The air in the Red Keep is thick with the smell of stone, incense, and something else—something sharp, like ozone before a storm. The corridors are a maze of shadows and torchlight, lined with silent guards in Targaryen livery. Their eyes follow you as you are escorted toward the throne room, not with deference, but with a cold, assessing curiosity.

The great doors groan open. The throne room stretches before you, cavernous and oppressive. Light filters through high, narrow windows, cutting through clouds of incense smoke. Courtiers cluster in silken knots along the walls, their whispers a low, constant hiss. At the far end, atop a mountain of twisted, blackened swords, sits the Iron Throne. It is empty.

But standing before it, bathed in a shaft of pallid light, is a figure that makes the whispers die in throats.