The Ashen Gale cut through the waves like a whisper, her sails taut with wind, her hull humming faintly with the runes Vaelros had etched into her bones. It had been three days since they left Lys, and the sea had been kind too kind, in Vaelros's opinion.
He stood on the foredeck, one hand resting on the rail, the other tracing a faintly glowing seal carved into the wood. The rune pulsed under his fingertips, its light dimmer than it had been the day before.
"Still poking at your ghost scribbles?" came a voice behind him.
Vaelros didn't turn. "They're not ghost scribbles, Korran. They're structural wards."
Korran chuckled, stepping up beside him. He was a broad-shouldered man with a shaved head, a crooked nose, and a lattice of old scars across his arms and chest. Once a gladiator slave in Meereen, now a free man with a sailor's gait and a cook's hands. He'd joined the crew for coin, but stayed for the quiet.
"They look like ghost scribbles," Korran said, squinting at the rune. "Like something a madman would carve into a wall before the fire took him."
Vaelros smirked. "That's fair. But these madman scribbles are the reason we haven't been swallowed by a whirlpool or turned inside out by a screaming wind."
Korran scratched his chin. "You always talk like that?"
"Only when I'm nervous."
"Ah. So we're doomed."
Vaelros laughed, finally turning to face him. "You're not worried?"
"I've fought men with axes for sport. I've been stabbed in the thigh, the ribs, and once in the ass. What's a haunted sea compared to that?"
"Depends on the ghosts."
They stood in silence for a moment, watching the horizon. The water had taken on a strange sheen darker, almost oily. The air smelled faintly of sulfur.
"You hear what the crew's been saying?" Korran asked. "Rumors about this voyage?"
"I try not to listen."
"Well, they say you're looking for a dragon. That you've got a map inked in blood. That you talk to your books when you think no one's watching."
Vaelros raised an eyebrow. "Only the last one is true."
Korran grinned. "Figured. You're not the first mage I've sailed with, you know. But you're the first one who brings his own tea."
"It's calming."
"It smells like boiled moss."
"It is boiled moss."
Korran made a face. "You're a strange man, Vaelros."
"I've been called worse."
They shared a quiet laugh, the kind that comes easy when death is still a few days away.
"So what do you think we'll find?" Korran asked, more serious now. "Out there."
Vaelros looked toward the west, where the sky was beginning to bruise with distant smoke. "I'm hoping for a dragon egg. Maybe a few. But more than that... there's a place I've read about. A forge. Deep in the ruins of a lesser house House Vharax, I think. They weren't great dragonlords, but they were smiths. Riders. They made weapons from dragonbone and steel. I want to see their work. Maybe even take one."
Korran whistled. "You planning to fight something?"
"Not yet. But I want to be ready."
The former gladiator nodded. "Well. If you find a sword, maybe you'll let me swing it."
"Only if you promise not to stab anyone in the ass."
"No promises."
That night, as the crew dined on salted fish and hard bread, Vaelros retreated below deck to his study a cramped cabin lit by blue-glass lanterns and cluttered with scrolls, inkpots, and a dozen open books.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, the ship creaking around him, and opened the largest tome: a compilation of Valyrian ruins, copied from fragments found in Qohor and Tyrosh. He flipped past the familiar pages sigils of fire resistance, diagrams of dragon anatomy until he found the section he'd marked in red thread.
House Vharax. A minor house, long forgotten. Known for their obsidian-forged blades, their dragonbone armor, and their failed attempt to bind a dragon's breath into a spear.
He traced the illustration of their forge a circular chamber carved into black stone, with a vented dome and a basin of molten glass.
"If it still stands," he murmured, "it could be the key."
He closed the book, leaned back, and listened to the sea.
Outside, the wind had shifted. The air was warmer now, thick with the scent of ash.
They were getting close.
And the world was about to change.