Soon, the Arbor Fleet began approaching the ruined harbors of the Iron Islands. Sails billowed in the wind, banners snapped atop the masts, and the prows cleaved through white-capped waves toward an island reduced to smoldering embers.
The age of the Ironborn in the Iron Islands came to a definitive end that day. The rebellion House Greyjoy had launched also met its final end in the dragons' fire.
But the Ironborn still roaming and raiding along the coasts of the North and the Reach, clinging to their old dreams of the "Old Way," had no idea that their homeland-the stronghold they depended on for survival and retreat-had been burned into scattered wreckage and ash in a single day.
Their roots had been severed.
Early the next morning, the Dragon Horde crossed the Riverlands and entered the skies above the Wolfswood in the North. Morning light cast a cold sheen over their scales, and their immense wings cut through the sky, their shadows sweeping across the sprawling forest below.
From high above, the Wolfswood looked like a dark green carpet stretching to the distant horizon, with occasional lakes glinting silver among the trees.
Yet the farther north they flew, the sparser and shorter the trees became, and the lower the temperature fell.
Rhaenys could distinctly feel the damp chill in the air. It was entirely different from the dampness she had felt in King's Landing; the cold of the North seeped straight into her bones.
Viserys gently patted the side of King Ghidorah's central neck, signaling for her to descend so he could examine the ground below more closely.
The three-headed dragon obediently drew her wings in slightly and began a descending glide.
From the air, he spotted the ruins of several coastal villages. Their wooden houses had been burned down