Bloodflame 2

The violent tremors came not from a single fissure, but from the cascading collapse of the entire hall.

The massive stone pillars supporting the vast dome began to tilt and crumble amid a teeth-grating chorus of cracks.

The first was the pillar farthest from Aegon and the densest ranks of the Ironborn.

It snapped in the middle, its upper half crashing down with overwhelming force, instantly crushing several Ironborn and mercenaries who failed to dodge into pulp.

"It's collapsing! It's coming down! Run!" Someone let out a piercing scream amid the chaos.

But this was only the beginning.

Like toppling dominoes, more pillars snapped and fell, one after another.

Enormous slabs of obsidian peeled away from the dome and plunged like meteors, gouging deep craters in the floor and sending dust billowing everywhere.

The entire roof of the hall collapsed at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Henry, Carl, and the others stood beneath a relatively fragile arch near the edge of the hall.

A huge rock smashed through the arch, triggering a localized collapse that, by sheer chance, exposed the sky outside.

Though it might have been no more than faint daylight filtering through a vast cavern above, or another underground space.

Falling boulders, broken pillars, and earth instantly cut them off from Aegon, forming an impassable wall of rubble.

"Hayne!!" Henry's eyes bulged with anguish. He tried to hurl his heavy body toward the rubble, but Carl and another mercenary held him fast.

He struggled and roared, watching helplessly as Aegon and the Ironborn surrounding him were swallowed completely by more falling rocks and shattered sections of the dome, vanishing into the thunderous roar and dust.

"Go! Hurry! This whole place is coming down!" Carl's voice was hoarse, almost pleading, as she pointed toward the exit the collapse had happened to expose.

The handful of surviving mercenaries dragged the nearly crazed Henry along without giving him a choice, stumbling toward their only way out.

When Henry looked back one last time, all he saw were boulders still crashing down and the completely buried center of the palace.

Aegon's figure had vanished entirely behind the veil of death.

Meanwhile, beneath the rubble.

Aegon lay half-buried in broken stone. His Valyrian steel armor had protected his vital organs, but the impact had battered his insides, and blood finally seeped from the corner of his mouth.

He pushed the rocks aside with difficulty and surveyed his surroundings.

Apart from the Ironborn corpses strewn across the floor, all that remained were a dozen or so Ironborn still capable of fighting, slowly closing in, and Crow's Eye, who strolled toward him at his leisure.

Gravely wounded and utterly exhausted, Aegon seemed trapped in a situation from which there was no escape.

Crow's Eye approached step by step, his footsteps ringing with unusual clarity through the hall, which had suddenly fallen deathly silent.

He idly toyed with the dagger in his left hand, its runes glowing an eerie green. His lone eye looked down on the kneeling Aegon as though he were a moth caught in a spider's web.

"A shame about that fine armor." Crow's Eye's voice held a trace of feigned regret, but far more of the mockery of a cat toying with a mouse. "What a waste to have it on you."

He stopped a few paces before Aegon, his gaze sweeping over Aegon's bloodstained visor and faintly trembling arms.

"All that struggling, all those men of mine you killed... and this is how it ends anyway." He shook his head, a cruel smile curling his blue-purple lips. "Tell me, what was the point? If you'd handed it over sooner, you might at least have had a quick death."

Aegon kept his head lowered, panting heavily. Sweat mingled with blood as it dripped from his chin, splashing into tiny dark blossoms on the obsidian floor.

Malice was slowly stirring again, gathering!

Aegon seemed to lack even the strength to lift his head.

Crow's Eye lost the last of his patience, his gaze turning cold. "Enough. I'll finish you myself and see whether your blood really is redder than anyone else's, you silver-haired brat!"

He raised the dagger, poised to stab.

At that very instant-

Aegon jerked his head up!

Behind the eye slits of his visor, his violet eyes held no despair, no fear, not even exhaustion-only a cold fire that almost seemed to burn, and a madness filled with resolve!

He no longer held back, and the blood he could no longer suppress sprayed against the inside of his visor, seeping through its gaps.

Yet he smiled, his lips curling into an almost crazed, bloodstained sneer.

The obsession and madness of the Targaryens overwhelmed his reason entirely.

"Want to kill me?" Aegon's voice was hoarse, yet as clear as shattering ice. "Then come to hell with me!"

Before the words had faded, Aegon made a move that Crow's Eye and the surrounding Ironborn, watching in astonishment, could not comprehend!

Before anyone could react, he gripped the longsword's hilt with his left hand and set its blade with perfect precision against the tiny, almost invisible gap between the gauntlet and vambrace of his Valyrian steel armor at his right wrist-a gap left there to allow movement!

Without the slightest hesitation, he slashed down hard!

Riiip-!

The muffled sound of flesh tearing set their teeth on edge.

Scalding, crimson blood did not trickle out. Like a fountain held back for far too long, it burst from the gap in his armor in an instant!

Blood spattered the black Valyrian steel, the mirror-smooth obsidian floor, Aegon's own breastplate and visor, and even the leather boots and trouser cuffs of Crow's Eye, several paces away.