The bloody warehouse

"No, we must take the troops back to Oldtown. Half the family's standing forces are here. If there really is a crisis, we're the safeguard!"

After forcing himself to calm down, the steward immediately voiced his opinion to Darean.

Yet the forceful language that had won concessions in the past met only the coldness in those young eyes this time.

"If we go back now, do you even know what happened?"

"If Jeylo really leaves with the men, who will be responsible for New Land Town's safety?"

"And let me ask you this: aside from this letter, no one knows yet that something may have happened at the Hightower."

"You know perfectly well how many people are watching us. Once our army moves, even a fool will realize something has gone wrong in the family."

"You know better than I do what an accusation of kinslaying will bring. So our most urgent task is to find a way to confirm whether this is true. If it is, cover it up at once!"

Darean's words left the old man, who had in fact already lost his composure, speechless.

Only when he saw Maester Marwyn of the Citadel side with Darean without hesitation did he realize something:

This was Dareon Hightower's land. He was its master!

Gerold Hightower had also come to New Land Town because of the young man before him.

Darean's earlier refusal to argue with him had given him the illusion that he could control the overall situation.

Now, Darean's merciless refusal finally made the old steward, who had served House Hightower his entire life, realize that the power over this land had always been firmly in the other man's grasp.

"Then... are we really going to do nothing?"

The old steward made one last attempt.

Darean ignored him, his gaze settling on the impressions in the wax seal.

He had overlooked one question all along:

There were two impressions on this wax seal. Setting aside that useless Humfrey, who was still under house arrest, why was Garth's missing?

After all, this elder brother of his wielded more power in the family than anyone except the eldest, Baelor.

Why did something this important lack his endorsement?

Garth knew nothing of Darean's suspicions.

Right now, he was desperately organizing resistance.

East of Oldtown, a narrow road led beyond a series of rolling hills.

This was a distribution point for some of the family's supplies, one of House Hightower's reserve warehouses.

Ten days earlier, Garth had left the city with a small squad of personal guards and headed for this fortress-like warehouse enclosed by a stone wall.

His task was to inventory the supplies here and allocate the portion that needed to be transported south to New Land Town in the next phase.

He still did not quite approve of the family bleeding itself dry to support Darean's construction efforts.

But since everyone else had agreed, Garth could not forcibly oppose it.

And so, under this Hightower son's direction, batch after batch of supplies had been brought out of the warehouse and piled in the courtyard, waiting only for the inventory to be completed before shipment.

What happened next, however, became a nightmare that this normally imposing Hightower could never shake.

Garth remembered that it was a sweltering afternoon.

Having just finished counting out enough copper, Garth was resting against the back of his chair when he saw two guards hurrying into the open space below, supporting a man between them.

Their cries for the warehouse's resident physician immediately drew many people's attention.

"Go see what's going on."

Not wanting his mood disturbed, Garth gave the order to his guard.

The guard nodded and went to carry it out.

When the guard approached, he saw that the man dragged inside was a mass of mangled flesh and blood.

His face, neck, and arms were all covered in unmistakable bite marks.

"What happened here? Was he bitten by a wild animal?"

The guard frowned as he asked.

The two men, dressed in what appeared to be laborers' clothes, shook their heads.

"We don't know. We found him by the roadside while driving a cart here from Oldtown."

"There shouldn't have been just one man with a cart, but he was the only one we saw there."

"Ah, there was blood all over the ground. The others probably didn't make it. We brought him back here first."

The guard nodded, asked exactly where they had found the blood, then waved them on, signaling them to hand the man over to the physician and save his life first.

Yet just as the guard was about to turn back and report to Garth, he heard a scream behind him.

His hand instinctively went to the sword hilt at his waist. Whirling around, the guard saw something he would never forget for the rest of his life:

The unfortunate man, who had been a mangled, dying wreck just moments earlier, suddenly opened eyes threaded with pitch-black veins and lunged at an unsuspecting laborer beside him.

His bloody mouth made strange, rasping sounds. Then, before the other man could react, he sank his teeth into that utterly unprotected neck.

Though human teeth had long since lost their sharpness through evolution, some inexplicable, monstrous strength still spelled disaster for the fragile artery.

Hot, crimson arterial blood gushed out, and the agonized screams chilled everyone to the bone.

Everyone froze. This sudden turn had caught them all off guard.

Standing atop the tower, Garth had been watching the entire time.

He was the first to react.

"Quick! Pull that madman off him!"

His roar snapped the others in the courtyard out of their stupor. The guard immediately drew the steel sword at his waist, pointed it at the man who was still biting away, and shouted:

"Get away from him, or I'll cut you down!"

What answered him was a hideous face covered in blood and flesh, its skin rotting.

In those upturned eyes, the guard could no longer see any emotion belonging to the living.

"Seven Hells... what is this... you..."

Years of training kept him from retreating in fear, but the monster gave him no more time to think.

A blood-scented gust rose as he lunged straight at the guard.

Everything happened too quickly. The guard had not even had time to bring his sword across his body.

Just as he seemed about to share the fate of the laborer, who was now only twitching, a spinning wine bottle hurtled in and blocked the deadly attack.

Garth had grabbed a wine bottle, and years of aristocratic games had allowed him to land the throw accurately.

Now, without another word from him, the guard swung his blade.

What he had just seen could no longer fall within the bounds of humanity.

A dull, strange sound of steel entering flesh rang out, accompanied by an eerie scream.

The guard's full-strength slash cut halfway through the monster's body.

Its entrails spilled across the ground, painting a nauseating picture of hell within the courtyard.

But the creature's vitality was astonishingly tenacious. Even this did not kill him.

He still stretched out blood-covered hands and crawled forward.

Only when the guard finally chopped off his head did everything fall silent.

"Damn it, what is this thing?"

Garth came downstairs after uttering that curse.

Then he saw another pair of eyes threaded with black veins.

It was the laborer who had just met his violent death!