The Mountain's head rolled across the ground, where dust mingled with pools of blood, his lifeless eyes staring up at the gray sky.
Thick, dark red blood gushed from the bowl-wide stump of his neck, spreading unchecked and staining the center of Duskendale's square a horrifying crimson.
The deafening clash of battle, the dying roars, the sharp ring of sword against armor-all fell abruptly silent.
Silence weighed on every heart like a cold boulder. Only the low murmur of wind sweeping through blood and dust faintly mingled with stifled sobs in the distance.
This stillness was far more suffocating than the din. Even breathing had to be soft, as though one breath too loud might bring utter destruction.
On the platform, Tyrion Lannister stood frozen. His legs felt filled with lead, yet stripped of all strength, barely able to support his small body.
His heart had been seized brutally from the clouds of elation and hurled into a bottomless abyss, where it thrashed and convulsed coldly in his chest.
He had weathered countless storms in his life, schemed over royal power, toyed with nobles, and skirted death time and again. Yet never had his emotions swung as wildly as they had just now.
When Aegon first declared that he was the judgment, Tyrion had thought he would trample guest right, heedless of what the world thought, and reduce him, Cersei, and every Lannister banner and soldier in the square to ash with a single dragon's breath.
In that instant, despair had swallowed him like an icy sea, freezing even his soul.
Yet Aegon had offered a trial by combat.
Amid boundless terror, he had glimpsed a chance to live!
Elation had burst through his reason like molten rock. He had almost laughed aloud.
He had believed the Mountain invincible, believed