"May you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you-haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe-I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always-take any form-drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!"

He is remembered as Durran Godsgrief reborn, perched in his castle atop Shipbreaker Bay, traces his lineage uninterrupted from the Dawn Age through sea gods and wind goddesses, dragonborn and Storm King. He returns when the dragons do, their bastard prince, with nothing but the guardians and protectors who had spirited him away from the fire priestess's frames, no army at his back and no creatures to command, only a sword which he pledges to the 1000th Lord Commander, a monster in his own right, Azor Ahai brought to the world through smoke and salt. He fights for dawn and returns with the Greyscale Princess, the Greyscale Queen who names him Baratheon and crowns him King.

They were years of plenty and endless summer, and as the foxes and roses quibble and the trouts dwindle and fade, the Stormlands are restored as they were in the days of the kings, extending from the Weeping Town to the Neck, from Evenfall Hall to Bitterbridge. The borders are closed thereafter, letting none escape and permitting none entry, as the plagues and famines ravage the lands outside the protection of the queen and her king.

It lasts a decade, no longer, not when the queen dies in her birthing bed bringing her third black-haired blue-eyed prince into the world, not when the walls of the castle glow red as though with blood, not when a storm is unleashed across the Narrow Sea, the likes of which had not been seen since the sea gods themselves sought to bring the walls of the keep down. But it does not fall, even as the Cape Wrath is drowned, even as Estermont and Evenfall Hall lie in ruins. It is the end of the world, they say, those who live at the sea and watch it rise against them, who swear they heard the voice of a woman that night, carried through the winds, a voice which cried in pain and pleasure, a crowned form which appeared as though from the mist, stood outside the gates of the castle which had once belonged to her, unable to get in.

They say that it is the gods' anger, their fury for the cruelty of the Storm King, for turning away the hungry mouths, the weeping masses that tried to gain entry into his domain. It is for his blood, other says, the gods not abiding a bastard to sit on the throne that ages ago belonged to their divine daughter and her mortal kin. It is for his years in Lys, some claim, when he swore his soul to a love goddess and learned how to pleasure women, how to use their bodies and ensnare their minds.

But when the storms continue to rage, breaking ships against the cliffs and sending fishermen further and further inland to sow seeds instead of cast nets, when the figure of the woman appears time and time again, called by the waves, screaming and moaning at the doors of her home, unable to step inside even as the gates and windows are flung upon to her, those who have the right of it name their king the Stormbringer.