Valyrian steel armor

Aegon dragged his injured leg through the eternal darkness, leaning on his long blade as he struggled onward.

The passage beneath his feet sloped upward, nothing like the cramped rat tunnel he had imagined.

Instead, it was extraordinarily wide and lofty. An immense blackstone vault vanished into the deep darkness overhead like the ribs of a dragon, as though he were walking inside the remains of some prehistoric beast.

Silence was the sole ruler here, so dense it could crush his eardrums.

Only his own ragged breathing, the pounding of his heart, and the rustle of his injured leg dragging across the floor broke it, making the deathly stillness all the more suffocating.

Every step sent a deep, piercing ache through the fracture in his left shin. Cold sweat had long since soaked his underclothes.

He dared not stop. The golden dot on the system interface blinked steadily somewhere ahead, drawing ever closer.

Fragments of the Torregar survivor's memories replayed in his mind.

Those broken directions, the markings of possible traps, and... the vague location of the family's "legacy."

It was almost his only hope amid the despair.

That eerie rustling followed him like a shadow. It came from no fixed direction, seeming instead to permeate the air and flow along the stone walls.

Aegon forced himself to blame it on air whistling through countless holes, but the keen perception granted by his exceptionally high Spirit attribute kept sounding shrill warnings-something, countless things filled with malice, lurked in the darkness beyond the light, licking his back with their cold "gazes."

His violet eyes were sharp as a hawk's in the gloom, constantly scanning every turn and patch of shadow ahead.

Suddenly, Aegon stopped short, pressed himself against the cold, damp stone wall, and held his breath.

A new sound came from beyond the corner ahead-not wind, but the sticky noise of something wet and slippery dragging itself slowly along, punctuated by faint clicks like bone scraping against bone.

An indescribable smell drifted toward him, mingling sulfur with a deeper, rank stench.

Aegon's hair stood on end. That familiar feeling of being watched reached an unbearable peak.

Without a moment's hesitation, he followed his instincts and slipped swiftly and silently into the shadow of a vast crack in the stone beside him, making himself as inconspicuous as possible.

The sound drew closer, lingered at the corner for a moment, then slowly receded.

Only when the sensation had vanished completely did Aegon slowly release a stale breath. Cold sweat had almost soaked through his undershirt.

He proceeded with even greater caution.

At last, at the end of the passage, an enormous black door made of neither metal nor stone barred his way.

There were no decorations on it, only a deep palm-shaped recess at its center.

Aegon stared at the recess, and something stirred deep within his blood.

Recalling a fragmentary ritual scene from the death replay, he hesitated briefly, then slowly pressed his palm, smeared with mud and dried blood, into it.

The great door slid silently to one side without making the slightest sound.

The sight beyond it caught Aegon's breath.

The hidden chamber was vaster than he could have imagined. Rather than a room, it was more like a forgotten underground hall.

Enormous stone pillars, each requiring five or six people to encircle it, supported a seemingly endless vault hidden in darkness. The air carried the cold stillness of a place sealed away for a thousand years.

The floor was paved with enormous, smoothly polished obsidian slabs, reflective enough to mirror a person.

At the center of the hall, two objects stood quietly upon a circular stone dais raised well above the floor.

The first to catch Aegon's eye was a suit of full plate armor hanging from a metal stand at the center of the dais.

The armor was a deep, dark black, yet beneath the starlight, a dusky red sheen rippled across it like water. It was the legendary Valyrian steel.

Its design lacked the bulk and clumsiness of the knightly plate armor common in Westeros.

Instead, its lines were fluid and sharp. The pauldrons had been cleverly shaped into roaring dragon heads, while intricate patterns of flames and dragon scales, seemingly formed by nature, adorned the breastplate. The joints were ingeniously connected, offering protection without compromising flexibility.

It radiated a sense of quiet, formidable power.

Beside the armor, a strange horn lay flat on the stone dais.

Its material resembled both black jade and some kind of metal. Bands of red gold and dark steel wound around its surface, engraved with twisting Valyrian runes that seemed alive.

Even lying motionless, it radiated pulses of ancient magic that made his heart tremble. The horn's opening was unfathomably dark, as though it led straight into some burning abyss.

A suspicion rose in his heart-

Is this Dragonbinder?

Aegon's heart began to race.

Suppressing his excitement, he stumbled onto the dais.

First, he cautiously touched the Valyrian steel armor. It felt cool and smooth beneath his fingertips, faintly resonating with the cursed blood within him.

His sodden clothing and armor were steadily draining his body heat. Aegon hesitated no longer and, quickly but with difficulty, stripped off his filthy, tattered old armor and cold, wet clothes.

He could not help shivering when his skin touched the cold lining.

But as he put on the steel armor piece by piece-greaves, thigh plates, faulds, breastplate, arm guards, gauntlets, pauldrons... and finally donned the ferocious-looking enclosed dragon-head helmet, which left only his eyes and chin exposed-an indescribable sensation spread throughout his body.

The armor was astonishingly light, like a second skin, yet it felt utterly indestructible.

The lingering chill and damp were shut out completely, and his body temperature rose rapidly.

More wondrous still, the severe pain in his left leg and the aching exhaustion throughout his body seemed to ease considerably.

He walked over to a relatively smooth obsidian wall that could faintly reflect his image.

In the reflection, a figure stood tall and imposing, covered from head to toe in heavy dragon-scale armor of interwoven black and dark red. The dragon-head pauldrons reared proudly toward the sky, and only a pair of violet eyes burning with cold fire showed.

The bedraggled silver-haired boy had vanished. In his place stood a majestic, dangerous warrior from the ancient age of the Dragonlords.

Just then, footsteps and a clamor of voices approached from the distance, shattering the hall's silence!

Aegon's heart skipped a beat.

He instantly extinguished the torch in his hand. Moving like lightning, he swiftly tucked Dragonbinder into the shadows of an inconspicuous crevice beneath the dais.

Then he retreated swiftly, pressing himself into the shadows of the innermost corner of the stone chamber, his hand settling on the hilt of the long blade at his waist.

Even though this ordinary steel seemed meaningless beside Valyrian steel.