The air in Astapor had changed.
Gone was the cloying stench of rotting corpses, spices, and despair.
In its place was a scent brimming with life.
Daenerys walked down the broad street.
She had changed into a linen dress that allowed her to move freely, her long silver-gold hair braided down her back.
The blood in the Plaza of Punishment had long since been washed away, replaced by hundreds of newly built furnaces.
Roaring flames stained the sky orange-red, while the clang of hammers against anvils swelled into a stirring symphony.
More than a thousand smiths worked bare-chested, their bronze muscles gleaming in the firelight.
They were forging new armor for their protectors.
At the other end of the street, a long queue stretched before a temporary relief station.
The freed slaves held rough clay bowls, their faces no longer blank with numbness.
There was confusion in their eyes, and unease, but above all, hope.
A slave woman accepted a steaming bowl of wheat porridge from an Unsullied soldier, blew on it carefully, then handed it to the child beside her, who barely reached her thigh.
The little boy wolfed it down.
Watching him, the woman smiled.
"Mass..."
She softly spoke the name that countless people whispered in praise in Astapor's dark corners.
Mass meant "mother" in Old Ghiscari.
They did not know the Dragonlord's name, nor did they know the Queen's.
But they knew that the man who rode the three-headed dragon and the woman with hair like moonlight had given them new lives.
They were the "Mass" of all free people.
Warmth welled in Daenerys's heart as she watched.
This was what she wanted.
Not fear bought with fire and blood, but love earned through kindness and respect.
"My lady."
Missandei had come to her side unnoticed, her