When Corwyn woke, he thought he was buried.
He couldn't move.Not from fear, not from confusion — he physically couldn't move. Every limb felt tied down, though there were no ropes. Only weight. Ash pressed against his lips. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Something wet filled one ear.
For a moment, he thought he was blind.
Then he blinked. The world shifted.
The ceiling above him was cracked stone, black-veined, slick with something that might once have been blood. Pale red light filtered through holes in the temple roof. Dust floated in it, unmoving, like dead snow.
He tasted metal.
Not the sharp cut of iron — something thicker. Old copper. Bone broth gone sour. His lips were split. His throat rasped. His stomach felt as hollow as a sucked-out shell.
He rolled onto his side and vomited.
What came up wasn't food.Wasn't bile.
It was black and red and steaming.
He shivered. Not from cold. There was no cold here. Not really. But his bones shook anyway. His teeth clacked once before he clamped them shut.
The Heart was gone.
Not destroyed — just… gone.
Where it had floated now lay a dark stain, like the bottom of a forge. The iron bands had melted into the floor. Nothing pulsed. Nothing burned.
It had stopped beating.
He didn't remember when.
He remembered heat. Screaming. The feeling of falling upward into fire.
And the dragons.
He touched his chest.
His ribs ached — not bruised, but shifted, like something inside had rearranged them and left in a hurry.
Bayle.
He remembered the name, though he hadn't heard it spoken. The red one. The wrong one. The one that refused.
"You mocked me," the voice echoed, though no one spoke.
Corwyn pulled himself up onto his elbows. Every muscle protested. His fingernails were cracked. His arms were streaked with soot and something crusted black. His right ankle throbbed with each shift in balance.
He crawled to the edge of the chamber and slumped against the wall.
The stone was warm. Still. Not hot anymore.
He looked around the temple. It was exactly as it had been — and yet different. The carvings seemed less sharp. The air less thick. The ground… quieter.
For the first time since the expedition began, he couldn't hear the land breathing.
He stayed there for hours.
Or minutes.
Or days.
Time didn't work right in Valyria.
Eventually, thirst made him stand.
He limped. Slow. Careful. Every step was a small defiance.
He made it back up the spiral corridor. The tunnel felt shallower than before. The symbols on the wall didn't seem to move anymore.
The air outside hit him like a slap. Sharp. Chemical.
The sky was still red.
But something had changed.
The wind moved.
Real wind. Not that low, sulfuric exhale that had haunted their march inland. This was colder. Not winter-cold — just… touched. As if the place had exhaled, and now it waited.
Corwyn didn't know what it meant.
He just knew he was alone.
He staggered down the hill. His foot slipped on slag glass. He fell once, tore his sleeve. Blood came — dark and sluggish. His body still worked. Mostly.
He passed the remnants of the camp.
No bodies. Just ash.
Gerion was gone.
Everyone was gone.
He sat on a broken statue's leg and drank from a bowl-shaped crack in the stone where rainwater had collected. It tasted like metal. He drank it anyway. His stomach cramped. He ignored it.
The pain wasn't new. It was just there.
He walked until his legs gave out.
Not far. Maybe a few hundred steps.
The city was quieter than it had ever been. No ashstorms. No cracks in the ground. No rumbles from deep things sleeping. Even the sky, red though it remained, felt less alive.
Valyria had stopped pulsing.
The bones of towers loomed like broken teeth. Statues had melted into puddles of suggestion — wings that used to soar, now slumped. Roads curled like bark stripped from trees. Everything here had once been fire, and now all that fire was finished.
Corwyn wandered the way he always had: head down, ears sharp, hands loose.
He kept to the edges of walls and archways. Not out of strategy. Just instinct.
He passed what had once been a bathhouse. Black tiles crusted in soot. A pile of bones in the corner — not men. Something with tusks.
He passed a shield melted into the side of a wall. A Westerosi lion twisted sideways, the gold slagged. Gerion's? He didn't stop to check.
He found a rusted helm lodged in volcanic stone. It cracked when he touched it. Hollow. Everything here was hollow.
The world felt stripped.
Like a body after it dies, still warm, still shaped like something alive — but already vanishing.
He kept walking.
By the third hour, the hunger returned.
He hadn't felt it during the walk. The pain had been too deep. Now it came crawling back.
Gnawing.
His mouth ached. His stomach clenched and stayed that way.
The red fire he'd swallowed, whatever the Heart had done to him — it hadn't fed him. Not really. It had burned. And left him empty.
No food.
No water left in his gut.
He chewed a piece of dried leather from his boot until his jaw cramped. Spat it out.
He tried to pray.
Didn't know who to pray to.
The Seven didn't live here.
The Old Gods had no roots in this ash.
R'hllor maybe. But the red priests back in the Free Cities never looked twice at bastards.
So he prayed to no one.
And kept walking.
He saw the bird mid-afternoon.
A shape on the horizon. Swooping.
At first he thought he'd imagined it. Nothing had flown overhead in days — weeks, maybe. Even the flies had stopped.
But there it was.
One bird.
Small. Fast.
Gone again.
He stopped.
Watched.
Listened.
Then — there.
A sound.
Not the bird.
A whistle. Low. Two short bursts. Then silence.
He froze.
Not imagined. Not wind.
A man.
Someone was alive.
Corwyn moved slower now.
He kept to cover.
A shattered walkway curved up along the side of a ruin. He climbed it. His arms shook. His legs ached. But he climbed.
From the top, he could see a stretch of broken stone leading toward the coast. And on that road:
Three men.
Not Westerosi.
Tall. Dark-skinned. Black armor, loose-fitting for the heat. One wore a red sash. Another had a whip coiled at his hip.
They weren't exploring.
They were torching.
Piles of rubble burned behind them — not with kindling, but with oil.
They weren't seeking treasure.
They were salvaging.
Stripping the city for anything still worth coin.
And they weren't alone.
Behind them — two wagons. One with barrels, the other with people in chains.
Slaves.
Corwyn ducked back.
His heart thudded.
He should've run.
But something held him in place.
Not curiosity.
Not courage.
Just the growing, ugly understanding that his time alone was done.
And he was too weak to fight.
He tried to slip away.
Made it ten paces.
Then he stepped on something that cracked.
A sound like bone.
The men turned.
Too late.
A shout. A command.
Corwyn bolted.
Got three steps.
Felt the sting.
Something struck the back of his thigh — a hook, maybe. Or a weighted dart.
He dropped.
He twisted. Kicked. Screamed something wordless.
A boot met his stomach.
He curled, gasping.
A hand grabbed his hair. Another struck his temple.
Darkness came a second time.
This time, it tasted like chains.