The study in the Red Keep lay submerged in the dead silence of night.
Outside the window, scattered lights dotted King's Landing. A few lonely cries from a night bird only deepened the surrounding stillness.
Only a thick tallow candle burned on the heavy oak table. Its warm yellow light flickered, casting Aegon's shadow onto the cold stone wall, solitary and tall, as motionless as an enduring statue, carrying an unshakable majesty.
He still wore the plain black clothes he had worn that day. His silver hair was loosely tied behind his head, with a few stray locks falling across his brow.
His fingertips rested lightly against the edge of a blank sheet. His gaze seemed fixed on empty space, but in truth, it had long since pierced the paper to behold the wounds and fate of all Westeros.
The ruthless ferocity with which he had quelled the riot through dragon aura and carried out executions with an iron hand in the Red Keep's square had now receded, like a sword returning to its sheath. Only a fathomless chill remained.
He was the player moving the pieces.
In the silent night, he looked down upon a continent entangled in an ancient system for a thousand years, its sickness already sunk into the marrow.
The old feudal system.
The foundation that had upheld the order of the Seven Kingdoms since the Andal invasion was also the source of endless warfare and rampant betrayal. Aegon had long since seen through it completely.
Those dukes, earls, and petty lords who held sway over their own domains, their lines stretching back generations upon generations, were all kings within the kingdom.
They maintained private armies, whose armor and heraldry shone only for their houses;
They levied private taxes, filling their treasuries with wealth that should