Limpick sat at the long table, staring at the open book. The prologue. He had already memorized every word Melisandre had read to him the day before. "In the beginning the world was darkness. There was no light, no heat, no life…" He closed his eyes and recited it silently once, twice, three times until the lines sat solid in his mind.
He shut the book, stood, and walked to the shelves. Row after row of volumes—some new, some crumbling, some with gold lettering on the spines, some plain. He pulled one out at random. Dense text, nothing he could read. Another. Still text. The third had a picture: a man standing before a fire, arms raised, a shadowy human shape forming inside the flames. He understood the drawing even if he couldn't read the words beside it. Someone seeing something in the fire, the same thing Melisandre had done the first night.
He slid the book back, returned to the table, and opened The Book of R'hllor again. He tried matching the sounds he remembered to the strange squiggles on the page. The longest word, full of loops and hooks—maybe "R'hllor"? The short one with the dot in the middle—maybe "came"? He wasn't sure.
He closed the book, shut his eyes, and kept reciting.
The days settled into a rhythm. Every morning Limpick went straight to the library. He stayed until the oil lamp burned low and the brazier glowed dull red. He memorized the prologue until it rolled off his tongue like a prayer, then moved on to the first chapter. Melisandre came once each day—sometimes morning, sometimes afternoon, sometimes at dusk. She never knocked. She simply pushed the door open, sat across from him, and listened while he recited.
"First chapter," Limpick stood with his hands at his sides, eyes on her face, speaking slowly but clearly, exactly the way she had taught him. "'After R'hllor created light, life came into the world. The first blade of grass pushed through the earth, the first fish swam in the sea, the first bird flew across the sky. But darkness did not vanish. It waited at the edge of the world, in deep mountains, in caves, in the black depths of the ocean, and in the hearts of men. Darkness waited for the day the light grew weak. That day is the Long Night.'"
Melisandre listened without expression, then gave a single nod. "Good. Do you know what the Long Night truly is?"
"Winter," Limpick answered. "A winter so long there is no sun, only darkness and cold."
"Not only winter," she said. "The Long Night is the living face of darkness itself. When it comes, the dead will rise from their graves, the Others will pour south of the Wall, and every fire will go out—every fire except R'hllor's holy flame." She reached into her sleeve and drew out a piece of dragonglass, smaller than the last but just as black and gleaming. "You have earned this."
Limpick took it. The moment his fingers closed around the stone, golden text flashed:
[Detected high-purity dragonglass ×1]
[Absorbable]
[Estimated evolution gain: 0.7%–0.9%]
He gripped it tight. "Thank you."
"Do not thank me," Melisandre said, rising. "You earned it yourself." She walked to the shelves, pulled down a different book, opened it to the first page, and set it in front of him. "Tomorrow we begin learning the letters."
Limpick blinked. "Letters?"
"You cannot read. That means you can only hear the words through someone else's mouth. You will not always have that luxury." She pointed to the first line. "These are the letters of High Valyrian. The holy books of the Lord of Light are written in this tongue. Translation into the Common Tongue loses too much. You will learn both the letters and the language."
Limpick stared at the strange shapes—hooks, loops, dots, circles. They looked like tiny flames or snakes. He remembered the foreign merchants at the Riverrun docks jabbering in something that sounded just like this.
"I won't be any good at it," he said. "I'm not made for books."
Melisandre's red eyes stayed steady. "When you lived in Riverrun, did you ever think you would eat white bread with salt and honey in your porridge?"
Limpick said nothing.
"When you lived in Harrenhal, did you ever think you would sail to Dragonstone and sit before the holy fire?"
Still nothing.
"You were not made for books before," she said. "Now you are." She pushed the book closer. "Begin."
Learning the letters was harder than memorizing whole pages. The shapes twisted and fought him. What he remembered one moment vanished the next. He gripped the quill until his knuckles whitened and scratched out page after page of crooked lines that looked like drunk worms. Melisandre stood behind him, watching in silence. He waited for her to scold him. Instead she reached down, placed her hand over his, and guided the quill.
Her hand was hot—hotter than a normal person's, warm like Ember's scales. Her fingers were long and steady. She moved his hand one stroke at a time, naming each letter as she formed it. "This is a—ar—fire. This is e—en—light. This is i—il—life."
Limpick repeated after her, feeling the shape burn into his memory. When she let go, he tried alone. The letters were still ugly, but better. She said nothing about the ugliness.
"Every day, ten pages," she told him. "Finish them before you eat."
She meant it. Limpick wrote twenty pages that first day, not because she ordered it, but because he refused to stop. His hand cramped, his fingers blistered, but he kept going, carving the letters into his mind the way he once carved wood back in Harrenhal.
Melisandre came every day. Sometimes she stayed half an hour, sometimes longer. She taught him more than letters—she taught prayers, rituals, the rules of the red faith. Her voice never rose or hurried; it burned steady, like the brazier beside the table.
He learned faster than he expected. The alien shapes stopped looking like enemies and started looking like old friends. By the tenth day he could stumble through the first chapter of The Book of R'hllor, slow and halting, but without anyone reading it to him.
Melisandre sat across the table and listened until he finished. She gave a small nod. "Not bad. Do you understand what this passage means?"
Limpick thought a moment. "R'hllor made fire, and fire is alive. It burns, it dies, it spreads, it changes. It's not like other things."
Melisandre's red eyes flickered with something deeper than approval. "You see farther than most who have read this book their whole lives. Some only see the words. They never understand what fire truly is." She paused. "Have you ever seen real fire?"
Limpick thought of cookfires, torches, the hearth behind her. "I've seen fire," he said. "Underground in Harrenhal. The stones glowed dark red, pulsing. Marwyn called it the trace of dragonflame."
Melisandre's fingers tapped the table once. "Dragonflame. Yes. The purest fire, the highest gift R'hllor left in the world. When the Targaryen dragons died, the true dragonflame died with them. But its echo remains—in Harrenhal, in the Gods Eye, and here on Dragonstone." She stood and walked to the window, pushing it open. Sea wind rushed in, cold and salty, thick with sulfur. "You have smelled it since you arrived. The sulfur beneath the island. Dragonstone sits on a living mountain—a volcano. It has burned for thousands of years, maybe tens of thousands. That is R'hllor's power: eternal fire, unquenchable fire."
She turned back to him, copper hair catching the brazier light like living flame. "You stand on Dragonstone and you stand on fire itself. This island is holier than any temple in Volantis, because the fire here is not lit by men. It is the mountain's own heart, burning beneath our feet."
Limpick felt the three pieces of dragonglass and the dragon bone warm against his chest. Somewhere far north, two dragons waited in the woods outside King's Landing. He touched the newest stone in his robe and thought of the mountain burning under the castle, ancient and alive.
He understood now why Melisandre had called this place sacred.
And he understood why he could never let her look too deeply into the flames.