle Eddard Stark raised me and raised me as his bastard son, Jon Snow. All of this without telling me who my real parents were, unlike the way he promised in his day he would do." Rhaegar's son said practically spitting the end while looking at Lya in search of understanding.

But Lya had the face of wanting to murder her brother while her bodily attitude reflected a tremendous disgust and a certain contained rage.

'If we are really alive, and it is true that this is 297 after the conquest, I think both Lya and I are going to say a couple of things to Eddard Stark' he thought while he contained as best he could the anger that hearing the fate of his son, was causing him. The King of All Westeros turned into a bastard. If Rhaegar already had problems before hand with his brother-in-law, this one was now on a privileged list that included Tywin Lannister, Mace and Olenna Tyrell, Hoster Tully, Jon Arryn, Ser Gregor Clegane and his cousin Robert.

"How is it possible that you were present the day I died? How come nobody other than me saw you?" Lyanna asked in an increasingly agitated voice that condensed a kaleidoscope of emotions that ranged from grief and sadness to the fury of a mother wolf.

"Not only that I saw... after the blood ritual at the Dragonstone cave, Balerion released his flame and I suddenly felt like the night I had died. I mean, like tonight a little while ago. But instead of dying again, I felt my body again, my real body. And when I opened my eyes ... I was in a clearing next to a stream, watching how the Knight of the Laughing Tree faced the Crown Prince..." the surprise in the expression of Lyanna must be being replicated by the one Rhaegar knew he had in him.

Only Arthur, apart from the two of them, knew that his first meeting with Lyanna was like this. At the silence of both, Aegon continued telling what he had seen of the lives of both.

"I watched you walk through the Harrenhal woods and I saw you get married on the Isle of the Faces, where mother wore the same dress she has now. I was at the Trident during the battle in

which you lost your life, with her name as the last word and the armor you are now donning. After that I found myself in a Tower of Dorne before a door... behind which I found the truth about my own person that had been hidden all my life. And finally I saw the largest Weirwood Tree that I have ever seen in a clearing within an immense snow-covered forest ... After that, you already know the following."

Now it was beginning to be difficult to discard the truth in what his son was saying who was relaxing his posture and having a more serene look.

It seemed that little by little Aegon seemed to be accepting what he had experienced thanks to being able to explain it to his parents and Rhaegar wanted to show his son that he was not going to judge him for how mad what he just said sounded. Thanks to his dreams and his interest in prophecy, Rhaegar knew better than anyone that sometimes there are mad things that can be true no matter how much one does not want to accept it.

"Aegon, I believe more and more in what you tell us. I am not able to follow the whole logic of why and what happened and surely the details will escape even for you, but our family and blood are famous for magic. At the time I thought i was the Prince that was Promised of the prophecy because of the visions I had in my dreams" although Rhaegar said it with all his good intention, the mention of the Prince that was Promised and visions caused Aegon to tense up as if he were about to face an army alone.

"No ... tell me it can't be ... tell me you didn't have visions with the fucking Long Night!!!" Rhaegar's son said while giving him a look almost pleading.

Aegon's expression was one of despondency mixed with resignation. The shoulders tense towards his back. Despite not being as tall as Rhaegar, Aegon was up to his nose, so his eyes were practically face to face. It looked like the look of an abandoned pup.

'If with the mention of the Prince that was Promised and visions he becomes like that, there is no doubt that something of truth must be behind the prophecy and the long night.' Rhaegar thought as he looked at his son and considered what to answer him.

Before Rhaegar could, Lyanna approached her son and looking up she fixed her gray gaze on her son's black purple and silver eyes.

"OH FOR GODS FUCKING SAKE YOU TOO NOT! Don't tell me that you also believe that the story to scare children is real. As your mother I demand that you tell me that it is nothing more than a made-up story."

Lya said with a desperate voice. Rhaegar's wife, albeit a believer in magic, always had a healthy rejection of everything related to prophecies and especially those that made reference to the Others because she didn't want to think what would be to fight against them. It wasn't easy to believe in it, but Rhaegar had seen it, and it seemed his son did too.

"The motive behind Aegon's conquest was a dream of Rhaenys... where she saw the Long Night ... Visenya was convinced of the existence of a Valyrian blood savior and wrote the seven times cursed prophecy... which is neither more nor less than the words she intoned during the blood magic ritual through which I believe I reached the body of the Conqueror, and through which I have also returned to my body ... Ritual in which Senya also prophesied your death under a hammer." told them Aegon who seemed to be mentally putting together all the pieces that his knowledge and Rhaegar's newly contributed had provided Aegon.

Rhaegar for his part was willing to believe in his son blindly, because after everything he had seen

and lived that night,

'Who am I to deny the existence of magic and the possibility that I am back again in the world of the living, in Winterfell, more than fifteen years after my death?'