As the blood of Red Grass soaked the veins of Blackfyre's sword, and Daemon Blackfyre's roar was cut short by a poisoned arrow—the rebel who had sparked the division of the Seven Kingdoms had actually opened his eyes a century earlier on Dragonstone.

In 97 AC, true dragons still circled the skies, the fuse of the Dance of the Dragons had yet to be lit, and he became a vague footnote in the Targaryen family tree—"the orphan of Prince Aemon, mother unknown."

The black dragonmark on his shoulder burned like a charcoal, resonating with the roar of the Glutton from the depths of the dragon's lair. The "ancestors" before him were as vivid as blades: Rhaenys the Sleepless Queen's violet eyes concealed undimmed ambition, Daemon Targaryen's "Wandering Prince" blade reflected the arrogance of youth, and Jaehaerys's "Mature King" cough carried the weight of the Iron Throne.

He had once been the "Black Dragon" who overthrew the Targaryens, but now he rode the fiercest wild dragon, the Glutton, and danced the skies with his great-grandfather of the same name. As the afterimage of the Blackfyre Sword intertwined with the dragon flames of the Glutton over King's Landing, he finally understood: his destiny, spanning centuries, had never been to retrace the bloody path of rebellion—

but rather, on the eve of the Dance of the Dragons, before all tragedy was written, to ask those ancestors who shared his blood:

The glory you bear in the name of "blood and fire," will it burn as a torch of redemption or a wildfire of destruction?

The ashes of the Red Grasslands fell into the sulfurous mist of Dragonstone. A black dragon from the future, with its rebellious claws, was prying at the most fragile link of the Targaryen dynasty.