Malice

Aegon's fingertips slid over the rough rock wall. Torchlight flickered in the passage, illuminating scenes on the murals that had remained unchanged for a thousand years, making them seem as though they had happened yesterday.

Like a ghost wandering through a corridor of time, he silently watched the rise and fall of the family named Torregar.

Everything he had seen so far depicted the family's overbearing glory-dragons soaring from the Fourteen Flames, dragonriders leading vast fleets to conquer one land after another.

The Torregar family's sigil, a fearsome dragon with a sea monster clamped in its jaws, appeared in every corner of the Essos coastline.

The Valyrians in the murals stood with their heads high and chests proud, their eyes filled with contempt for other peoples. They wrote their epic of conquest in fire and blood.

Yet when Aegon rounded a corner and stopped before the next mural, its tone took an abrupt turn.

This section was badly damaged. Wide patches of flaking paint and cracks seemed to hint that history itself could not bear to look back.

From the surviving images, Aegon could only piece together the outline of a tragedy: the Torregar family had just won an overwhelming victory over the Rhoynar, their dragons burning rivers and cities.

Before the joy of victory had faded, the scene shifted to a sky thick with dark clouds.

Under cover of those clouds, a dragon whose scales gleamed with the cold luster of moonlight appeared without a sound. In what was almost an ambush, it lunged at the Torregar family's largest dragon.

Then more dragons plunged from the clouds, and a savagely brutal battle unfolded in the sky.

Dragonfire crisscrossed, scales shattered, and dragonriders fell from on high like rain.

Aegon bent down, carefully deciphering the nearly erased inscription beneath the mural. The words carved in High Valyrian seethed with bitter hatred:

"Sylvis... treachery... this vengeance... repaid a hundredfold..."

Clearly, the Torregar family had been betrayed by another dragonlord family within Valyria-most likely the Sylvis family.

This civil war had inflicted devastating losses on the family's elite.

Perhaps this was why the Valyrian dragonlords had let Nymeria go, allowing her to lead the surviving Rhoynar out of Essos and across the sea to Dorne.

The dragonlords had been too busy fighting one another to bother with such insignificant remnants.

Aegon continued onward. The murals that followed were even more fragmented.

He saw the sigil representing the Torregar family grow dim, their lands left in ruins, and nests once piled with dragon eggs plundered bare.

The surviving family members had been forced to abandon their holdings in the heart of Valyria and migrate to the fringes of the Valyrian Freehold-the very desolate ruins where Aegon now stood.

Once dragonlords, they had fallen this far. The murals were steeped in the sorrow and defiance of heroes brought to their end.

As the party ventured deeper, the air grew thick and heavy. Mixed with the sulfur was a faint, nauseating, sweet metallic odor, like old, crusted blood.

The style of the next murals changed abruptly, shifting from the solemn recording of history to something frenzied and uncanny.

The lines became twisted and hurried, the colors dominated by dark red and ink black. The murals began to revolve around one central theme-the resurrection of the Progenitor Dragon, "Torregar."

A dragon that shared the family's name.

Or perhaps their name had come from that dragon.

It reminded Aegon of the mural called "Sea Burner."

The writing, too, became hopelessly disordered, its words jumbled and filled with obsessive delusions.

"Progenitor... not dead... slumbering... beneath our feet..."

"...Key of Life... only a sea of blood... can awaken glory..."

"Sacrifice... the blood of thousands... forge the path to rebirth..."

An enormous mural covered an entire rock wall, depicting a horrifying scene: countless people-soldiers and commoners, judging by their clothes, but no slaves-were bound to execution frames. Sharp blades slit their throats, and their blood flowed like streams into an immense underground lake.

At the center of the lake, the faint outline of a dragon rose and sank in the bloody water.

On the other side, heaps of corpses were thrown into roaring flames as offerings to a mysterious power.

He reached out to wipe dust from the mural, accidentally cutting his finger on a sharp protrusion of rock. A crimson bead of blood welled from the tiny wound.

In an instant, an indescribable chill seized him.

It was not the cold of a low temperature, but a chill rising from the depths of his soul.

Every hair on his body stood on end. The little figures bled dry as sacrifices in the mural seemed to come alive, countless hate-filled eyes fixing on him.

From the mural, from the empty air, from deep within the stone beneath his feet, that hatred seemed ready to take physical form and devour him alive.

He seemed to hear the dying wails and curses of countless souls. The heavy stench of blood nearly suffocated him.

He felt as though the invisible malice would freeze his blood. He stood rigid, unable to move.

"Boss?" "Hayne!"

Henry and Carl noticed Aegon's strange condition almost simultaneously. The silver-haired boy, usually frighteningly calm, was deathly pale, his pupils contracted and his body trembling almost imperceptibly. Both tried to rush forward without a second thought.

"Stop!" An Ironborn barred their way with his blade, his face wearing its customary ferocity.

"Let them through."

Euron Greyjoy's voice rang out, quiet but leaving no room for argument.

His lone eye studied the rigid Aegon with interest, then swept over the frenzied murals. His blue-purple lips curved in an amused smile.

He waved a hand. Though puzzled, the Ironborn obeyed and stepped aside.

Henry and Carl immediately rushed to Aegon's side.

Henry clumsily took Aegon's arm. Feeling his taut muscles, he whispered urgently, "What's wrong? What did you see?" Carl was more guarded. She placed one hand on Aegon's shoulder, trying to lend him strength, while her other hand rested on the cleaver at her waist. Her sharp gaze swept their surroundings, watching the murals and Euron's every movement in particular.

Under his companions' touch and calls, the illusory malice surging over him like a tide gradually receded. Aegon drew a sudden, ragged breath, like a drowning man finally breaking the surface. Cold sweat had soaked his back.

"What was that? What happened?"

He gasped in the decay-tainted air.

He shook his head to indicate that he was all right, but could no longer tear his gaze from the murals depicting blood sacrifices.

Euron strolled slowly forward and stopped beside Aegon, joining him in studying the mural of the vast blood lake.

"It seems... our 'True Blood' dragonlord left us more than an empty tomb." Crow's Eye's voice slid against his ear, slick as a venomous snake. "Tell me, silver-haired boy, what else did these pictures tell you? For instance, how to complete this... interesting ritual?"

Aegon drew a deep breath, forcing himself to pull free of that spine-chilling resonance.

He met Euron's probing gaze, his eyes calm once more, though a barely perceptible sharpness lay deep within them.

Aegon's mind was like a current beneath the ice, placid on the surface while rapidly weighing the gains and losses of every move below.

"What this mural depicts is an extremely ancient and dangerous Valyrian Blood Sacrifice Ritual." Aegon's voice was steady, betraying no emotion.

He pointed to the blood gathering into a lake in the mural and the dragon-shaped outline at its center.

"They believed that by sacrificing vast numbers of lives-note that everyone in the mural is a soldier or commoner, not a slave-and channeling their life force into a particular 'vessel,' they could awaken or create some powerful being. Such as... their fallen dragon."

He paused, deliberately looking away from the mural. His gaze passed over Corlyon, who stood nearby with a pale face and feverish eyes, before returning to Euron.

"As for the method... the inscriptions are vague, full of fantasies and madness. But one thing is clear." Aegon deliberately stressed his words, giving them an unmistakable note of warning. "This ritual is far more than simple slaughter."

It required a particular location, a particular bloodline to guide it, and perhaps even precise control over the energies of the stars and the veins of the earth.

One misstep might bring not power, but utter destruction and a backlash.

The Torregar family's final downfall might well have been connected to this.

Aegon had not entirely lied. Instead, he had deftly wrapped the truth in warnings.

He hinted at the ritual's complexity and danger, both displaying his knowledge and laying the groundwork for any conflict that might follow-if Euron insisted on attempting it, he would very likely fail, perhaps even unleashing catastrophic consequences.

"As for how I know all this..." The faintest smile curved Aegon's lips, deliberately tinged with self-mockery, more convincing than either a direct admission or denial. "Ancient records sometimes survive in unexpected places, waiting for someone who can understand them."

"My family... once dabbled in this forbidden knowledge as well. The price was steep."

He deftly obscured his Targaryen heritage, hinting that he came from some equally ancient but fallen Valyrian branch. It explained the source of his knowledge without directly exposing his identity.

Crow's Eye's lone eye, cloudy as a dead fish's, gleamed with murky greed. "It seems this journey won't disappoint me."

"Keep moving."