Backstab

As the party pressed deeper into the silent ruins, the sense that something was wrong grew stronger in Aegon's heart.

At first, the gateways and halls on the outskirts, though crumbling, still allowed a Dragon to pass with its head held high.

For all their terrifying scale, they at least retained traces of habitation, offering glimpses of the proportions and daily life of a bygone age-even if that life had belonged to inhuman Dragonlords.

He had heard the legends of Harrenhal, but beside this place, it could surely only pale into insignificance.

Yet the deeper they ventured, the more a wholly different order began to reveal its hideous face, cold and efficient, replacing the glory of the past.

The ground seemed to have been hollowed out by some enormous, invisible hand. In its place stood vast circular enclosures, so immense they stole the breath, divided by towering, sinister walls of stone as black as night.

They stood in orderly rows, spaced apart, as though the earth had been carved into a cold, intricate stone maze whose sole purpose seemed to be dividing the vast space, imprisoning it, turning it into livestock pens.

Looking down from their present height, they saw the bottoms of the enclosures sink into dense shadows that the torchlight could not dispel. Their depth was impossible to judge; they offered only a dreadful sense of plunging straight into the heart of the earth.

Deep grooves were carved into the floors of the pens-blood channels, each winding like veins writhing in their death throes. They converged at last and fed into dark pipes in the walls that looked as though they had lain dry for countless ages, leading up to silent stone dragon heads, their mouths forever open, as if still awaiting the next torrent.

Amid that vast, unsettling scene, a few human skeletons lay scattered along the edges of the enclosure floors where the light could barely reach, like forgotten scraps. One was especially jarring-its finger bones were dug deep into cracks in the stone wall, its entire frame still stretched upward in a climbing posture, frozen in the last moment of life. As though, even after its flesh had melted away, that last defiant fragment of its soul still sought to escape the smooth, sheer cliff whose top lay beyond sight.

Within that inhuman, merciless cage of massive stone and yawning abysses, those traces of one insignificant individual's struggle seemed at once utterly trivial and profoundly horrifying.

Only then did Aegon fully realize that the road beneath their feet, broad enough for several riders abreast, was no safe thoroughfare at all. It was the top of this cage's enormous wall. They were walking along the "walltop" of a prison of unprecedented size.

"Boss, there's something seriously wrong with this place," Carl said, moving closer to Aegon and unconsciously rubbing her arms, trying to banish that inexplicable chill. "Outside, it was like being thrown into a furnace. How come it suddenly turned so cold the moment we came in?"

"It's not the kind of cold that cuts to the bone," Henry said beside them, holding his great hammer and lowering his voice. "It's just... there's wind coming from somewhere, and it keeps making my spine tingle. Gives me the creeps."

"Oh, please. With enough blubber on you to rival a hibernating mountain bear, you can still feel cold?" Carl shot back out of habit, though much of her usual glib expression had faded, and her eyes were wary.

Henry's plump face reddened at the jab, but he did not argue as he normally would. He merely tightened his grip on the hammer's haft.

Aegon's expression remained calm as his gaze slowly swept across the deep prison pens on either side.

The scenes from the murals flashed through his mind-hundreds of thousands of sacrifices had once been held here.

Now it stood empty and deathly silent, leaving only this stone structure, so vast it inspired despair, and the handful of skeletons that happened to catch their eyes below.

Where had all the lives that once crowded this place gone? The answer had long since been written in the blood channels and pipes leading toward the dragon heads. Sinister?

It was far more than sinister.

It was the fear and resentment condensed from the final moments of hundreds of thousands of desperate lives, an echo that had not fully faded even after a thousand years.

"Stay alert. Less talking, and watch your footing." As Aegon spoke, he reached out and hauled Henry back into the center of the road. The man seemed drawn to the sight below the enclosure walls and had been about to lean over the edge. "Who knows how many years this place has been abandoned? The stone's probably crumbling by now. Unless you want to fall and end up a smear of pulp, keep your eyes and feet where they belong."

He paused, his expression growing graver, and glanced swiftly back at the formation of the party.

Most of the men had already stepped onto this seemingly suspended "wall" road. The mercenaries led the way, while Euron Greyjoy and his Ironborn followed at a distance that felt oppressively close.

Corlyon, however, had somehow fallen far behind everyone else. He had practically stopped at the beginning of the passage, in the safe area where it joined seamlessly with the solid rock of the mountainside, without taking another step forward.

Why was he staying so far back on his own? An invisible alarm suddenly rang in Aegon's mind.

This was certainly not someone lagging behind out of fear or exhaustion. That distance had been calculated. It was a deliberately maintained vantage point, detached from events and absolutely safe.

Aegon's boots struck the rough, uneven stone paving, their echoes unnaturally clear amid the vast, empty chasms.

His gaze was sharp, like that of the most cautious scout, as he carefully examined the unusually broad "wall" passage beneath his feet and the bottomless cages on either side, which seemed capable of swallowing even torchlight and faintly exuded the smell of ancient blood and decay.

The entire party of nearly a thousand stretched into a long column, like an enormous snake slowly slithering forward. Against the inhuman scale of the structure, even the burning torches in their hands seemed weak and flickering, illuminating only a few steps ahead.

A sense of instability rooted in the structure itself, a warning of weakness in its very construction.

It coiled around his heart like a cold vine-this did not feel like a road meant for walking, but rather the top of an enormous floodgate spanning an abyss, its balance delicate and dangerous.

The party continued its difficult advance along that deeply unsettling "wall."

The torchlight struggled fiercely, yet could never truly dispel the darkness below, thick as ink.

Wind howled and spiraled upward from the unseen depths of the abyss, bringing more than the chill of low temperatures.

There was something... else. Low, distorted roars, neither human nor beast, were borne along, torn apart, and amplified by the currents, mingling with the wind, fading in and out.

The sound seemed like the pained groaning of some ancient being deep within the earth's crust, or like the countless wronged souls imprisoned here.

Their endless collective wailing at the end of time climbed the cold stone walls, burrowed into everyone's ears, and gnawed at their taut nerves.

"D-down there! There's definitely something down there!" A mercenary walking near the edge of the column, unable to resist peering below, suddenly cried out in a distorted voice, trembling uncontrollably.

He stared fixedly into the light-devouring darkness beneath his feet, his pupils widening, as though the darkness itself were writhing and would thrust out countless pale, swollen arms in the next instant to drag everything along the edge down into it.

That startled cry was like cold water splashing into boiling oil. Tension and terror erupted at once, spreading through the crowd like a plague.

Everyone, mercenaries and fierce Ironborn alike, instinctively scrambled toward the center of the road, crowding against one another. Sweaty hands clenched weapons so tightly that their knuckles turned white.

Henry and Carl stepped forward almost simultaneously, one on either side, guarding Aegon like the most loyal bulwarks. They even held their breath, every muscle taut as iron.

At that moment, when all else fell silent save the dreadful howling of the wind and the pounding of hearts, when the indescribable noises from the abyss beneath their feet held everyone's minds in a relentless grip, and all attention was fixed on that darkness that seemed to be gestating monsters-

An exceedingly faint sound, utterly unlike the sobbing wind and distant roars, suddenly pierced the surrounding noise like a cold steel needle, reaching Aegon's ears with unerring precision, sharpened as they were by his utter vigilance.