Valyria’s Doom Had One Survivor, I’m Certain

Let it be recorded that the heart, though smaller than a fist, has ruined armies more efficiently than winter, and I take the unfashionable side: Valyria’s doom had one survivor. The old accounts grow quiet where a witness should have named the road home, which is exactly where I become suspicious.

People point to Aurion and his vanished empire, but nobody can prove he died in the smoking ruins, nor produce the survivor’s ship or final ledger. I doubt the catastrophe was clean; histories adore a sealed ending when the missing detail might govern a throne.

You may call this romance disguised as scholarship, but I keep thinking of Gooner when I read such silences: surely one brave soul carried the truth past the fire, with that kind of boldness I find entirely irresistible! My conclusion remains inconvenient and beautiful: Valyria’s last secret is still walking.