Tyrosh.
The air still held the lingering tang of smoke mingled with the sea breeze, but it no longer smelled of death.
The enormous breach in the Black Wall had been filled with new stone, its slightly paler color like a savage scar freshly healed.
In the streets, vendors' cries had replaced soldiers' shouts, and carts laden with goods rolled over paving stones once soaked in blood.
The palace that had once belonged to the Archon of Tyrosh now served as the Narrow Sea Crownlands' royal residence and administrative center in the city.
The guards wore new uniforms of black armor with red detailing, the three-headed dragon badges on their chests gleaming coldly in the sunlight.
They stood straight, their sharp eyes sweeping over everyone who entered or left, utterly unlike the old Archon's idle, arrogant guards.
On the palace's top floor, Aegon stood with his hands behind his back before an enormous arched window overlooking the sea.
Outside lay the bustling harbor of Tyrosh, where the masts of new warships and merchant vessels rose like a forest. Beyond it, the deep blue Narrow Sea stretched endlessly, its boundary with the sky blurred at the horizon.
But Aegon's gaze did not linger on the view. Before him hung an enormous sea chart that covered almost an entire wall.
The tanned cowhide map was slightly yellowed, its different-colored inks meticulously tracing every bay, island, and reef from the western coast of Essos, across the Narrow Sea and the Stepstones, all the way to the western coast of Westeros.
His finger started at the red dot marking Lys and moved slowly eastward, with a deliberate, thoughtful pressure, across the scattered ink marks representing the Stepstones. Finally, it came to rest firmly at the chart's westernmost edge... on the coast of Westeros.
He