Heaven and earth sank into an uncanny silence.
The Death Dragon's soul-rending roar, the earth-shaking thunder of the collapse, the bubbling of the boiling Blood Lake-
All that clamor was instantly stripped away, swallowed, erased beneath the terrifying pressure descending from the dark clouds.
What remained was a deathly silence more unnerving than any sound.
Henry knelt in the mud, feeling as though his breathing would stop. His heart hammered wildly in his chest, each beat threatening to shatter his ribs and burst out of his body.
His mouth hung open, but he could not draw in a breath-the air seemed to have congealed into a heavy gel, clogging his mouth, nose, windpipe, and lungs.
All he could hear was the dull pounding of his own heart, and... the faintest crackling of embers burning in the ruins around him.
In that absolute silence, those sounds were magnified endlessly, so clear they made his skin crawl.
Carl lay prone nearby, her lean body as rigid as stone.
Time lost all meaning in that deathly silence.
It might have been an instant, or a quarter of an hour.
Until-
"Tap."
The sharp sound of a boot striking the ground abruptly broke the frozen silence.
It was not loud, even somewhat muffled, but in that utter stillness, it rang as clearly as thunder, slamming into everyone's eardrums, hearts, and souls!
Henry shuddered violently and turned his head, stiffly, agonizingly slowly.
The bones in his neck gave a faint crack.
His gaze passed over scattered rubble, corpses, and congealed pools of blood, reaching deep into the ruins where eerie blue embers still burned.
A figure slowly emerged from the churning flames and thick smoke.
His steps were impossibly steady.
It was Aegon.
The edges of his Valyrian steel armor had been scorched dark red by the flames, like a divine weapon taken from a furnace and quenched after forging.
Rather than fading, the dark red sheen flowing across the armor had grown deeper and more subdued under that baptism of heat. The embossed dragons seemed like living creatures slowly awakening and breathing within it.
His helmet had long since been removed and was nowhere to be seen.
His long, frost-white hair whipped wildly in the heat, faint sparks even flickering at its tips.
Soot and dried blood covered his sharply chiseled face, yet could not conceal the knife-edged severity of his features, or those-
Those violet eyes.
Henry met those eyes.
In that instant, he felt all the blood in his body freeze.
That was not the gaze of his familiar companion, Hayne-though Hayne's eyes had always been calm and watchful, occasionally touched by the detachment of someone who had seen much of the world.
Now those violet eyes held no weariness, no relief at surviving disaster, not even their customary calm.
There was only a... nearly divine indifference that Henry could not put into words.
As though what he had just endured had not been a battle to the death, but something as trivial as brushing dust from the hem of his clothes.
As though the mountains of corpses and seas of blood beneath his feet, the burning hellscape of ruins behind him, the oppressive dark clouds hanging low overhead, and the terrifying presence looming within them... were all merely part of the scenery in his eyes.
Aegon held a sword.
Its entire blade was crimson, as though freshly drawn from a forge, with cold, eerie blue flames coiling around its surface.
Those flames burned silently, giving off no intense heat, yet the surrounding air warped slightly, and light refracted strangely as it passed near the blade.
Just like that, carrying his burning sword, he crossed the scorched earth and pools of blood, one step at a time.
He passed Henry.
He did not stop.
He did not even glance down at the fat man kneeling on the ground, blood and tears mingling on his face as he stared at him with trembling disbelief, wild joy, and fear.
He passed Carl.
Carl opened her mouth, a faint, unintelligible breath escaping her throat.
She wanted to ask something, to confirm something, but every word caught in her throat, turning into a silent tremor.
Aegon's gaze did not linger on her for even a moment.
From beginning to end, he looked calmly, directly ahead-
Toward the creature crouching beside the Blood Lake, its head lowered, its rotting flesh trembling faintly, two enormous hollow sockets burning with ghastly green soul-fire fixed on him-
The Death Dragon.
Henry's heart clenched.
He... what was he going to do?!
He wanted to shout, to warn him, to stop him-that monster had vaporized nearly half the Altar with a single blast of Dragonfire!
Yet just as his throat worked and a hoarse cry was about to escape-
A mud-stained hand, its nails torn and split yet remarkably steady, gently settled on his shoulder.
It was Carl.
At some point, Carl had struggled into a half-seated position. Her face was deathly pale, her forehead covered in cold sweat, but her eyes, usually so sly and shrewd, now held only a deep, almost reverent clarity.
Meeting Henry's puzzled, anxious, bewildered gaze, she slowly gave the slightest shake of her head.
The movement was tiny, but its meaning was unmistakable:
Don't move.
Don't speak.
Don't... disturb him.
Carl had seen it.
The Aegon before them was no longer the Hayne they knew.
He radiated an indescribable aura that instinctively made them want to retreat, yet also compelled them to prostrate themselves.
It was not merely power.
It was... a higher order of being.
The natural suppression of every lesser creature by an existence at the top of the food chain.
Yet not everyone could retain a shred of reason and judgment amid overwhelming shock and terror, as Carl had.
"Heh... heh heh..."
A strange, low laugh, like air wheezing through broken bellows, came from behind a heap of rubble on the other side of the platform.
The voice was hoarse and dry, yet filled with a sick, hysterical exhilaration.
Everyone instinctively turned toward it.
Corlyon struggled out from behind several massive fallen stones.
His velvet robe had been reduced to strips of rag, covered in black and red stains.
Fragments of stone had cut several gashes across his face, smearing it with blood and dust, but he seemed utterly unaware.
One arm bent at an unnatural angle, clearly broken. With his other, uninjured hand, he clawed desperately at the ground, dragging himself free of the rubble inch by inch.
His eyes were fixed on Aegon, who was steadily approaching the Death Dragon in the distance. His pupils had shrunk to pinpoints, burning with a fire Henry could not comprehend—a mixture of extreme envy, insane hatred, and a twisted ecstasy.
"Yes... yes!" Corlyon muttered, his voice growing louder. "I knew it... the ritual didn't fail! It succeeded! It awakened the true... hahahahaha!"
He laughed madly and tried to rise, but the excruciating pain in his arm and his utter exhaustion made him stagger, almost sending him tumbling back down.
The guard captain, who had remained nearby and was equally bedraggled, surveyed their surroundings and grabbed Corlyon, his brow tightly furrowed. "My lord, while we still can... we must leave!"
His words stopped abruptly.
Corlyon had whipped his head around and, with his uninjured hand, drawn the sword from the Guard Captain's waist at an unbelievable speed!
"My lord? You..." The Guard Captain froze, confusion and a flicker of foreboding appearing on his face.
The next second.
"Shhk-!"
The muffled sound of a blade slicing through flesh and severing a windpipe was especially clear and grating in the silence.
Gripping the sword with both hands, Corlyon drove its sharp blade into the side of the Guard Captain's neck with all his strength! Then he yanked it sideways!
Blood spurted like a fountain, splashing across Corlyon's head and face, making his already filthy features still more hideous and terrifying.
The Guard Captain staggered backward, his hands futilely covering the enormous wound in his neck, his wide eyes filled with uncomprehending disbelief and the agony of death.
He opened his mouth as though trying to speak, but only great gushes of bloody froth poured out.
"Thud."
His corpse hit the ground, twitched twice, and went still.
It had all happened too quickly, too suddenly.
The few surviving guards nearby stood utterly stunned, watching their captain die, momentarily forgetting to react.
Corlyon held the blood-drenched longsword without so much as glancing at the corpse still twitching faintly on the ground.
He licked the warm blood splashed against his lips, an almost intoxicated, deranged smile spreading over his face.
"No one can... no one can stop me..." he whispered hoarsely, swaying as he found his footing. Then he spun around, pointed his uninjured hand at Aegon in the distance, and unleashed an earth-shaking roar:
"It was you-!!!!"
His voice, shrill as a night owl's cry, tore through the air.
"You silver-haired bastard! You vile thief!!"
Still roaring, he stumbled toward the Death Dragon and Aegon, seemingly forgetting the danger there, his broken arm, and every wound on his body.
"You ruined my ritual! You stole the glory of House Torregar! That was my progenitor! My power! My-!!!!"
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