He felt his way forward, as though "reading" the darkness firsthand through his body's sense of touch.
The cave's upward slope gave Aegon a faint glimmer of hope.
At least the direction was clear.
The air remained cold and clammy, but the oppressive heaviness pooled below, thick with blood and decay, was beginning to ease.
After another upward climb, the ground felt different beneath his feet.
It was no longer natural rock or the rough hollows bored out by creatures, but flat, evenly laid flagstones.
He had entered a passage clearly built by human hands.
He brought closer the makeshift torch he had just fashioned, lighting it with dry strips torn from his clothes.
The walls were familiar black dragonstone, their surfaces polished smooth. Even beneath a thousand years of dust, he could still sense the precision of the original craftsmanship.
This had to be the underground section of those magnificent castle ruins, perhaps a cellar, perhaps a passage linking different areas.
Silence.
There was only his own subdued breathing, the tapping of his crutch, and the faint sound of his long blade occasionally touching the floor.
Thick dust covered the ground, marked by a jumble of footprints, some fresh, others old.
Several dark red bloodstains, not yet fully clotted, led deeper inside like intermittent trail markers.
Apparently, more than one person had awakened before him and found this route, and someone was injured, or... dragging someone else's blood along with them.
There were few branches in the passage, and he followed the system's guidance strictly.
The golden point of light drew closer and closer, but its proximity brought no reassurance. Instead, his heart beat faster.
Where exactly were "they," the things the warning had called "within reach"?
He rounded a corner into a slightly wider space, something like the entrance to a small side chamber or storeroom.
Beside a heap of decayed debris in the corner, its original form unrecognizable, Aegon spotted a skeleton.
It was unlike the scattered bones he had seen along the way.
Relatively intact, it sat propped against the wall, dressed in clothing that, though old and tattered, still bore traces of its former splendor.
What caught Aegon's attention was a Heraldry emblem embroidered in silver thread on the chest, now badly tarnished and blackened—a savage dragon's head holding a twisted, many-legged sea monster in its jaws.
The Torregar family crest he had seen earlier in the mural.
Aegon's pupils contracted slightly.
A member of the Torregar family had died deep beneath the ruins of their own home.
He approached cautiously, holding up the torch.
The flickering firelight illuminated the long-desiccated skin of the face and its hollow eye sockets.
The instant the firelight shone into the skull's empty eyes-
Cold.
Not the chill of the underground, but a familiar, icy shudder that burst directly from the depths of his soul.
His vision blurred at once, wrenching away.
Fragments of Death Echo stabbed sharply into his consciousness.
...An uproar.
No, it was the wailing and sobbing of countless people, united in utter despair.
The cloying stench of blood was suffocatingly thick, mingled with sulfur and the reek of burning.
The viewpoint was somewhat low.
Swaying, running, like a child who had slipped away without telling his elders and ventured somewhere he should never have come.
Within his vision.
Someone wore a magnificent robe embroidered with the sea monster and dragon Heraldry, a head of silver hair strikingly conspicuous.
An ancient scroll rested in his hands, his fingertips white from the force of his grip.
The gaze passed through a tall, sinister gallery. On either side stood circular cages with unfathomable depths, crowded figures pressing against the bars, countless arms reaching out like damned souls struggling in hell.
Sobbing, pleading, cursing.
"For the glory of Torregar!" someone shouted in the distance, his voice trembling with fanaticism.
"Mommy... Mommy..." A faint, childish cry pierced the din.
The gaze swept past by chance. In a nearby cage, a young mother with a grime-covered face clutched her toddler tightly, huddling futilely in a corner as she tried to shield the child's eyes from the horrifying sights outside with her body.
The child's little hands gripped his mother's ragged clothes desperately.
The movement did not pause.
It did not even slow.
There was nothing in his heart but the ancient words recorded on the scroll, nothing but an almost insane longing to "awaken the progenitor."
Those cries... were merely a necessary harmony.
They were fuel.
The gaze reached the edge of a vast circular altar.
Below lay a churning pool of dark red blood, bubbling as potent life essence and death-born resentment seethed and intertwined within it.
At the center of the pool, an enormous shadow slowly rose and fell.
The figure on the raised platform waved a hand.
...The sacrifice began.
There were armored soldiers and civilians herded in from the other side... They were lined up, pushed onto the platform, their throats slit, their blood drained.
Warm life flowed in streams into the pool.
The mother and toddler were dragged over as well. The mother cried out hoarsely, crushing the child against her chest.
The executioner frowned, apparently finding her a nuisance. He snatched the child away and tossed him aside, then deftly slit the woman's throat.
Blood sprayed.
The child fell to the ground and watched uncomprehendingly as his mother collapsed in convulsions, as the red spread toward him and soaked his tiny palms.
He was stunned with terror, forgetting even to cry.
The executioner reached for the child...
Just then-
Without warning, the earth beneath their feet shook violently! Ten times, a hundred times more fiercely than any previous volcanic disturbance!
The heavens seemed to roar. From the distance came an unending series of terrifying crashes, as though mountains were collapsing and the earth splitting apart.
It was the Fourteen Flames!
They were not erupting. They were... exploding!
Perhaps even the gods were enraged by this crime and had sent down divine punishment.
"The Doom! It's the Doom!" Fanaticism turned to boundless terror.
The crowd went utterly mad, trampling one another.
Even the soldiers maintaining order threw down their weapons.
The blood pool boiled violently, as though the thing beneath it had been awakened and enraged by this sudden upheaval of heaven and earth.
The shadow within the pool writhed frantically, unleashing a soundless roar.
A vast consciousness, filled with malice and hunger and mingled with the lingering souls of countless freshly slain sacrifices, swept outward like a storm beyond all control!
"No-! The ritual isn't finished!" The silver-haired man on the platform roared in defiance, trying to approach the blood pool and complete the final step.
But it was already too late.
Those dead souls, forcibly gathered and then left without guidance when the ritual was interrupted, were swept up by the Progenitor Dragon's lingering, brutal will and became something horrifying.
The first people they lunged at were those beside the altar wearing clothing bearing the Torregar Heraldry—those "chief celebrants"!
"Why... we're your..." Before the figure on the platform could finish, the cold, formless sea of dead souls swallowed him.
The vision shook and spun, as though someone were dragging him away from this hell.
The last things he saw were countless twisted faces filled with bitter, bone-deep hatred, and the toddler lying in a pool of blood, his eyes empty...
Someone about his own age, yet with an utterly opposite fate...
Before you continue