Chapter 22: The Mountain Drinks the Sun: A Kingdom Erased
The march to the western coast was a funeral procession for an entire land. Behind Robb Stark's grim, purposeful army, the heart of the Westerlands was a smoldering ruin, a testament to a King's grief and a god's fury. Kayce was a blackened scar. Feastfires, a molten memory. The gold and silver mines that had fueled Lannister arrogance for centuries were choked with rock and fire. Each act of destruction had been precise, terrible, and broadcast by the smoke that stained the sky for leagues in every direction.
Now, before them, loomed the ultimate symbols of Lannister power: the bustling port city of Lannisport, and the colossal edifice of Casterly Rock that overshadowed it, a mountain carved into the mightiest fortress in Westeros, the ancestral seat of House Lannister for thousands of years. It had stood against dragons, defied sieges, and sneered at the ambitions of lesser lords. It was deemed impregnable, eternal.
Robb Stark, King in the North and of the Trident, intended to prove that assumption false.
He ordered his army to make camp several leagues from Lannisport, on a series of low hills overlooking the city and the great Rock beyond. He gave them no orders for assault, no plans for siege. Instead, he addressed his commanders – the Greatjon, now more subdued and watchful in his King's presence; Dacey Mormont, her one good eye reflecting a mixture of fierce loyalty and a new, profound awe; Jason Mallister, ever the pragmatist, now struggling to reconcile his understanding of warfare with the King he served. Catelyn Stark stood apart, her face a pale mask of sorrow, her eyes rarely leaving her son.
"Tomorrow, at high noon," Robb announced, his voice devoid of its usual warmth, carrying instead the chill of the void between stars, "I will unmake Casterly Rock. You will keep the army here. This is a judgment I must deliver alone. Those who wish to witness may do so from these hills. Those who fear such sights may turn their eyes away. There will be no shame in it."
A profound silence greeted his words. Even the Greatjon did not bluster. They had seen Harrenhal. They had seen Kayce. They knew, with a certainty that froze their blood, that their King was capable of anything.
Catelyn finally spoke, her voice a hoarse whisper. "Robb… my son… I beg you. There are innocents in Lannisport, in the Rock itself – servants, women, children… Must all be consumed? Is there no room left for mercy in your heart?"
Robb turned to her, and for a fleeting instant, she saw not the demigod of destruction, but the haunted eyes of her boy, the son of Eddard Stark. Then it was gone, replaced by the implacable resolve of the King of Ash and Light. "Mercy, Mother?" he said, his voice soft but edged with an unbreakable hardness. "Did they show mercy to my father? Do they show mercy to Sansa in their viper's den? Did they show mercy to the Riverlands when their Mountain put its villages to the torch? Mercy is a luxury afforded by those who have already won the peace. We are still at war. And this war will only end when House Lannister is utterly and irrevocably broken, their power erased, their pride shattered, their very home a testament to the folly of waking the wolf."
He turned away. "There will be no more discussion. Prepare yourselves."
The next morning dawned bright and clear, the sun climbing into a mercilessly blue sky. A strange, oppressive silence hung over the Northern camp. Men spoke in hushed whispers, their eyes constantly darting towards the west, towards the distant, colossal silhouette of Casterly Rock. Many had indeed chosen to avert their gaze, busying themselves with mundane tasks, unable to bear witness to what their King intended. Others, a mixture of fear and morbid curiosity on their faces, gathered on the hilltops. Catelyn Stark was among them, her face pale as death, supported by a grim-faced Brynden Blackfish. She had to see. She had to know what her son had truly become.
As the sun neared its zenith, Robb Stark walked alone from his camp, Rhitta held easily in one hand. He wore no kingly crown, only his stark Northern armor. He moved with a slow, deliberate pace, a solitary figure against the vast landscape, marching towards the greatest fortress in the world. He stopped on a high bluff, perhaps two leagues from the Rock, Lannisport sprawling below and to his left. From here, he had a clear, uninterrupted view.
The air around him began to shimmer. The ground beneath his feet grew warm, then hot. Grass smoked, then blackened. He raised his face to the noon sun, his eyes closed, and for a long moment, he simply stood, a conduit for the raw, untamed power of his divine patron. He felt Sunshine surge through him, an ocean of incandescent energy, more potent, more absolute than he had ever allowed himself to channel before. This would not be a focused beam, nor a localized sunburst. This would be an act of utter, cosmic erasure.
His eyes snapped open, no longer grey, but blazing orbs of pure, white-hot solar fire. Rhitta, in his hand, ignited, the axe itself becoming a miniature sun, its golden head radiating an almost physical wave of heat that distorted the very air.
"House Lannister," his voice was no longer human, but a chorus of colliding stars, a sound that seemed to echo from the heart of the sun itself, carrying across the leagues to his watching army, to the terrified inhabitants of Lannisport, and perhaps even to the unhearing ears within the Rock itself. "For eight thousand years you have sat in your mountain of pride, hoarding your gold, spinning your webs of deceit, bringing misery and war upon this land. You murdered my father. You hold my sister. You scorned my peace."
He raised his other hand, palm upturned, towards the heavens. The sky above him seemed to darken, as if all ambient light was being drawn into him, into the nascent cataclysm forming above his palm. A sphere of light appeared, small at first, then swelling, growing, becoming a seething, impossible globe of pure, condensed solar fury, dwarfing anything he had unleashed at Harrenhal. It was a true star, ripped from the heavens and held captive, its power beyond mortal comprehension. The heat it generated was immense, even leagues away his army could feel it, like standing before an open furnace door the size of a mountain.
"Your pride has been your shield," the voice of Robb, the Sun King, boomed. "Your gold, your power. Your Rock, your unyielding strength. But all things end. All things burn."
He looked at the colossal mountain fortress, the symbol of Lannister dominion.
"For Eddard Stark, and all the Starks who bled for the North! For the Trident, and all its people who suffered your avarice! For Sansa! For Arya!" His voice rose to a terrible crescendo. "LET THERE BE NIGHT UPON HOUSE LANNISTER!"
With a roar that was the sound of creation and destruction intertwined, he hurled the colossal Cruel Sun.
It moved with an impossible, terrifying grace, a sphere of incandescent doom sailing across the sky. The world seemed to hold its breath. Then, it struck Casterly Rock.
There was no explosion, not at first. Only light. A silent, absolute, all-consuming incandescence that dwarfed the noon sun, that bleached all color from the world, that seared the eyes of those who dared to look. For a timeless instant, the mountain that was Casterly Rock simply vanished within this man-made star.
Then came the sound, a sound that was not heard but felt, a concussion that slammed into Robb's army leagues away, throwing men from their feet, shattering eardrums, a physical blow that seemed to crack the very foundations of the world. The earth heaved and buckled. A colossal mushroom cloud of superheated gas, vaporized rock, and incandescent dust boiled miles into the sky, blotting out the sun, casting the world into an eerie, premature twilight.
The shockwave hit Lannisport like the fist of a vengeful god. Buildings were flattened. Ships in the harbor were tossed about like toys, many igniting spontaneously from the sheer heat. A tsunami, born of the displaced earth and rock, surged out into the Sunset Sea.
When the initial cataclysm subsided, when the blinding light faded enough for vision to return, when the trembling earth stilled, those who could still see, those whose minds had not shattered, looked west.
Where Casterly Rock had stood for millennia, there was nothing.
Nothing but a vast, gaping, circular wound in the earth, miles across, its edges scorched and glassy, descending into a churning, molten pit where the heart of the mountain had once pulsed with hoarded gold. The sea itself was rushing into the newly formed abyss, creating a new, steaming, toxic bay. Of the fortress, of its mines, its halls, its treasures, its history – not a stone, not a pebble, not even dust remained. It had been utterly, completely, and irrevocably erased from the face of Westeros.
Robb Stark stood on the bluff, his borrowed solar fire slowly ebbing as the catastrophic energy was expended. Rhitta, beside him, still pulsed with a ferocious heat, but its active blaze was dimming. He was breathing heavily, not from exertion – for Sunshine sustained him – but from the sheer, overwhelming psychic backlash of unleashing such a torrent of cosmic power.
He looked at the place where Casterly Rock had been, now a smoking, hellish testament to his wrath. The Tony Volante persona, the ruthless strategist, nodded in grim approval. A threat of this magnitude had been neutralized with absolute finality. Escanor, the Lion's Sin of Pride, felt a surge of terrible, divine satisfaction at such an unparalleled display of dominance.
But Robb Stark, the son of Eddard, felt… empty.
He had done it. He had unmade a mountain. He had erased the heart of his enemies. The vengeance was absolute. Yet, the cold ache of his father's absence remained. Sansa was still a captive. The world was still broken.
His army, on the distant hills, was prostrate. Some were weeping uncontrollably. Some were babbling prayers to gods old and new. Some simply stared, their minds unable to encompass the scale of what they had witnessed. Their King was not a king. He was a god. Or a demon. Or something new and terrible that had no name.
Catelyn Stark had collapsed into the arms of Brynden Blackfish, her eyes wide and unseeing, fixed on the apocalyptic ruin where her son had just unwritten eight thousand years of history. This was not war. This was not even vengeance. This was a force beyond human understanding, and her son, her beloved Robb, was its vessel. She felt a mother's love curdle into a profound, bone-deep terror.
Robb lowered Rhitta, its light dimming to a soft, golden glow. He felt the immense power of the noon sun still within him, but the drive, the burning rage that had pushed him to this act, had cooled, leaving behind a chilling desolation. He had reshaped the world. He had proven his power beyond any doubt. And in doing so, he felt more alone, more isolated, than ever before.
He had shown them the Night of House Lannister. He had brought it with the power of the Sun.
What came next? What did one do after unmaking a mountain?
He looked towards the south-east, towards King's Landing. Tywin Lannister was there. Joffrey. Cersei. His sisters.
The thought of unleashing such power on a populated city, even King's Landing, gave him a moment's pause. Harrenhal had been a military fortress, its destruction, while terrible, largely confined to enemy combatants and its structure. Casterly Rock was a symbol, its obliteration a strategic and psychological blow. King's Landing was filled with hundreds of thousands of innocents.
Could he do it? Would he?
The silence from his own army, the vast, terrified hush that had fallen over them, was an answer of sorts. They would follow him anywhere, do anything he commanded. But they were also, undeniably, afraid of him.
He slung Rhitta onto his back. The axe felt lighter now, or perhaps he was simply too numb to feel its true weight. He turned and began to walk back towards his camp, a solitary figure against a backdrop of impossible, world-altering destruction. The King of Ash and Light had made his statement. Now, Westeros would have to decide how to respond to a monarch who could command the very sun to obey his will. And Robb Stark would have to decide what kind of King – or god – he truly intended to be.