Prologue - Crimson Comet

In the 298th year after Aegon's Conquest of Westeros, a crimson comet slashed through the heavens, millions of eyes across the world saw it and gave a million different meanings to it.

In the streets of King's Landing, the capital of Westeros, commonfolk scorned the memory of the Mad King Aerys, hailing King Robert Baratheon who had usurped him as their saviour and protector of the realm and Lord Stark his new hand.

Inside the Red Keep, Ned Stark, Lord of Winterfell and the new Hand of the King stood looking at the Iron Throne in the empty Great Hall. The famed Iron Throne was an asymmetric monstrosity of spikes jagged edges and twisted metal. It was uncomfortable to look at and even more uncomfortable to sit at. But that wasn't the true source of the unease he felt.

He never wholeheartedly wanted to come back here, the very hall where the last Targaryen King murdered his father and brother so unjustly that it became the leading cause of the rebellion that ended the rule of the House of the Dragons. If only the Mad King had listened all those years ago, then so much bloodshed could have been prevented.

His thoughts then drifted off to the sudden death of Lord of Vale, the King's Hand before him, Jon Arryn, the man who raised him and Robert like a father as he never had a child of his own until a few years ago. Something about all this, this death, didn't sit right with Ned and he walked away from the ugly sight of the throne. Leaving the cursed hall behind, he stopped for a moment at the window and gazed outside at the red shooting star.

"Red Messenger" some called it. It kindled fear of war, an omen of what had come before will come again.

Some Septom preached of divine wrath, labelling the comet the "Father's Scourge," foretelling doom.

Septon Dorian in Winterfell, the capital of the Northern cold lands of Westeros, spoke of it as the "Sword that Slays the Seasons."

For some the yearning for the old gods whose faces were carved in white weirwood trees persisted in the North, fueled by the comet's fiery trail.

Further North in snowy lands, where the ancient gargantuan Wall of ice and stone stood, tall as the clouds, and so wide that it cut off the entire landmass inhabited by the Wildlings from the rest of the realm. Here the brotherhood Night's Watch in Castle Black guarded the realm from such threats which came from beyond the wall. They had many notions about the meaning of the comet but the most ancient among them, the blind Maester Aemon believed to be more than a century old, said that it was a sign of the coming of the Prince that was Promised.

In the east of Westeros, at the island of Dragonstone, Melisandre, a fervent red priestess, saw in the comet a sign of Stannis Baratheon's destiny as Azor Ahai. She was certain if Azor Ahai had come again then so would its ancient enemy, the Great Other's Long Night who promised to death all life there is.

Unbeknownst to most of Westeros, the Stormborn, Daenerys Targaryen, the last daughter of House Targaryen, the daughter of whom they called the Mad King hid in Essos, one of the last remaining of the old royalty alongside her brother. She held in her hands three cold scaly stonelike dragon eggs that came to her as a wedding gift from Magister Illyrio Mopatis. It had been centuries since the world had last seen dragons and the dragons which built Valayria, the greatest civilisation in recorded history, legendary dragons which the Valayrian dragonlord Aegon Targaryen used to conquer Westeros right after Valayria's mysterious doom.

That wasn't her primary concern anymore, she wasn't even sure if Targaryen was her family name anymore. Her brother Viserys the Last Dragon had her married off to Khal Drogo, the undefeated barbaric warlord for ten thousand of his warrior horse riders, known as the Screamers in exchange. All to sail across the Narrow Sea with a terrible army, reclaim the ancestral throne by might and birthright from Demon Usuper who now sits upon it, the same Usuper who was also the murderer of an older brother she never met. Viserys had made a vow to end him along with whom he called his dogs, the House of Starks and the Lannisters, the ones who murdered the rest of her kin, the ones she never met and could never meet.

Outside her tent, the Dothraki Khalsar laid camp in the grasslands, together these nomadic people were like a moving city of tents to an outsider journeying to Vas Dothrak, thousands of them had suddenly ceased their activities, bronze-skinned men and women, altogether looking up at the crimson comet in the black sky and they named it the Bleeding Star. Danayreys oblivious to much was taken aback when the previously cold stone dragon egg suddenly felt warm.

As the crimson comet painted its message across the sky, it heralded an era of change, shaping the fate of a world torn by history and ambition.