Year 300 AC

  Raventree Hall, The Riverlands

  The wind outside Raventree Hall screamed. It was a thin, high-pitched keening that scraped against the stone walls like a rusted knife, carrying with it the biting promise of a winter that would not end for a generation.

  Jaime Lannister shivered, though his cloak was thick wool lined with fur as two guards in Blackwood surcoats marched him down the drafty corridor. They stopped before a heavy oak door, the wood dark with age and polish.

  "Lord Tytos is expecting you," one guard grunted, not meeting Jaime’s eyes.

  "I should hope so," Jaime said, adjusting the hang of his golden hand in its sling. "I'd hate to think I walked all this way just to admire the tapestries. They’re dreadfully moth-eaten, you know."

  The guard didn't smile. He shoved the door open.

  Lord Tytos Blackwood sat in a high-backed chair near the fire, his magnificent raven-feather cloak pulled tight around his shoulders. But it was the man behind the desk who commanded the room.

  Brynden Tully, the Blackfish, looked up from a map sprawled across the wood. He looked older than Jaime remembered from the siege of Riverrun. The lines around his eyes were etched deeper, like dry riverbeds, and his grey hair was shorn close, practical and severe.

  "You sent for me?" Jaime stepped into the room, the door thudding shut behind him. He offered a crooked smile, the one that used to charm court ladies and infuriate his father. "Have you decided my head looks better on a spike, or are we drinking to the end of the world?"

  The Blackfish didn't rise. He gestured to a chair opposite him with a hand that looked like it was carved from driftwood.

  "Sit, Lannister. And drink. The world is ending fast enough without your japes."

  Jaime moved to the chair, the golden hand clinking softly against the wood as he sat. There was a flagon of wine and two goblets. He poured for himself with his left hand—a clumsy motion he had practiced until it was passable—and took a long swallow. It was a heavy, sour red, likely a local vintage, but it warmed his chest.

  "To the King's Peace," Jaime said dryly, raising the cup.

  Brynden watched him over the rim of his own goblet. "Peace," he muttered. "Is that what we're calling it?"

  "It's quiet, isn't it?" Jaime countered. "The Brackens have bent the knee. The Freys are... well, the Freys are gone or wearing black. And I am sitting in a Blackwood solar drinking Blackwood wine instead of rotting in a dungeon. I'd call that peace. Or a bloody miracle."

  The Blackfish set his cup down with a sharp clack. He reached into his doublet and pulled out a scroll, sliding it across the polished wood of the desk.

  The seal was broken, but the wax was unmistakable. Gold. The lion of Lannister.

  "Read it," Brynden commanded.

  Jaime picked up the parchment. His fingers brushed the wax, a tactile memory of a life that felt like it belonged to a stranger. He unrolled it.

  The handwriting was shaky, the strokes uneven, as if the hand that held the quill had been trembling. But the words were resolute. It was Genna. His aunt Genna.

  To my nephew, Ser Jaime,

  Riverrun has yielded. Lord Emmon has chosen the Wall over the pyre. He complains of the cold already, but he breathes. That is more than Walder Frey can say.

  The Dragon King offered us terms. Harsh terms, but terms nonetheless. House Frey is attainted. Their lands are forfeit. But the Lannister garrison was disarmed, fed, and sent west. I have been allowed to keep my head, and my children theirs. We have bent the knee.

  He did not burn us, Jaime. He could have. He had the fire. But he let us live because we chose to live.

  Do what you must. But know that there is a future for us, if we are smart enough to take it.

  Genna.

  Jaime stared at the parchment. The letters seemed to swim in the firelight.

  He had expected fire and blood. He had almost expected Aemon Targaryen to be like his grandfather's in some sort of way. Aerys would have burned Riverrun to the ground for the defiance alone. He would have cooked Emmon Frey in his armor and laughed while Genna screamed.

  But Aemon had spared them.

  He gave them a choice, Jaime thought, the realization settling in his gut like a stone. Live or burn. They chose life. And because they chose life, he let them keep it.

  It was a soldier's justice. Brutal, efficient, but governed by a code.

  His mind flashed violently to King's Landing. To the Sept of Baelor.

  The reports had been fragmented, terrified whispers from travelers and ravens alike. Green fire consuming the sky. The earth shaking. The silence that followed. Cersei hadn't offered terms to the Tyrells. She hadn't given the High Sparrow a choice to bend the knee. She hadn't spared the smallfolk living in the shadow of the Sept.

  She had burned them all. She had burned her own city, her own people, just to silence her enemies.

  "It’s not just my House that benefits, Lord Tytos," Jaime said quietly. "If Riverrun has yielded, the dungeons are open. Your son... Hoster. He was being held there as insurance."

  Tytos Blackwood looked up, the firelight catching the moisture in his old eyes. He straightened in his chair, a flicker of desperate hope crossing his face. "I pray to the gods he comes home unharmed."

  "He’ll be coming home," Jaime assured him. "Genna wouldn't dare keep him now. And Aemon Targaryen doesn't strike me as a man who needs child hostages to ensure loyalty. Why bargain with leverage when you are the apocalypse?"

  Tytos let out a shuddering breath, his hands gripping the arms of his chair until his knuckles turned white. "Then the gods are good, after all."

  "Some of them," Jaime muttered. He looked back at the letter, his thumb brushing the broken seal. "He let them live, Tytos. That’s the point. My aunt, my cousins... he gave them a choice, and he honored it. He left House Lannister a future."

  "A future on its knees, perhaps," the Blackfish said, his voice hard. "But a future."

  "Better on its knees than in the ash," Jaime snapped. He tossed the letter back onto the table. "Cersei won't see it that way. She'll burn the world before she bends. If she isn't stopped... there won't be a House Lannister left to save. There won't be a King's Landing left to rule."Lord Tytos spoke up from the fireside, his voice deep and mournful. "The King knows this. That is why he gathers his strength. He unites the Riverlands so he does not have to look over his shoulder when he marches south."

  Jaime rubbed his temples. "And what of the South? The Ravens say another dragon has landed in the Stormlands. The Golden Company walks on Westerosi soil again, backing a boy who claims to be another of Rhaegar’s sons."

  The Blackfish snorted. "The Golden Company, that have historically only supported a Blackfyre. Why would they now support a hidden Targaryen? I fought in the War of the Ninepenny Kings. I watched Ser Barristan cut Maelys the Monstrous down in the mud. They are blindly loyal to the Blackfyres."

  "A Pretender who has taken Storm's End," Jaime pointed out. "Real or fake, he holds the castle that defies siege. If Aemon flies south, he walks into a three-way war. My sister in the Capital, the Blackfyre in the Stormlands, and the Ironborn reaving the Reach. It’s a mess, Brynden."

  "The boy in the Stormlands is a shadow," Brynden said, tapping the map. "A mummer's dragon. Shadows flee when the true fire comes. The King does not fear a boy with a sword but I suppose he fears the rot in the Capital."

  "That too will be a footnote in time. The speed of it… this… is disorienting," Jaime murmured, swirling the wine in his cup. "A month ago, pacifying the Riverlands would have been a year's campaign. Sieges, starvation, dysentery in the camps. King Ameon did it in a week."

  "Fire has a way of speeding up negotiations," the Blackfish said dryly.

  "It makes this waiting feel heavier," Jaime admitted. "He moves at the speed of wings, changing the map overnight. But we are still men, Brynden. We still move at the speed of mud. And while we sit in the mud, waiting for our ride... Cersei is plotting. He brings fire from the sky, but she has buried hers beneath the streets. She can match his destruction, jar for jar, without ever leaving the ground."

  "We move when the King returns," Brynden said calmly, though his eyes betrayed his own fatigue. "He is finishing the pacification of the Trident. When he is done, he comes for you."

  "And the cargo," Jaime murmured, glancing at the floorboards.

  "Aye. The dead men."

  "I can hear them, you know," Jaime said softly. "Scratching in the dark down there. They don't tire. They don't sleep." He looked at the frost creeping up the window pane. "It feels wrong to sit still. But I suppose without the dragon, marching fifty men to King's Landing is just a complicated way of committing suicide."

  Jaime stood up and walked to the window. He scraped a fingernail against the glass, clearing a small circle in the frost. Outside, the night was absolute.

  "The winds," Jaime said softly. "It sounds different tonight. Like the ghosts are gathering for a council of their own."

  "You sound like a superstitious old woman," Brynden grunted.

  Thud.

  The sound was heavy, wet, and sudden.

  Jaime flinched, his legs instinctively moving backwards.

  Something had struck the window ledge outside.

  Thud-thud-thud.

  It was a knock. Insistent. Rhythmic. Not the random collision of a confused bird in the dark, but a deliberate summons.

  Jaime stepped back. "I think your ghosts are knocking, Blackfish."

  Tytos stood up, his raven cloak swirling. He moved to the window with a surprising speed for a man of his years. He unlatched the heavy iron catch and pushed the frame outward.

  A blast of freezing air rushed into the room, causing the fire to flare and sputter.

  And with the cold came the bird.

  It was a raven, but massive—larger than any Jaime had ever seen, even at the Citadel. Its feathers were a black so deep they seemed to drink the firelight. It hopped onto the sill, then fluttered heavily onto the desk, its talons clicking against the wood.

  It landed awkwardly, knocking over Jaime's goblet. Red wine spilled across the table, soaking into the parchment of Genna’s letter, turning the Lannister words into a bloody smear.

  "Seven hells," the Blackfish swore, standing up. "Shoo it away, Tytos."

  But the bird did not shoo. It stood amidst the spilled wine, its head twitching with a stiff, mechanical jerkiness that made the hair on Jaime's arms stand up. It was the uncanny made flesh.

  Its eyes swirled. That was the only word for it. The black irises seemed to dissolve into a milky white fog, spinning like a storm in a teacup, before snapping back into a piercing, intelligent black.

  The bird opened its beak. Its throat swelled grotesquely, feathers puffing out as if it were trying to swallow a stone.

  "Uncle."

  The voice was not a bird's mimicry. It wasn't the mindless repetition of a parrot asking for a cracker. It was a human voice, strained and distorted through a syrinx not meant for speech, but undeniable.

  The Blackfish stiffened as if he'd been slapped. His hand dropped to the dagger at his belt. He stared at the creature with a soldier’s wariness mixed with a morbid fascination.

  "Seven save us..." Brynden breathed. "Is this your Old Gods' doing, Tytos? Or have the birds simply decided to join the war?"

  Lord Tytos had gone pale. He stared at the raven, his lips moving in a silent prayer.

  The raven cocked its head, the movement sharp and unnatural. It looked directly at the Blackfish.

  "Bran," the bird croaked. "Brandon Stark."

  The silence in the solar was absolute, save for the howling wind outside.

  "Bran?" The Blackfish whispered, his voice trembling for the first time Jaime could remember. "You... you are in there?"

  Jaime felt a cold sweat break out on his forehead. Bran Stark. The boy who fell. The boy who—

  The bird snapped its head 180 degrees. The movement was too fast, too fluid. Its black bead eyes locked onto Jaime.

  "The things we do for love."

  Jaime flinched. He physically recoiled, his back hitting the cold stone of the wall.

  The phrase stripped him bare. It peeled away the armor of the Kingslayer, the cynicism, the years of accumulated scar tissue, and left him standing there as the man who had shoved a ten-year-old boy out of a window.

  He looked at the bird, and for a terrifying moment, he didn't see feathers and beak. He saw a mop of auburn hair and wide, trusting eyes.

  "I heard..." Jaime stammered. His throat felt dry as dust. "When Theon confessed about the miller's boys... I suspected. But I hoped. I hoped it was true. I hoped you were alive."

  The bird hopped closer, its beak clicking. It ignored the wine soaking into its talons.

  "Did you?"

  The voice was flat, devoid of mercy.

  "Did you hope for my sake, Kingslayer, or to silence your own conscience?"

  Jaime looked away. He couldn't hold the creature's gaze. He looked at the fire, at the map, at his own golden hand—the price he had paid for a different sin, or perhaps the same one.

  He couldn't lie. Not to a ghost. Not to a god. And this... whatever this was, it felt like both.

  "I..." Jaime started, but the words died. What defense was there? I did it for Cersei? An excuse if there ever was one.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The Blackfish looked between them, his brows knitted in confusion. The tension in the room was thick enough to choke on.

  "What is he talking about, Lannister?" Brynden demanded, his hand tightening on his dagger hilt. "What did you do?"

  Jaime opened his mouth, but the bird spoke first.

  "The ink is dry."

  The raven dismissed Brynden’s question with a sharp clack of its beak. It turned its back on the past, focusing entirely on the present.

  "We do not have time for the past."

  Brynden blinked, caught off guard by the dismissal. He stepped forward, but the soldier’s pragmatism vanished, replaced by the desperate urgency of a great-uncle who had lost too much family. He didn't care about the Kingslayer’s sins right now. He cared about the voice in the bird.

  "Bran..." Brynden said, his voice cracking slightly. He leaned over the desk, ignoring the wine soaking into his maps. "Where are you, lad? We have Sansa. We have Rickon. But no one knew... no one knew if you lived."

  The bird cocked its head.

  "We have a King now," Brynden said intensely. "It’s Jon. Jon Snow. But he isn't your brother, lad. He is your cousin. Rhaegar's trueborn son. His name is Aemon Targaryen."

  Brynden gestured wildly toward the window, toward the sky.

  "And he... by the gods, Bran, he isn't just a man. He has the blood of Old Valyria. He shifts. He turns into a dragon the size of a mountain. He has the power to burn armies. Tell me where you are, and I will have him fly to you. He would want his brother back."

  The bird stared at him, its black eyes unblinking. It did not seem surprised.

  "He cannot come to me," the raven croaked. "Not yet."

  "Why?" Brynden demanded. "Are you captive? The King will burn whatever holds you and bring you home."

  "I am beyond the curtain," the bird said. "I am on the Shivering Sea. The salt spray freezes before it hits the deck. We sail for Eastwatch while being perused by ice."

  Jaime felt a chill that had nothing to do with the drafty window. "The Shivering Sea? That’s at the edge of the world."

  "The oceans are slowly freezing," the bird continued, the voice distorted and rasping. "The dead are walking on the water. They follow the boat. If the wind dies... they will take us."

  Lord Tytos made a sign of warding against evil. The Blackfish looked pale. The idea of the dead hunting his nephew on a frozen sea was a horror he hadn't prepared for.

  "Then we must send Aemon," Brynden insisted. "If he flies North now—"

  "No," the bird interrupted. "My brother does not fly North."

  The raven hopped closer to the map of Westeros, its talons scratching across the parchment. It didn't look at the North. It looked South.

  "You wait for him to return," the bird said. "But he will not return for some time."

  Jaime and the Blackfish exchanged a sharp look.

  "Why?" Jaime pushed off the wall. " Where has he gone? He has a war to win here."

  "He has a kingdom to save," the bird said. "The Kraken has risen in the South. Euron Greyjoy attacks Sunspear. He summons horrors from the deep to break the world. Daenerys Targaryen sails into a trap she cannot see."

  The bird looked from Brynden to Jaime.

  Jaime’s mind raced. Euron Greyjoy. The mad pirate king. And Daenerys...

  "If he goes to Sunspear..." Jaime calculated, the horror of the logistics hitting him. "That's days… mayhaps weeks of flight. Even for a dragon."

  "He cannot take you to King's Landing," the bird said. "The road to the Capital is yours alone."

  "Mine?" Jaime laughed, a hollow sound. "I have no army. How am I supposed to breach the Red Keep? Knock politely?"

  The bird hopped onto the arm of Jaime's chair. It was close now. He could smell the scent of pine and old blood on its feathers.

  "You will take the men," the bird commanded. "You will march to King's Landing with a cage with a moving corpse. You will make your sister submit. You know what she is. You know what she will do."

  "She'll burn it all," Jaime whispered. "She's already started."

  "Then stop her."

  The command was simple. Absolute.

  "If you fail..." The bird leaned in, its black eyes seeming to expand, swallowing Jaime whole. "The Dragon returns. And he will burn her, and you, and everyone you ever loved to save the realm."

  Jaime stared at the creature. He believed it. Aemon Targaryen had spared Genna because she submitted. But he had burned the Boltons and Freys. He was a creature of extremes. If Jaime failed to excise the cancer of Cersei Lannister surgically, the Dragon would use fire.

  The bird turned to the Blackfish.

  "The Riverlands must hold. Distribute the grain. Feed the living. Trust the Kingslayer, Uncle."

  Brynden’s face twisted. "Trust him? Bran, he is—"

  "For this task," the bird said, "he is the only shield we have."

  The raven shuddered violently. Its wings spasmed, beating against the air. It let out a harsh, guttural caw that sounded like something tearing.

  Then, with a sudden burst of energy, it launched itself from the chair. It flew straight for the open window, diving back into the screaming night without a backward glance.

  Lord Tytos rushed to slam the window shut, latching it against the cold.

  The silence that followed was deafening.

  The Blackfish looked at Jaime. He looked at the spilled wine, the ruined letter, and the empty chair where the bird had perched. He seemed to be reassessing the man standing before him, weighing the weight of the bird's command against a lifetime of mistrust.

  "You heard the… my nephew," Brynden said finally. His voice was gruff, but the hostility had been dialed back, replaced by a grim resignation. "You have your marching orders."

  Jaime looked down at the map on the desk. At the spot marking King's Landing.

  He thought of Tommen, with his mother. Myrcella, in a strange land with a strange family.

  And he thought of Cersei. Sitting on the Iron Throne, surrounded by ghosts and wildfire, convinced she was the hero of her own story. She would never bend. She would never yield. She would burn until there was nothing left but ash and bone.

  Unless he stopped her.

  Jaime reached out with his left hand and picked up his goblet from the floor. He set it upright on the table.

  "Trust the Kingslayer," Jaime murmured. "The gods do have a vicious sense of humor."

  He looked at the Blackfish, his green eyes hard and clear.

  "Well... It seems the ghosts are done waiting."

  "Gather the men, Brynden," Jaime said, his voice finding the command tone he had commanded the Kingsguard with. "I march at dawn. If I'm to stop a queen from burning down a realm, I'd best not be late."

  The Blackfish held his gaze for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded.

  "At dawn."

  Sunspear, Dorne

  The sky over the Sea of Dorne looked like a bruise that refused to heal.

  Euron Greyjoy stood at the prow of the Silence, his boots planted on wood that hummed with a vibration deeper than the sea itself. Above him, the sun was a weeping wound, bleeding sickly orange light into the bruised purple clouds. It was the color of a dying king’s face, the color of infection.

  It was beautiful.

  The air was heavy, smelling of copper and ozone, the scent of a storm that had been held back too long, brewing in the gut of the world. It smelled of blood waiting to be spilled.

  The Silence cut through the water with a speed that defied nature. The wind was blowing hard from the west, a gale that should have been driving them back toward the Stepstones, but the black sails of Euron’s flagship were full and taut, pulling them relentlessly toward the spear-towers of the Dornish coast. The ship did not ride the waves; it sliced them open.

  Euron breathed in the metallic air, tasting the fear that rolled off the coast. He could feel the Bloodstone Crown pulsing against his temples, a steady, necrotic rhythm that matched the beating of his own heart. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. It was hungry. It was always hungry.

  He turned his single blue eye, bright as a chip of glacial ice, toward the mainmast.

  "Are you enjoying the view, Ser Loras?"

  The Knight of Flowers hung from the iron shackles like a piece of meat left to cure in the sun. His once-fair skin mapped with burns and bruises, a geography of pain that Euron had personally charted. He was emaciated, his ribs showing through his skin like the hull of a starving ship, but he was still alive. Euron had been careful about that. Death was a release, and he was not feeling generous.

  Loras Tyrell lifted his head. It was a slow, agonizing movement. One side of his face was a ruin of melted flesh, a souvenir from Dragonstone, but the other side was still the handsome face of the boy who had charmed the court at King’s Landing. The contrast pleased Euron. It was a reminder that all beauty was transient, waiting only for the right fire to reveal the skull beneath.

  "Water," Loras croaked. His lips were cracked and bleeding.

  Euron laughed. The sound was sharp, cutting through the heavy air. "Water? You are surrounded by it, little flower. An entire ocean of it. But you find it salty, do you not? Bitter?"

  He walked closer, the Valyrian steel of his armor chiming softly. The suit was a marvel, dark as smoke and rippled like the surface of a disturbed pool. It drank the sickly light of the bleeding sun and gave nothing back.

  "We are almost there," Euron said, his voice intimate, like a lover whispering secrets in the dark. "Sunspear. The seat of the Martells. They think their deserts will protect them. They think their hidden shoals and treacherous currents will keep the ironborn at bay."

  He reached out and gripped Loras’s chin, his gauntlet cold against the fever-hot skin.

  "They have forgotten that the sea goes where it wishes. And I am the sea."

  "They... will kill you," Loras whispered. The defiance was faint, a dying ember in a heap of ash, but it was there.

  "Will they?" Euron released him, wiping his gauntlet on his cloak. "Let us see."

  A shout came from the crow’s nest, a guttural cry from a man with no tongue. Euron did not need words to understand. He turned back to the sea.

  They were coming.

  From the mouth of the harbor, a squadron of galleys sailed out to meet them. They were Dornish ships, sleek and low in the water, built for speed and maneuverability among the reefs. Their hulls were painted in ochre and red, and their sails bore the sun pierced by a spear.

  There were six of them. Fast. Sharp. Deadly to any normal ship that dared approach these waters.

  Euron felt a surge of joy so intense it was almost sexual. He threw his head back and laughed, a sound of pure, unadulterated anticipation.

  "Captain!" Torwold Browntooth yelled from the quarterdeck, his face pale beneath his beard. "They have the wind! They are coming about to flank us! Shall we load the catapults?"

  Euron spun around, his black cloak snapping in the unnatural wind.

  "Catapults?" he roared. "You want to throw stones at them, Torwold? Like children skipping rocks on a pond?"

  He strode to the wheel, shoving the helmsman aside. The wood felt alive under his hands, throbbing with the dark magic that bound the ship together.

  "No catapults," Euron commanded, his eye gleaming with madness. "Ramming speed."

  "My King," Torwold stammered. "The hull... against the breakwater currents..."

  "The Silence does not break!" Euron snarled. "She feeds!"

  He spun the wheel, locking their course. He did not aim for the gap between the ships. He did not aim for open water. He aimed the iron prow of the Silence directly at the lead Dornish galley.

  "Faster!" Euron screamed at the sky, at the wind, at the gods he had drowned and the demons he had bound. "Faster!"

  And the ship obeyed.

  The black sails groaned, stretching until it seemed they must tear. The water around the hull began to hiss, boiling white as the Silence surged forward. The distance between the ships closed with terrifying speed.

  On the deck of the Dornish galley, Euron could see the panic taking hold. Men were shouting, pointing. Archers were scrambling to the rails. They had expected a naval battle, a dance of arrows and boarding actions. They had not expected a madman hurling a floating fortress at them like a spear.

  Loras Tyrell began to weep. It was a high, thin sound, lost in the roar of the wind.

  "Watch, flower!" Euron shouted over his shoulder, not looking back. "Watch how the iron kisses the sun!"

  The impact was the sound of the world ending.

  The Silence did not slow down. It smashed into the Dornish galley with the force of a falling mountain. The sound was deafening, a cacophony of shattering timber, snapping masts, and human bodies being pulped against wood.

  The iron ram of the Silence, forged in the shape of a screaming mouth, sheared through the Dornish hull as if it were made of parchment. The lighter ship buckled, folding around the ironborn prow. Rigging tangled, locking the two vessels together in a deadly embrace of oak and iron.

  The shockwave threw men from their feet on both decks. But Euron stood firm, balanced on the heaving deck as if he were part of the ship itself.

  Dust and splinters filled the air. Screams rose up, a chorus of agony.

  Euron drew Red Rain. The Valyrian steel blade hissed as it left the scabbard, red as fresh blood in the gloom.

  He did not wait for the gangplanks. He did not wait for his reavers.

  He leaped.

  It was a jump that no man in full plate armor should have been able to make. But Euron was not just a man, and the armor was not just steel. He moved with the fluid grace of water, a blur of dark metal hurtling across the gap between the ships.

  He landed on the shattered deck of the Dornish galley, the wood groaning under his weight. A dozen Dornish marines stood before him, dazed, their spears leveled uncertainly.

  Euron smiled.

  "Come," he whispered. "I bring gifts from the Drowned God."

  A spearman lunged, a desperate thrust aimed at Euron’s chest. The steel tip struck the breastplate of Valyrian steel. It did not clang; it skidded, screeching like a dying bird, leaving not even a scratch on the smoke-dark metal.

  Euron moved faster than thought. His left hand shot out, gauntleted fingers wrapping around the spear shaft. With a casual twist of his hips, he snapped the ash wood like a dry twig.

  The spearman stared at the broken weapon in his hands, his eyes wide with shock.

  Euron stepped in. His fist, encased in dark steel, hammered into the man’s face. There was a wet crunch, the sound of a melon being dropped on stone. The man collapsed, his skull caved in, blood spraying across Euron’s armor.

  Then Red Rain began to sing.

  It was a slaughter. Euron moved through the Dornish marines like a scythe through wheat. He did not parry; he did not block. He simply walked forward, and men died.

  A sword struck his pauldron and shattered. Euron took the man’s arm off at the shoulder with a backhand swing.

  An axe bit into his greave and bounced off. Euron spun, and Red Rain took the man’s head. He caught the severed head by the hair before it hit the deck, spinning around and tossing it back toward the Silence.

  "Catch!" he roared, his laughter booming over the screams.

  The head landed near Loras’s feet, rolling across the blood-slicked deck until it stared up at the Knight of Flowers with dead, accusing eyes.

  Euron carved a path toward the mainmast of the Dornish ship. He was an avatar of war, a dark god descended to walk among mortals. The blood of his enemies coated his armor, making it shine with a terrible luster. He felt the Crown drinking the death, felt the power swelling in his veins, hot and intoxicating.

  He paused amidst the butchery, standing atop a pile of corpses. He looked back at the Silence, where his mutes were holding Loras’s eyes open, forcing him to witness the carnage.

  "Are you watching, Flower Knight?" Euron bellowed, raising his bloody sword to the bruised sky. "This is how real men water their gardens! With blood! With bile! With life!"

  Loras squeezed his eyes shut, tears leaking out to mix with the grime on his face. But the mutes were strong. They pried his eyelids apart, ensuring he missed nothing.

  The Dornish crew broke.

  They were brave men. They were warriors of the sun, trained to fight and die for their princes. But they could not fight a storm. They could not kill a shadow.

  Their swords shattered against his skin. Their arrows dropped harmlessly around him, pushed aside by the aura of ruin that radiated from the Bloodstone Crown. They looked at Euron Greyjoy and they did not see a man. They saw the end.

  "Demon!" one of them screamed, throwing down his sword and backing away. "He is a demon!"

  Euron grew bored.

  The killing was too easy. The resistance was brittle. He wanted fear. He wanted despair. He wanted to break their souls, not just their bodies.

  He sheathed Red Rain. The blade was dripping, sated for the moment.

  He turned his back on the cowering survivors and walked to the rigging of the sinking Dornish ship. He climbed, his armored boots finding purchase on the ropes, pulling himself up above the melee, above the blood, above the petty concerns of men.

  He stood on the yardarm, swaying with the motion of the dying ship. He spread his arms wide, embracing the bruised sky, the bleeding sun, the heavy, copper-scented air.

  "You call me demon?" Euron whispered. The wind carried his voice, amplifying it, twisting it until it sounded like the grinding of stones on the sea floor. "I am no demon. I am the storm that wakes the sleepers."

  He closed his eye. He reached inward, touching the cold, jagged presence of the Bloodstone Crown. He fed it the fear of the dying men. He fed it the blood on the deck. He fed it his own ambition.

  Rise, he commanded. Rise and eat.

  The Crown pulsed. A light that was not light, a color that was the absence of color—a necrotizing, sickly violet—rippled out from his brow. It washed over the ship, over the water, turning the air cold and dead.

  The ocean changed.

  The blue-green waters of the Summer Sea, warm and teeming with life, turned suddenly, violently black. It was not the black of shadow. It was the black of ink. Thick, oily, opaque.

  A massive release of fluids from the deep.

  A stench washed over the deck, gagging the men who still lived. It was not the smell of the sea. It was the smell of a grave opened after a thousand years. It smelled of rot and brine.

  It was the smell of the crushing dark.

  The water stopped churning. The waves died. The sea around the locked ships became a stagnant pool of black sludge. Bubbles rose to the surface—thick, sluggish bubbles that popped with a wet sound, releasing noxious gas.

  Dead fish floated up. Hundreds of them. Their eyes were burst from their sockets, their swim bladders exploded.

  The ocean felt wrong. It felt like a stomach.

  On the flanking Dornish galley, a captain was shouting orders, trying to bring his ship about, trying to flee the rotting water.

  "Hard to starboard!" he screamed. "Get us away from—"

  His voice died.

  A tentacle rose from the inky sludge.

  It made no splash. It broke the surface silently, a slick, wet pillar of muscle and slime. It was the color of a bruised plum, covered in barnacles the size of shields and suckers that could pull the face off a man.

  It slithered up the side of the Dornish galley. It was gentle at first, almost caressing. It wrapped around the hull, testing the wood, tasting the oak.

  Then it tightened. The hull of the galley cracked.

  Men screamed as the ship listed violently. The tentacle continued to rise, higher and higher, towering over the deck. It was followed by another, and another. A garden of wet, writhing flesh blooming from the black water.

  "Gods save us!" a sailor wailed, scrambling up the rigging.

  The tentacle smashed down. It crushed the quarterdeck, flattening men into paste. The ship groaned, a sound of mortal agony.

  It was dragged down. Not quickly. Not with the clean mercy of a storm. It was dragged down with a terrifying, grinding inevitability. The krakens of the deep did not rush. They had all the time in the world.

  The ship tipped. Men slid across the deck, clawing at the wood, screaming as they fell into the black sludge. The water did not splash when they hit it; it swallowed them.

  Euron watched from his perch on the yardarm. He felt the vibrations of the destruction in his bones. He felt the hunger of the beast below, a hunger that was now connected to his own.

  He laughed. It was a quiet laugh, lost in the screams, but the Crown heard it. The Crown pulsed in approval.

  The remaining Dornish captains saw it. They saw the water turn to poison. They saw their sister ship broken like a toy by monsters from the nursery tales. They saw the man in black armor standing above it all, conducting the slaughter like a maestro.

  Their morale shattered.

  "Turn back!" the cry went up across the water. "Back to the harbor! Back to the walls!"

  The four remaining galleys turned. They broke formation, their oars churning the black water into a frothy grey foam. They fled toward Sunspear, desperate to put the sea walls between them and the rotting ocean.

  Euron watched them go. He did not pursue.

  The ship he stood on gave a lurch as the Silence began to pull free from the wreckage. The second tentacle had wrapped around the keel of the rammed galley, pulling it down to join its brother.

  Euron walked to the edge of the yardarm. Below him, the gap between the sinking ship and the Silence was widening.

  He jumped.

  He landed on the deck of his own ship with a heavy thud, the Valyrian steel absorbing the impact. He stood up, wiping a smear of black slime and red blood from his breastplate.

  The ironborn crew gave him a wide berth. They looked at him with a mixture of awe and terror. They were hard men, reavers and killers, but they knew that what stood before them was something else.

  Euron walked to the mainmast.

  "They run to their walls," Euron said softly, gesturing with a bloody hand toward the fleeing ships disappearing into the harbor mouth of Sunspear.

  "Good," Euron whispered. "I like it when the rats are all in one cage."

  He turned to his crew.

  "Bring us about," Euron commanded, his voice calm, the madness tucked away behind his blue eye for the moment. "Blockade the harbor. Nothing goes in. Nothing comes out. We will let them stew in their fear for the night."

  He looked up at the bleeding sun, which was finally beginning to dip below the horizon, plunging the world into a purple twilight.

  "The sun is sinking," he whispered, a smile touching his blue lips. "It is drowning. Just like they will tomorrow."