THALOR
The first memory came like a lightning strike—sudden, brilliant, and terrifying.
Three-year-old Prince Thalor Targaryen sat playing with wooden blocks in the royal nursery, stacking them carefully into a tower. His nurse, Septa Merilene, sat nearby, embroidering and occasionally glancing up to ensure the young prince remained entertained. The chamber was quiet and warm, sunlight streaming through tall windows that overlooked the Blackwater Bay.
Thalor reached for a final block to crown his tower. As his small fingers closed around the wooden cube, something inside his mind unlocked.
Fire. Overwhelming, all-consuming fire.
Wind rushing past his face as he fell.
A desperate cry—not his own, but familiar. So achingly familiar.
"TOOTHLESS!"
The wooden block tumbled from his suddenly limp fingers. The tower collapsed, blocks scattering across the stone floor with a clatter that seemed distant to the boy's ears. Thalor sat frozen, his emerald eyes wide and unseeing.
"My prince?" Septa Merilene looked up from her embroidery, needle poised mid-stitch. "Is something amiss?"
But Thalor couldn't hear her. His mind was elsewhere—in another body, another life.
He was older, lankier. Flying through the air on the back of a dragon black as night, its wings cutting through clouds. The beast wasn't a mount; it was part of him, an extension of his soul. Together, they spiraled and dove with perfect coordination, joy surging through their shared consciousness.
Then came the monster—a dragon the size of a mountain, bellowing flame hot enough to melt stone. They fought, the small boy and his night-fury against this colossus. A last desperate gambit. A flash of light. Pain. And then... nothing.
"Thalor!" The septa's voice finally penetrated his trance. She knelt before him, her weathered hands gripping his small shoulders, her face lined with concern. "My prince, speak to me!"
Thalor blinked, disoriented to find himself back in the nursery, back in this small body with its silver-gold hair and child's proportions. This wasn't right. He wasn't supposed to be here. He was... he was...
"Hiccup," he said, the unfamiliar name stumbling from his tongue.
"What was that, my prince?" Septa Merilene frowned.
"I'm—" He stopped, confused by the high, childish quality of his own voice. He looked down at his hands—tiny, pale, unblemished. Not the callused hands of a blacksmith's apprentice he somehow expected to see.
Where was he? This wasn't Berk. This wasn't home.
Home? The word echoed strangely in his mind. King's Landing was home. He was Prince Thalor of House Targaryen, second son of King Aerys II and Queen Rhaella, younger brother to Crown Prince Rhaegar. He knew these facts as surely as he knew his own name.
And yet...
"Dragon," he whispered, a sudden pang of loss so acute that tears sprang to his eyes.
"Yes, yes, little one," the septa soothed, misunderstanding. "You're a dragon, a mighty Targaryen dragon." She began gathering the scattered blocks. "Perhaps you've played enough for today. Would you like to see your egg? Would that make you feel better?"
At the mention of the egg, something fluttered in Thalor's chest—a hope he couldn't explain.
"Yes," he managed, his voice steadier than he felt. "Please, I want to see my egg."
The septa took his hand, leading him to the adjoining chamber where his bed stood. And there, nested in a cradle of dark volcanic stone beside it, rested the dragon egg that had been his companion since birth. Black as midnight with whorls of deep green running across its petrified surface, it looked exactly as it always had—cold and beautiful and lifeless.
And yet, for the first time, Thalor approached it with something more than childish curiosity. He placed his small palm against the stone surface with reverence, with recognition.
"Toothless?" he whispered, so softly that the septa couldn't hear.
Deep within his mind, memories continued to surface—alien and yet undeniably his own. A village perched on cliffs above a stormy sea. Dragons of all shapes and sizes, once enemies, now allies. A father with a massive red beard. A blacksmith's forge where he'd created wonders. Friends who'd followed him into battle.
And most of all, a bond—unbreakable, transcendent—with a night-black dragon who had been more than a mount, more than a friend. A soul bound to his own.
Thalor pressed his forehead against the cold stone of the egg, tears sliding silently down his chubby cheeks. It was impossible, insane. He was a Targaryen prince, born to the blood of Old Valyria. He had never known any other life.
And yet, he had. He had been Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, heir to the chieftainship of Berk. He had died in fire and water, falling alongside his dragon after defeating a monstrous beast.
How could both be true?
"My prince?" The septa sounded worried now. "Are you unwell? Should I summon the Grand Maester?"
Thalor pulled away from the egg with effort, wiping his tears with the back of his hand. "No," he said, forcing a smile that felt strange on his lips. "I'm just... tired."
"Of course you are, poor lamb." The septa helped him onto his bed for his afternoon rest. "Sleep now. When you wake, perhaps your lord father will visit. He's returned from the Small Council meeting."
The mention of his father sent a shiver through Thalor. In his confused state, he pictured both Stoick the Vast with his booming laugh and King Aerys with his unsettling violet eyes. Two fathers from two lives, neither image quite fitting comfortably in his mind.
As the septa drew the curtains, dimming the chamber, Thalor lay still until he heard her settle into her chair by the door. Then he rolled to his side, facing the egg cradle beside his bed.
"Are you in there?" he whispered, his child's voice barely audible. "Is it really you, bud?"
The egg remained stone-still and silent. Yet somehow, in the depths of his dual consciousness, Thalor felt certain. If he had returned, if his soul had traveled across time and worlds to be reborn in this strange place, then surely Toothless had followed. They had died together; they would live again together.
He just had to be patient. Had to wait for the right moment.
With that thought bringing him comfort, Thalor closed his eyes, allowing sleep to claim him. His dreams were a confusing blend of two lives—soaring over the seas of Berk one moment, then being carried and walking through the hallways of the Red Keep the next. Throughout it all, a black dragon shadowed him, present yet just out of reach.
When he woke hours later, the chamber was darker, illuminated only by the soft glow of candles. A figure loomed by his bedside—tall and thin, with silver-gold hair that fell to his shoulders.
"Father," Thalor murmured, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.
King Aerys II Targaryen regarded his second son with intense scrutiny. At thirty, the king was still handsome, though his violet eyes held a feverish quality that made many at court uneasy.
"You've been crying," Aerys observed, reaching out to trace a finger down Thalor's tear-stained cheek. "Why?"
Thalor hesitated, uncertain how to explain what he himself didn't understand. "I remembered something," he said finally, his child's instinct for truth winning out over caution.
"Remembered what?" Aerys leaned closer, suddenly alert.
"Flying," Thalor whispered. "On a dragon. And then falling."
Something like triumph flashed across Aerys's features. "Yes," he breathed. "You would remember that, wouldn't you? The blood knows. The blood always knows."
Confused, Thalor watched as his father moved to the egg cradle, caressing the black stone with the same reverence Thalor had shown earlier.
"I saw your death and rebirth in my dreams before you were born," Aerys said, his voice taking on the dreamy quality it often did when he spoke of his visions. "I saw you fall through fire and water, only to rise again in Targaryen flesh. The gods have marked you, my son. You are special among our blood."
Thalor stared at his father, trying to make sense of his words. Did Aerys somehow know about his past life? About Hiccup and Toothless and the Red Death?
"The egg," he said cautiously. "Will it hatch?"
Aerys laughed, the sound too sharp, too brittle. "Oh yes. When the time is right. When you are ready to claim your destiny." He turned back to Thalor, his eyes gleaming in the candlelight. "You've been touched by fire, son. Twice-born through flame. The dragon must have three heads, and you shall be one of them."
The words sent a chill through Thalor despite their apparent approval. There was something unsettling in his father's intensity, something that reminded him more of Dagur the Deranged than of Stoick the Vast.
"The dragon mourned you," Aerys continued, his gaze distant now. "It followed you into death and back again. Such loyalty... such power..."
Thalor wanted to ask more, to understand how his father could possibly know these things, but something held him back. A wariness that seemed to come from his older soul rather than his three-year-old instincts.
"I'm hungry," he said instead, deliberately childish.
The statement seemed to jolt Aerys from his reverie. He blinked, then smiled—a genuine expression that softened his sharp features.
"Of course you are. Growing dragons need to eat." He ruffled Thalor's silver-gold hair. "I'll have the kitchens send up a feast fit for a prince."
As Aerys swept from the room, issuing commands to waiting servants, Thalor exhaled slowly. He glanced back at the egg, still nestled in its cradle of stone.
"We need to be careful," he whispered to it. "This isn't Berk. I don't think it's as simple here."
And though the egg remained silent, Thalor could have sworn he felt a faint warmth emanating from it—a warmth that hadn't been there before. A promise, perhaps, that whatever this strange new life held, he wouldn't face it alone.
In the corridor outside, King Aerys paused, listening to his son's whispered words to the dragon egg. A smile played across his lips—not the gentle one he'd shown Thalor, but something hungry, ambitious.
"Soon," he murmured to himself. "Soon the world will see what House Targaryen truly means. Fire and Blood. And my son shall lead the way."
---
In the days that followed, Thalor struggled to reconcile his two sets of memories. He was both a three-year-old prince who had never known anything but the comforts of the Red Keep and a young Viking who had changed his people's relationship with dragons forever. The contradiction left him dizzy and confused.
His behavior changed enough that the royal household noticed. Where once he had been a cheerful, if quiet, child, he now often fell into long silences, staring out windows as if searching for something beyond the horizon. He began to reject help with tasks he could manage himself, insisting "I can do it" with a determination that surprised his caretakers.
And his fascination with the dragon egg intensified. He refused to sleep unless it was near, often waking in the night to place his small hand upon its surface, whispering words in a language none at court recognized—Old Norse, from a world away.
"Worried, Your Grace," Septa Merilene reported to Queen Rhaella. "The prince speaks to that egg as if it can hear him. And sometimes, he calls himself by a strange name."
The Queen, holding her newborn son Viserys, frowned thoughtfully. "What name?"
"'Hiccup,' Your Grace. I know not what it means."
Rhaella might have dismissed it as childish fancy, but she had lived too long with Aerys and his dreams not to recognize when something unusual stirred in Targaryen blood.
"Watch him closely," she instructed. "But do not discourage him. The blood of the dragon has its mysteries."
And watch they did, as young Prince Thalor began to leave behind childish games in favor of drawing—surprisingly sophisticated sketches for one so young. Dragons featured prominently, especially one particular night-black beast with intelligent eyes.
"That's Toothless," he would explain to anyone who asked, as if the name should be familiar to all.
By his fourth nameday, Thalor had developed a peculiar habit of disappearing into quiet corners of the Red Keep, often found hours later with scraps of parchment covered in designs for strange contraptions—saddles, mechanical devices, weapons unlike any seen in Westeros.
"He's a true Targaryen," courtiers whispered. "Touched by brilliance and madness in equal measure."
But Thalor heard them and understood more than they realized. He was neither brilliant nor mad—he was simply remembering, piece by piece, the skills and knowledge of a life already lived. And as more memories returned, one certainty grew stronger in his heart.
Toothless was coming back to him. He just needed to be patient.
And patient he would be, even if it took years. After all, death itself hadn't separated them. What was time compared to that?
Each night, before sleep claimed him, Thalor would place his hand on the black egg and whisper the same promise:
"We'll fly again, bud. Just you and me. No matter how long it takes."
And though no one else could feel it, the egg grew warmer each time he spoke, a dragon's heart slowly waking from its long sleep, drawn back to the soul it had followed even through death.