The Dead... Do Not Die

Huang Zhengdao's last memory was of the black wall in the South Sea that connected heaven and earth.

One moment, only muffled thunder rumbled deep within the lead-gray clouds, the sea breeze carrying a salty, damp mist across his skin, the water still undulating gently, supporting his lean, athletic physique. The next, the sky seemed to be torn apart by an invisible giant hand, and a curtain of ink-black rain poured down, bone-chilling and instantly blurring the world. The wind was no longer wind, but countless invisible, savage whips lashing the sea, raising ferocious wave crests. The once familiar and friendly sea had transformed into a roaring, churning beast, each wave carrying the force of a thousand pounds, smashing down, and greedily dragging him towards the abyss.

The will to survive burned in his bones and blood, squeezing every ounce of strength from his muscle fibers. Huang Zhengdao struggled to tread water, but every stroke felt like fighting through thick asphalt. The icy seawater poured into his nose and mouth, the salty taste rushing to his brain, nearly suffocating him. Mustering all his strength, he managed to break the surface, only for a particularly terrifying wave to crash down, pressing him fiercely underwater.

Huang Zhengdao's ears filled with a dull roar, and before his eyes was a murky darkness churning with countless bubbles. His lungs felt clamped tight in an iron vise, burning with pain. Relying on instinct, he desperately swam upwards, breaking through the heavy water curtain. Just as he touched a sliver of thin air, another, more insidious force seized him.

Less than a hundred meters from the golden beach, torn to shreds by the gale, the sea surface suddenly collapsed. A massive whirlpool, silently, opened its dark, gaping maw. The seawater spun and sank frantically, forming a bottomless funnel. The suction surpassed the limits of physics, carrying a soul-chilling greed. Huang Zhengdao felt his body lighten, all his struggles instantly becoming futile and laughable. He was yanked down by the irresistible force, like a helpless fallen leaf plummeting into a bottomless abyss.

The bone-chilling seawater squeezed in from all sides, his bones seeming to groan. The last bit of air in his lungs was ruthlessly expelled, turning into a string of desperate bubbles that quickly vanished into the increasingly dim light far above.

Absolute darkness embraced him, so heavy it was suffocating.

On the verge of consciousness extinguishing completely, in the depths of that ice-cold, dead silence that swallowed everything, a voice, or rather a thought, ancient as rock strata deposited over eons on the seabed, carrying the salty tang of sea rust and a certain inhuman grandeur, directly seared into his dissipating core consciousness:

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

"They shall... rise again..."

"Their might... even greater..."

The voice was not heard by his ears, but etched into his soul. It had no direction, no source, only a detached, eternal proclamation.

At the same instant, on the other side of the world, beneath the reef fortress of House Greyjoy on Pike Island, the heart of the Iron Islands, a biting sea wind shrieked past the jagged black rocks, whipping up icy spray that lashed the faces of the crowd standing on the shore. The air was thick with the unshakeable scent of sea salt, fish, and an almost palpable sense of grim finality.

At the center of the crowd was the patriarch of House Greyjoy, Corlys Greyjoy. He was tall, his face deeply etched by the sea wind and time, his eyes as hard as rock, yet carrying a hint of the nervousness and anticipation of a new father. Beside him stood his eldest son, Balon Greyjoy. Balon was only twelve years old, his frame slender but already showing the characteristic sharp features of the Greyjoy family. He tightly pursed his thin lips, his sharp eyes, inherited from his father, fixed intently ahead, striving to imitate his father's steady demeanor. However, his slightly clenched fists and somewhat rapid breathing betrayed his inner turmoil. This was the moment his younger brother was to be born and undergo his trial.

Only a few others were present: two solemn Drowned Priests, and Harrag, Corlys's most trusted captain's assistant.

The altar was a natural formation, a large rock hollow smoothed by the sea. It was currently filled with bone-chilling, frothing seawater.

The high priest, a Drowned Priest with white hair and beard, completely soaked, his eyes burning with fanatical fire, stood barefoot in waist-deep water. In his rough, bark-like hands, he held an infant wrapped in coarse, dark gray seaweed cloth—Corlys's second son, Euron Greyjoy, newly born into the world.

"Drowned God!" the old priest's voice was hoarse and high, piercing the howling sea wind. "Look down 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, stronger! Harder!"

The chant reached its peak. The old priest took a deep breath and plunged his arms down abruptly!

The icy seawater, carrying the scent of death, instantly engulfed the small swaddling clothes, submerging the newborn infant's tender, red face. There was no cry, only a few faint bubbles struggling to escape from the gaps in the cloth, only to vanish immediately.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

Time froze amidst the howling wind and waves. Patriarch Corlys involuntarily held his breath, his broad shoulders leaning forward slightly, his gaze fixed on the churning water, his tension evident in his furrowed brow and clenched fists. Twelve-year-old Balon didn't dare blink, his small body rigid as stone, his fingernails almost digging into his palms. Captain Harrag's expression was grim, his hand resting on the hilt of his dagger. Another, younger priest nervously swallowed.

Fine beads of sweat appeared on the old priest's forehead, mingling with the icy seawater and trickling down. He felt the struggle in the small body in his arms completely cease, becoming cold and limp, like a dead fish dredged from the deep sea. A heavy despair began to spread in his fanatical eyes.

Cold, darkness, suffocation... Huang Zhengdao felt himself being crushed, dissolved, his consciousness like a wisp of smoke about to dissipate. Just as his consciousness was about to vanish entirely, the suction from the abyss that had dragged him into the whirlpool suddenly reversed!

It was as if an invisible giant hand had reached into the icy abyss, precisely grasped his remnant soul, and then, with an irresistible force that tore through everything, yanked him outwards!

Boom!

Not a sound, but an indescribable, violent collision and compression on a spiritual level.

He felt himself being forcibly crammed into an extremely narrow, cold, rigid container that was rapidly losing its last vestiges of life. A violent sense of rejection, like billions of red-hot steel needles, pierced every crevice of his soul. Strange nerve endings transmitted a sense of near-death suffocation, coldness, and a faint, yet extremely unwilling, primal rage consciousness frantically gnawed and resisted his intrusion.

"Ugh... Gulp..."

Just as the infant's body in the old priest's arms grew completely cold and stiff, as the light of hope in Corlys's eyes was about to extinguish, and as Balon subconsciously took half a step back, a faint, peculiar sound came from the seawater-soaked swaddling clothes.

The old priest's arm trembled violently!

Immediately after, the small, purplish body convulsed violently!

"Pfft—cough! Wah—!"

A corner of the gray seaweed cloth was abruptly torn open, and a stream of murky seawater mixed with mucus shot out from the infant's mouth and nose like a small fountain! It sprayed the startled old priest full in the face.

Then, a true infant's cry, so loud it was piercing, tore through the howling sea wind and exploded in everyone's ears!

"Waaa—!!"

The cry was filled with terror, pain, and an ineffable bewilderment of having survived.

The deathly silence around the altar was completely shattered.

Patriarch Corlys gasped sharply, his tall body swaying. The color drained from his face instantly, only to be replaced by overwhelming joy and disbelief. He instinctively took a step forward. Twelve-year-old Balon, however, seemed stunned by the sudden cry, his small face pale, his eyes wide open, his body frozen in place. All pretense of imitation and composure vanished, leaving only the shock of a child facing something beyond comprehension. Captain Harrag let out a low exclamation, and the younger priest shivered with excitement.

The despair on the old priest's face was instantly replaced by an almost frenzied crimson. He trembled uncontrollably. He abruptly lifted the infant high above his head and roared with all his might, his voice distorted by extreme excitement and awe, echoing in the wind and waves:

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

Cold seawater streamed down his uplifted arm, dripping onto the infant's rapidly heaving, mucus-covered little chest. The infant's cries gradually weakened, leaving only rapid, post-survival gasps. His newly opened eyes, under everyone's horrified gaze, displayed a heart-stopping heterochromia—the left eye was a pure black, deep as an ancient well, seeming to absorb all light; the right eye, was a cold, azure blue, like the purest sea surface on the eve of a storm.

"The Drowned God has chosen this child!" the old priest's voice was like a bleeding horn, fervent and hoarse. "Granting our Lord rebirth! This is the Drowned God's avatar walking among men! The future hope of the Iron Islands! Proof that the dead do not die, but shall rise again!"

"The dead do not die, but shall rise again, their might even greater!" the old priest roared again himself.

Captain Harrag and the younger priest excitedly prostrated themselves, their foreheads heavily striking the cold, slippery reef, repeating the sacred incantation: "The dead do not die, but shall rise again, their might even greater!"

Patriarch Corlys did not immediately kneel. He strode forward and almost snatched the crying, flailing infant, whose cries were weakening and chest heaving, from the old priest's hands. His rough fingers carefully wiped the sticky seawater and mucus from the infant's face. As his fingertips touched the cold, slippery little body, there was an imperceptible tremor. His gaze, like the most experienced captain scrutinizing a sea chart after a storm, swept gravely and sharply over the infant's heterochromatic eyes—the left like the abyss-black that swallowed all light, the right like the fiercest sea-blue before a storm. There was no paternal tenderness in them, only a heavy scrutiny, as if he instantly bore the future of the entire Iron Islands.

Corlys Greyjoy's deep voice, overpowering the priest's fervor, lifted the loudly crying, squirming infant high above his head, and with undeniable authority and the excitement of survival, he shouted: "This is my son, the Iron Seed of House Greyjoy, Euron Greyjoy!"

"Euron Greyjoy!" others echoed the name, celebrating the birth of the second son of the Iron Islands.

Corlys turned and handed Euron to Balon, instructing, "Take your brother back to the castle, wrap him warmly in lambskin, and then give him to your mother."

Twelve-year-old Balon met his heterochromatic brother's gaze. He was like a small reef frozen by the sea wind. He watched as his father took his resurrected brother from the priest's hands, saw the complex mixture of ecstasy and heavy worry in his father's eyes that he had never seen before. He looked at his brother's strange, unsettling heterochromatic eyes, and a cold, unfamiliar feeling, like a deep-sea current, quietly washed over the young Balon's heart for the first time. His emotions were complex; the excitement of a blood relative's birth and being a brother for the first time, coupled with a vague sense of vigilance and rejection, as if his territory had been invaded and his attention stolen.

Icy waves crashed against the reef altar, and murky water sloshed in the hollow, reflecting the prostrate priests and captain, reflecting Patriarch Corlys holding the infant with a grave expression, and also reflecting the eldest son Balon, standing alone on the shore, his eyes shifting with complex emotions.

Deep within that small body, which had just experienced a cycle of life and death, two distinct souls—Huang Zhengdao from another world and Euron Greyjoy, who had died at birth—were in this cold, salty hell, in a painful and bizarre manner, slowly and irreversibly... merging. Their fates, from the very moment of their arrival, were deeply embedded in the future of House Greyjoy, weighing on the heart of their father Corlys, who sought reform but embraced "miracles," and quietly casting the first shadow upon the still tender but already hardening heart of his eldest son, Balon Greyjoy.