The Dead... Do Not Die...

Huang Zhengdao's last memory was of the black wall in the South Sea, stretching from the heavens down to the sea.

A moment earlier, thunder had rumbled deep within lead-gray clouds. The sea breeze, damp with a salty, fishy smell, had brushed his skin, while the water had still risen and fallen gently beneath his lean, athletic frame. The next moment, the sky seemed to split open beneath the hand of some invisible giant. Inky curtains of rain came crashing down, icy to the bone, blurring the world in an instant. The wind was no longer wind, but countless invisible, furious whips lashing the sea and raising monstrous crests. The familiar, welcoming water had become a roaring beast. Every wave carried tremendous force as it crashed down, then greedily dragged him toward the abyss.

His will to survive burned in his bones and blood, wringing every last bit of strength from his muscles. Huang Zhengdao kicked with all his might, but each stroke felt like struggling through thick tar. Icy seawater flooded his nose and mouth, its salty, fishy taste searing into his brain and nearly choking him. He poured all his strength into finally breaking the surface, only for an especially terrible mountain of a wave to come crashing down and slam him underwater.

His ears filled with a muffled roar. Before his eyes was darkness, murky and churning with countless bubbles. His lungs felt clamped in iron pincers, burning with pain. He clawed upward on instinct, fighting through the heavy veil of water. The moment he reached a thin breath of air, another, more insidious force seized him.

Less than a hundred meters from the golden beach, torn to shreds by the gale, the sea suddenly caved in. A gigantic whirlpool silently opened its dark maw. The water spun madly and sank, forming a bottomless funnel. Its pull exceeded the laws of physics, driven by a greed that froze the soul. Huang Zhengdao felt his body go weightless. All his struggles became futile and absurd in an instant as that irresistible force dragged him down, like a helpless leaf falling into a bottomless abyss.

Icy seawater pressed in from all sides. It seemed even his bones were groaning. The last of the air in his lungs was mercilessly squeezed out, becoming a string of desperate bubbles that quickly vanished into the distant, ever-darkening light overhead.

Absolute darkness embraced him, heavy enough to suffocate.

At the edge of consciousness, deep in that cold, silent place that swallowed everything, a voice—or perhaps a thought—ancient as strata accumulated on the ocean floor for eons, carrying the briny smell of rusted sea and something inhumanly vast, branded itself directly into the core of his fading mind:

"The dead... do not die..."

"Will rise... again..."

"Stronger... than before..."

He did not hear the voice with his ears. It was engraved upon his soul. It had no direction, no source, only an indifferent declaration, unchanged since time immemorial.

At that very moment, at the other end of the world, beneath the rocky fortress of House Greyjoy on Pike Island, the heart of the Iron Islands, the biting sea wind shrieked past jagged black rocks. It whipped up icy spray and lashed the faces of the people standing on the shore. The air was thick with sea salt, fish, and an almost palpable air of slaughter.

At the center of the gathering stood Kolen Greyjoy, lord of House Greyjoy. He was tall, his face deeply scored by the sea wind and the passing years. His eyes were hard as rock, yet there was a hint of nervous anticipation in them: the jitters of a new father. Beside him stood his eldest son, Balon Greyjoy. Balon was only twelve, thin but already showing the angular features characteristic of House Greyjoy. He pressed his thin lips tightly together, his sharp eyes— inherited from his father— fixed on the scene before him. He tried hard to imitate his father's composure, but his slightly clenched fists and uneven breathing betrayed his unease. This was the moment his younger brother would be born and face the test.

Only a handful of others were present: two solemn Drowned Priests and Harrag, Kolen's most trusted first mate.

The altar was a natural hollow in a huge reef, polished smooth by the sea. Now it was full of icy seawater, foaming and churning.

The chief Drowned Priest, an old man with hair and beard as white as snow, stood barefoot in the waist-deep water. Though drenched, his eyes burned with the fire of fanatic faith. In his rough, barklike hands, he cradled a baby wrapped in coarse, dark-gray seaweed cloth: Kolen's second son, Euron Greyjoy, newly born into the world.

"Drowned God!" the old priest cried, his hoarse, piercing voice cutting through the howling wind. "Look upon your humble creation! Grant him the hardness of the Ironborn! Grant him the breath of the sea! Let him endure your baptism, return from death, and grow stronger! Harder!"

The chant reached its climax. The old priest drew a deep breath and plunged both arms down!

The icy seawater, redolent of death, swallowed the tiny bundle at once, engulfing the newborn's tender, rosy face. There was no cry, only a few weak bubbles struggling up through the folds of the cloth before bursting.

One second. Two seconds. Three.

Time froze beneath the roaring wind and waves. Kolen held his breath without realizing it, his broad shoulders leaning forward as he fixed his gaze on the churning water. His anxiety showed in his tightly furrowed brow and clenched fists. Twelve-year-old Balon did not even dare blink. His little body was taut as stone, his nails almost digging into his palms. Captain Harrag looked grim, one hand resting on the dagger at his waist. The younger priest swallowed nervously.

Fine beads of sweat appeared on the old priest's brow, then slid down, mingling with the icy seawater. He felt the tiny body in his arms stop struggling completely, growing cold and limp like a dead fish hauled up from the deep. A heavy despair began to spread through his fervent eyes.

Cold, darkness, suffocation... Huang Zhengdao felt himself being crushed and dissolved, his consciousness like a wisp of smoke on the verge of dispersing. At the very instant it was about to vanish into nothingness, the pull from the abyss that had dragged him into the whirlpool abruptly reversed!

As if an invisible giant hand had reached into the icy depths, seized his wisp of a soul with perfect precision, then yanked it outward with an irresistible force that tore through everything!

Boom!

It was not a sound, but a violent collision and compression on a level beyond words, deep within the soul.

He felt himself being forced into an extremely narrow, cold, rigid vessel that was rapidly losing the last spark of life. The violent rejection was like billions of red-hot needles piercing every gap in his soul. Unfamiliar nerve endings sent him sensations of dying suffocation and cold, along with the faint but fiercely unwilling remnants of a primitive, savage consciousness, biting and fighting against his intrusion.

"Ugh... glug..."

Just as the baby in the old priest's arms had grown completely cold and stiff, the light of hope in Kolen's eyes was about to go out, and Balon had instinctively taken half a step back, an extremely faint, bizarre sound came from the seawater-soaked bundle.

The old priest's arms jerked!

Then the tiny, purplish-blue body convulsed violently!

"Puh—cough, cough! Waaah—!"

The gray seaweed cloth burst open at one corner. A stream of murky seawater mixed with mucus shot from the baby's nose and mouth like a tiny fountain, splattering the unsuspecting old priest's face.

Then a real baby's cry, so piercing it hurt the ears, tore through the howling wind and rang out for everyone to hear!

"Waaah—!!"

The cry was full of shock and pain, but also the indescribable bewilderment of someone who had just escaped death.

The deathly silence around the altar shattered completely.

Kolen sucked in a sharp breath. His tall frame swayed, his face blanching before giving way to overwhelming joy and disbelief. He instinctively stepped forward. Twelve-year-old Balon looked stunned by the sudden cry. His little face had gone white, his eyes were wide, and he stood rooted in place. All his attempts at imitation and composure had vanished, leaving only a child's horror before something beyond his understanding. Captain Harrag let out a low gasp, and the younger priest trembled with excitement.

The despair on the old priest's face instantly turned to a manic flush. He shook all over. Raising the baby high above his head, he roared with all his strength, his voice warped by wild excitement and reverence as it echoed through the wind and waves:

"Behold, Ironborn! Behold! The Drowned God has shown his favor! He has bestowed a miracle!"

Icy seawater streamed down his raised arms, dripping onto the baby's heaving little chest, slick with mucus. The baby's cries gradually weakened, leaving only the rapid gasps of someone who had just escaped death. Under the horrified gazes of the onlookers, his newly opened eyes were two unsettling colors: the left was as black as an ancient well, deep enough to swallow all light; the right was a cold blue, like the clearest sea before a storm.

"The Drowned God has chosen this child!" The old priest's voice was a bloodcurdling, hoarse trumpet call, feverish with conviction. "He has granted our lord rebirth! This is the Drowned God incarnate, walking among men! The future hope of the Iron Islands! Proof that the dead do not die, but rise again, stronger than before!"

"The dead do not die, but rise again, stronger than before!" the old priest cried out again.

Captain Harrag and the younger priest followed, dropping to their knees in fervor and pressing their foreheads hard against the cold, slippery reef as they repeated the sacred prayer: "The dead do not die, but rise again, stronger than before!"

Kolen did not immediately kneel. He strode forward and all but snatched the baby, whose cries were fading and whose chest still heaved, from the old priest's hands. With rough fingers, he carefully wiped the sticky seawater and mucus from the baby's face. His fingertips trembled almost imperceptibly as they touched the little body, cold and slick to the touch. His gaze, as stern and keen as an old captain inspecting a sea chart that had survived a storm, swept over the baby's mismatched eyes: the left as black as an abyss that devoured all light, the right as blue as the fiercest sea before a storm. There was no warmth of fatherhood in his eyes, only a grave, complicated scrutiny, as though he had suddenly taken the future of the entire Iron Islands upon his shoulders.

Kolen Greyjoy's low voice drowned out the priest's fervor. He raised the crying, squirming baby high overhead and shouted with unquestionable authority and the exhilaration of one who had escaped death: "This is my son, a trueborn son of House Greyjoy—Euron Greyjoy!"

"Euron Greyjoy!" The others joined in, crying out his name to celebrate the birth of the Iron Islands' second son.

Kolen turned and handed Euron to Balon, instructing him, "Take your brother back to the castle. Wrap him in warm lambskin, then bring him to your mother."

Twelve-year-old Balon met the gaze of his mismatched-eyed brother in his arms, like a tiny reef frozen by the sea wind. He watched as his father took his brother, who had returned from the dead, from the priest. He saw the strange light in his father's eyes, a blend of joy and heavy concern unlike anything he had ever seen. He stared at his brother's unsettling, mismatched eyes. A cold, unfamiliar feeling, like a deep-sea current, passed through young Balon's heart for the first time. His feelings were tangled: excitement at the birth of a blood relative and at becoming a big brother for the first time, mixed with a vague wariness and resentment, as if his territory had been invaded and the attention he had once received stolen away.

Cold waves lapped at the reef altar. Murky seawater sloshed in its hollow, reflecting the prostrate priest and captain, the grave-faced lord Kolen cradling the baby, and the eldest son Balon standing apart on the shore, his expression shifting with conflicting emotions.

Deep within the tiny body that had just passed through life and death, two utterly different souls—Huang Zhengdao from another world, and Euron Greyjoy, who had died at birth—were slowly and irreversibly... merging in that cold, briny hell, in a manner both painful and uncanny. From the very first moment of his arrival, their fates had already been driven deep into the future of House Greyjoy. They hung over Kolen's heart, the father who sought reform yet clung to this "miracle," and quietly cast their first shadow over the still-young but hardening heart of his eldest son, Balon Greyjoy.