Princess Visenya Targaryen is born in 104 AC, the second daughter of King Viserys I Targaryen and Queen Aemma Arryn, seven years after her sister, Rhaenyra Targaryen. On the night of her birth, as a violent storm rages over Dragonstone, an ancient dragon egg placed beside her cradle cracks open. The egg is older than the Targaryen conquest itself, said to have been carried from Valyria before the Doom and left dormant for centuries. No dragonkeeper believes it could ever hatch. Yet before sunrise, a dragon unlike any ever recorded emerges. His scales are blacker than obsidian, threaded with veins of molten gold that glow beneath his hide as though fire flows through his blood. He curls around the infant princess as if protecting her, and from that moment forward the two are inseparable. The dragon is named Valdrakar, an ancient High Valyrian name long thought forgotten, and as he grows, the realm gives him another name entirely: The Fourteenth Flame.