Baelon The Monstrous: CH001

-CHAPTER 1-

-3RD PERSON POV-

The birthing chamber was thick with the scent of blood, sweat and burning candles. The flickering light casting long shadows on the cold stone walls as cries of pain from the woman on the bed echoes throughout the keep.

King Viserys Targaryen, King Of The Seven Kingdoms, stood alone in front of the hurrying group of Maesters and midwives. His muscles tense and his knuckles white as he clenched them in worry. The cries and panicked whispers unsettling him, each moment straining his nerves further.

His wife, Aemma, was fighting for the life of herself and their child.

The labor had grown desperate. The queen’s body had refused to deliver the child naturally. The maesters and midwives had grown more urgent, their faces pale and drawn. The risk was clear: either the mother or the child would die without intervention.

“Your Grace,” Grand Maester Mellos’s voice was low but urgent, “There are no signs that the child will come easily... There is only one option left.”

Viserys’s throat tightened. His voice thick with tension and worry. “What choice is there?”

Mellos hesitated for but a second, glancing toward the bed where Aemma struggled against pain that had long passed human endurance. “There is a technique known to the few of us at the Citadel who are proficient enough. It would mean cutting through the flesh and taking the babe straight out of the queen’s womb… It would also mean certain death for the Queen but there will be a chance to save the babe.”

Viserys looked to the queen’s pale, sweat-slicked face and saw the faint flutter of consciousness in her fading eyes. His fingers clenched tighter. He hated this, knowing the cruel cost of what he would now command.

“If this boy is to live, then…” His voice cracked and he nods.

Mellos nodded solemnly.

In the cramped chamber, the maester’s hands moved with grim precision. The queen’s harsh cries turn into screams, which quickly turn to silence. Blood pooled on the bed, spilling and staining the floor, and time seemed to slow as metal cut through flesh.

The air was heavy with impending loss.

“Waaah!” A quiet cry of the newborn filled the chamber, but there was something wrong…

At last, the maester pulled the infant free. A tiny, frail shape wrapped hastily in linen, held delicately by trembling hands.

“A boy,” the midwife whispered, breath trembling.

Yet the babe’s form was unlike any newborn Viserys had ever seen.

The baby’s skin was unnaturally pale, almost translucent, patterned unnaturally like the scales of a dragon. Tufts of his hair fell in sickly white wisps around his forehead. And the most damning of all, a crown-shaped scar marked deep upon his forehead. His haunting violet eyes—slitted, cat-like—opened and closed with an eerie, flickering light, unsteady but alive.

His fingers, resembled claws of a beast. Darkened, long and sharp even soon after his birth.

And Viserys knew… Like the way he knew that he would have a son… He knew that his son’s appearance was the price of the sin he had committed by sentencing his beloved wife to death…

For a moment the boy was so still that Viserys almost believed he had stopped breathing…

Viserys stepped forward, voice hushed but urgent: “Is he breathing?”

The midwife shook her head in distress. But to their relief, the child gasped shallowly, chest barely rising.

“It is a miracle that the babe is alive.” The maester muttered grimly. “He would have to be intensively cared for if he is to make it to his first nameday.”

“Enough!” Viserys breathed loud, the fire of grief and rage bubbling underneath him, taking his son into his arms. “I will not hear about it any longer. My son… Baelon must make it to his adulthood. The whole of seven kingdoms depend on it!”

The maesters and midwives looked down and nodded in subservience.  

Viserys swallowed thickly, forcing himself to look at the child. “He will live,” he said trying to convince himself, though every heartbeat threatened to shatter his hope. “He must.”

Behind them, in silent stillness behind heavy curtains, lay the queen. Her pale face was peaceful now, but forever still. Blood pooling on the bedsheets as the midwives and servants cleaned her up. The price had been paid.

He had an heir… But at the price of his queen.

Viserys closed his eyes, anguish knotted in his chest for Aemma—the woman he had loved fiercely and now lost—but the king in him was satisfied. The future of his kingdom was now secure.

Their son would survive… There is no other possibility but that… Because if he does not survive then… Then what was the meaning behind Aemma’s death?

Viserys remained by the fire long after the queen was laid to rest. His thoughts churned with bitter regret anguish and a desperate hope.

This child—monstrous, broken, and fierce—was the living legacy of Aemma and his line. Whatever the cost this boy would not suffer her fate.

Viserys cupped the tiny hand, his son’s claw like hands curling instinctively. “You will live. And you will rule the Seven Kingdoms.” he promised softly. “I vow.”

…

[EDITED FOR SPELLING MISTAKES]

…

A/N: This will be a short story (only around 50 chaps). It is a self insert into the dead son of Viserys and would focus around the butterfly effects of his existence. Of course not all things are as the MC remembers. and there is a obvious price to his existence. And a boon too- that we'll find out in the next chap. The Dance is averted- or is it?