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THE DRAGON'S ORACLE

AxelValtor48
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Synopsis
"History says the Dragons must die. Valerion says history is a lie." ​When an ordinary man from the modern world dies with the knowledge of George R.R. Martin’s universe in his head, he expects the void. Instead, he wakes up in the cold, salt-scented air of the Red Keep as Valerion Targaryen—the second-born son of King Viserys I and Queen Aemma Arryn. ​Born into a dynasty at the height of its power, Valerion sees what others cannot. Through the [Strings of Fate], a mysterious system of celestial visions and birth charts, he watches the threads of his family turning from gold to blood-red. ​He knows the tragedy that awaits his mother in the birthing bed. He knows the betrayal of the Hand. He knows the fire that will consume his sister, Rhaenyra, and the war that will leave their house in ashes. ​But Valerion isn't here to be a spectator. To change a destiny written in fire, he must become a monster that even dragons fear. Leaving behind the pampered life of a prince, he descends into the darkest depths of the Dragonpit to claim a legend that was never meant to be tamed: The Cannibal. ​In a court of vipers and a world governed by prophecy, the Oracle of House Targaryen begins his dance. He doesn't just want the Throne—he wants to break the cycle of fate itself. ​The Dance of the Dragons was supposed to be the end. For Valerion, it is only the beginning.
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Chapter 1 - CHAPTER 1:WEIGHT OF KNOWING

CHAPTER 1: THE WEIGHT OF KNOWING

The city smelled of rot, salt, and the distant, copper-bright musk of dragons.

Valerion Targaryen stood on the balcony of Maegor's Holdfast, his small hands resting on warm stone, and watched King's Landing churn beneath him like a living wound. The sun had barely cleared the rooftops of Flea Bottom, and already the streets below were alive — fishwives shrieking over their catch, litter-bearers navigating the filth with practiced indifference, barefoot children darting between horse flanks like river fish. Smoke rose in a dozen grey columns from the forges of the Street of Steel. Flies gathered in halos above the offal heaps.

It smelled nothing like the antiseptic, climate-controlled world he had died in.

Died in.

He let the thought settle, the way a man learns to touch an open wound — gently, and with full awareness of what it is.

Somewhere in another life — a life of apartment buildings and internet connections and the dull fluorescent hum of offices — he had been someone else. A reader. A viewer. A person who consumed these stories the way one consumes a campfire: hungrily, but from a safe distance. And he had died with his knowledge pristine and useless at the bottom of a bathtub on a Tuesday. A slipped foot. A cracked skull. The indignity of an ordinary ending.

And then: nothing.

And then: this.

He had woken in a body that was not his own — small, slight, smelling faintly of rosewater and milk — with a wet nurse cooing above him and the weight of knowing pressing down on his infant mind like a stone on his chest. He had not screamed then. He had simply lain still, staring up at the stone ceiling of the Red Keep, and understood.

House of the Dragon. Fire and Blood. The Dance of the Dragons.

He knew how every piece moved.

He knew how every piece died.

The boy who had been reborn as Valerion Targaryen was ten years old now, and he had spent a decade learning the distance between knowing and doing.

He was slight for his age, his frame carrying the fine-boned Valyrian features that set his family apart — sharp cheekbones, long fingers, and silver-white hair that fell neatly over the collar of his black wool doublet. His eyes, when he caught his reflection in polished metal or still water, were the colour of lilac in late bloom. Not violet, like his father's. Lighter. Almost lavender — as though the pigment had been diluted by something cold and calculating behind the iris.

He looked, he had been told, like winter given Valyrian form.

His mother said it with warmth.

His uncle said it like a man evaluating a weapon.

Now he watched the Great Sept of Baelor rise white and proud on Visenya's Hill, and he calculated.

​◈ STRINGS OF FATE — STATUS: INITIALIZED ◈

[HOST: VALERION TARGARYEN]

[MENTAL AGE: 30+ | PHYSICAL AGE: 10]

​◈ CURRENT CHAOS RATING: 3.1 ◈

(Baseline: Original Canon Timeline)

​Note: The butterfly has not yet flapped its wings. History is currently on its pre-determined track.

​◈ ACTIVE VISION THREAD — PRIMARY ◈

TARGET: QUEEN AEMMA ARRYN TARGARYEN

​Fate-Weight: CRITICAL (Anchor Point)

​Status: Fraying (Accelerated degradation detected)

​Time Remaining: 4-6 Months

​Intervention Probability: 12% (Success requires external draconic influence)

​◈ SECONDARY THREADS (Passive Monitoring) ◈

​Rhaenyra Targaryen: Taut / Vibrant (Potential Catalyst)

​Daemon Targaryen: Volatile / Coiled (The Wildcard)

​Otto Hightower: Tense / Calculating (The Architect)

​[UNNAMED CHILD]: Faint / Flickering (Thread termination imminent)

​◈ SYSTEM NOTICE ◈

​Observation Mode: OBSOLETE.

​Action Window: NARROW.

​Immediate Requirement: Draconic Bond. Knowledge without power is a slow death.

The visions had begun when he was four.

He had no better word for them than visions, though they felt less like dreams and more like reading a document whose contents he already knew — a sudden overlay of fate-threads stretching from the people around him in luminous, spider-silk lines, cataloguing weights, certainties, and terrible, soft-glowing inevitabilities. He did not know where they came from. He did not know if they were a gift, a punishment, or simply the universe's way of ensuring that his pre-death knowledge could never be conveniently forgotten.

What he knew was this:

His mother was going to die.

Not in the abstract way that all people eventually die. Not at a comfortable, distant remove. She would die in a room three floors above where he stood now, screaming — and the child cut from her body in a desperate attempt to preserve succession would live less than a day. And his father would grieve himself into a man who made poor decisions out of loneliness — the kind of loneliness that moved through the Red Keep like a second ghost. The kind of loneliness that had a name:

Alicent Hightower.

He had spent years watching the Hand of the King across dinner tables, studying his movements with the quiet contempt of someone who already knew the ending. Otto Hightower was a chess player in a world that mostly played checkers. Valerion respected that — the way one respects a disease that at least has the decency to kill efficiently.

Respect, and nothing more.

He pressed his knuckles into the stone railing until his skin whitened. Below, the Sept gleamed, its seven crystals catching the morning light and scattering it in fractured beams across the hill.

Months.

That was what the vision had said.

Not years.

He had not been certain until the previous night — until he had felt the thread around his mother pull tighter in the dark, the way a rope sounds different when the weight on the other end increases.

He was out of time to simply watch.

"You've been standing there long enough to take root."

The voice came from the doorway behind him — smooth as an unsheathed blade, amused in a way that carried an edge.

Valerion did not turn immediately. He had known Daemon was there for nearly a full minute, had heard the unhurried weight of his step — the quiet movement of a man who walked silently not from necessity, but from habit. A predator who practised even in his own den.

He turned slowly, knowing it would irritate his uncle more than surprise ever could.

Prince Daemon Targaryen leaned against the doorframe with effortless ease, as though doorframes existed for other people to use properly. He wore no formal regalia — only riding leathers — and the dark ruby in his ring caught the light as he turned a cup of wine between his fingers. His Valyrian features were sharper than his brother's softer warmth. He was beautiful in the way venomous things are beautiful: precise, striking, and dangerous to forget.

His violet eyes rested on Valerion with a familiar expression.

Curiosity.

Not affection. Not dismissal.

Curiosity — the kind reserved for something that does not behave as expected.

"The view rarely changes," Valerion said. "I keep hoping the city will surprise me."

"Has it?"

"No. But I remain optimistic."

Daemon stepped beside him, resting one arm on the railing with casual grace. He looked out over the city with the detached focus of a man evaluating territory rather than admiring it.

"Your tutors tell your father you don't engage in your lessons," Daemon said.

"My tutors tell my father whatever makes them look most favourable."

"Mmm." He turned the cup slowly. "Grand Maester Mellos says you asked how long a fever must persist before it damages a child's lungs."

"I did."

"He found it… peculiar."

"He found it threatening," Valerion said. "There is a difference. Mellos is the sort of man who mistakes curiosity for defiance because he has never met a child who asked questions that could not eventually be used against him." A pause. "I wasn't threatening him. I was asking about the science."

Daemon looked at him.

Not casually. Not idly.

But properly.

A long, measuring gaze that stripped away pretense.

"You are not like other children," he said.

"No," Valerion agreed. "I'm not."

"Your sister is fierce. Your father's heir, whatever Otto Hightower may intend. She will make a strong ruler — if the court does not consume her first." There was something roughened and genuine in his tone when he spoke of Rhaenyra. "But you…"

He stopped.

"But me?" Valerion prompted.

"You watch everything," Daemon said. "Like a commander studying a battlefield."

"I watch everyone that way."

"I know." A flicker of something like approval crossed his face. "It is… interesting."

Valerion stored that away carefully.

"Uncle," he said evenly, "how old must a prince be before he is permitted to enter the Dragonpit unescorted?"

Daemon's gaze sharpened instantly. "Why?"

"Because I intend to go soon. I thought it courteous to understand the rules before deciding whether to follow them."

For a long moment, Daemon simply stared at him.

Then — unexpectedly — he smiled.

A real smile.

Brief. Rare.

"Interesting," he said again, before pushing off the railing and walking away.

The vision came as Valerion turned back to the city.

It was never announced. It arrived like dread — not as a sound, but as a certainty. A sudden weight that made the air feel thicker.

One moment, he was looking at the Sept.

The next —

A room.

Stone ceiling.

Candles flickering in a draft.

His mother's hands gripping the sheets — small, elegant, desperate.

Blood on linen — not bright and dramatic, but dark, spreading, unstoppable.

A maester working.

And his father —

Standing at the far wall, utterly still. Like a man whose world had ended, but who had not yet been allowed to collapse.

And then —

Silence.

The absence of a cry.

Valerion returned to himself, gripping the railing.

The stone was warm.

The city moved on, unaware.

The Sept gleamed.

Seven hundred thousand people lived their lives, ignorant of the chain of events already set in motion — a single decision that would one day burn this city and shatter a dynasty.

He had read it.

He had watched it.

He had lived with it.

And he was still running out of time.

Valerion exhaled slowly and straightened. His hands were steady.

He was ten years old.

Small.

Overlooked.

He had no army. No allies. No coin. No dragon.

And that last one mattered most.

Because in this world, power reduced to one thing:

Fire and blood.

Without dragons, the Targaryens were just another foreign house.

With them, they were unstoppable.

And the Dance —

Would destroy them.

He had not been reborn to watch that happen.

Knowledge alone was not enough.

It was a weapon.

But a weapon needed a hand.

And the hand needed a dragon.

◈ STRINGS OF FATE — ACTIVE RECOMMENDATION ◈

The path of least resistance leads to the Dragonpit.

The path of greatest resistance leads to the Dragonpit.

All paths lead to the Dragonpit.

The difference lies only in what you carry when you arrive.

He thought of Dreamfyre.

Of the unclaimed eggs.

Of something older — something coiled in the dark beneath the Dragonpit, like smoke waiting behind a closed door.

Something was there.

Something waiting.

He pushed off the railing and walked back inside, leaving the golden light behind for the cool shadows of the Keep. His steps were calm, measured — the steps of a child who understood that drawing attention was a mistake.

The Dragonpit rose above the city like a crown of stone.

He had studied it his entire life — its entrances, its guards, its rhythms.

He was ten years old.

He was running out of months.

And deep within the Dragonpit…

Something ancient waited.

Valerion Targaryen walked toward it.